Richard O'Dwyer: The Other Copyright Infrngement Extradition Case
Posted on Sun Jan 29, 2012 at 11:53:01 AM EST
Tags: Richard O'Dwyer, Operation In Our Sites (all tags)
While the validity of the charges in the Megaupload indictment will take years to work its way through the courts, and many will have little sympathy because of the amounts of money the defendants earned, consider the case of British student Richard O'Dwyer.
O'Dwyer set up a site in his basement, TV Shack.net. He didn't download copyrighted material, he just provided links to it. His site was hosted on servers located in the UK, not the U.S. His site did not violate laws in the U.K. But the U.S. charged him with criminal copyright violations and sought his extradition. A few weeks ago, a court in the U.K. ordered his extradition. He will now come to the U.S. where he is facing two crimes, each with a 5 year penalty. [More...]
What was the basis for U.S. jurisdiction? That Verisign is the official registrar of .com and .net sites and Verisign is in the U.S. The Guardian reports ICE officials like Assistant Deputy Director Erik Barnett say that's enough.
"The jurisdiction we have over these sites right now really is the use of the domain name registry system in the United States. That's the key." The only necessary "nexus to the US" is a .com or .net web address for which Verisign acts as the official registry operator, he said.
Here's more on ICE's Operation In Our Sites.
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