Big Content's latest antipiracy weapon: extradition
Found on Ars Technica on Thursday, 21 July 2011
As major American copyright holders continue their long war on file-sharing, the focus of the debate has increasingly shifted overseas.
In May, American law enforcement officials opened up yet another front in this war by seeking the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer.
Until last year, he ran a "link site" that helped users find free movies and TV shows, many of them infringing. American officials want to try him on charges of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy.
The extradition request is remarkable; O'Dwyer has no obvious connection to the United States. He hasn't set foot there since he was a small child, his servers were not located there, and it's not clear he has broken UK law.
Together with the "hack us and we will bomb you out" statement, this is getting really questionable. Basically, the US tries to force its laws, ridiculous as they may be, onto people outside of their jurisdiction. Or, to force other nations to bring them under their jurisdiction.