nabraxas Posted June 28, 2012 Richard O'Dwyer is a 24 year old British student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is facing extradition to the USA and up to ten years in prison, for creating a website – TVShack.net – which linked (similar to a search-engine) to places to watch TV and movies online. O'Dwyer is not a US citizen, he's lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil. The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online. When operating his site, Richard O'Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied. His site hosted links, not copyrighted content, and these were submitted by users. Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honoured moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood. Richard O'Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second. This is why I am petitioning the UK's Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer. I hope you will join me. - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder sign the petition here: http://www.change.org/petitions/ukhomeoffice-stop-the-extradition-of-richard-o-dwyer-to-the-usa-saverichard 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cactuscarl Posted June 28, 2012 Signed That's bull s*** most of what was on that site was from free to air tv as well Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
whitewind Posted July 4, 2012 Yes I signed this from The Guardian site, they had a nice write up on why the extradition is illegal (as well as immoral). There is absolutely no way why this young fella should be extradited to the US for what is, at best, an extremely minor crime - a crime that moreover, follows in the footsteps of the greatest capitalists that America has ever spawned themselves. It makes me sick. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Xenodimensional Posted July 4, 2012 Considering the cock-up with Kiwi Kim you'd think they'd be having second thoughts... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
