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And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
The time is 7.01. That means it's time for Off The Hook.
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♪ The telephone keeps ringing. So I ripped it off the wall. ♪
♪ I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a call. ♪
♪ We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. ♪
♪ Fundidly boom for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Fundidly boom! ♪
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And Gabe and Troy Wright, the program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike. Hello.
Rob T. Firefly. Good evening.
Dot Rhett in red hat. Hello.
Jim. Hello.
Down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And boy, do we have an exciting program planned for you tonight.
You might have even heard about it on our news site or other news sites or through Twitter or just word on the street.
People talking about it outside, I saw before.
Well, they asked me what I was going to do tonight and I told them, so that counts.
But we have a couple of news items to update people on.
First off, look at this. I've got the brand new issue of 2600, which this is the only copy in the city right now.
So, yes, you can you can pass it around.
But I expect it back along with the plastic bag it came in after the show.
No, I want that bag. That's you can't get those anymore.
Yeah. And we have this news that just came in fairly recently.
We talked about Facebook last week.
We talked about how apparently employers are are forcing people to give out their passwords, which I still can't believe.
But I just thought this was a nice little addendum to that story.
House Republicans have blocked the measure.
They did this last night that would have let the FCC prevent employers from forcing workers to reveal their Facebook passwords.
Democrats offered the legislation as part of a bill to slap new restrictions on FCC rules after a string of reports about employers insisting on access to the social media network.
And basically, the measure failed 184 to 236 with no Republicans voting for it.
I can't imagine. I can't imagine the logic behind that.
But, yeah, apparently, apparently that's where it stands right now.
Sad, isn't it?
Well, I can explain the logic.
OK, explain the logic.
The logic is the Democrats proposed the bill, so the Republicans have to oppose it.
It's like being in kindergarten, isn't it?
It really is.
OK, and that's that's pretty much the only bit of that and the new issue.
And, of course, the conference is continuing to unfold or come together, as it were, week by week.
Have you joined the Twitter account Hope Number Nine with nine being a digit?
H-O-P-E-N-E-U-M-B-E-R nine.
That's the account you should join.
And you'll get, I believe, updates several times a day on various things that are happening.
Everything from speakers that are that are being announced to new projects and openings of various activities that you can participate in.
Bernie, why don't you pick one at random?
Anything.
I just want to I want to put you on the spot there.
And yes, what kind of activity at Hope Number Nine this July do you think is particularly exciting?
Despite about a hundred or so stimulating speakers on all kinds of topics you want to learn about.
Yeah, there's that. There's that.
We all know about speakers.
We all know that we have the best lineup ever of people speaking about technology and hacking and and activism and all kinds of interesting things like that.
Here's one that we haven't even announced yet.
I was talking to the Prometheus Radio Project people the other day, and they're going to be presenting a workshop on literally building your own low power FM radio transmitter right there at the conference.
Do you think you can build one for yourself and take it home?
That is news to me even.
So, yeah.
So, yeah, every every day we find out that we find out something new.
So there you go.
Yeah.
Go to www.hope.net for the latest information.
You can join the mailing list there.
The mailing list will send you to your email account all kinds of announcements and the latest news less frequently than than the Twitter account.
Hope number nine with the nine being a digit.
And I think that's about it as far as things you can you can follow other than listening to us each week.
Oh, yeah.
Of course, if you have if you have an idea for a topic to speak on, we're wide open to all kinds of different ideas.
We've had everyone from high school kids to college professors to international spot.
I guess I shouldn't reveal secret information about people.
But, yeah, there are all kinds of interesting people submitting talk ideas and being accepted to.
Hope is a tremendous coming together of minds of all sorts.
So if you think you're you're not qualified, you probably are.
And if you assume that that you're overqualified, you probably not or something like that.
Yeah.
Speakers at hope.net is the address to to write to as far as talk presentations and ideas.
The it's still open for at least the indefinite future until the conference begins.
July 13th through 15th.
OK, that's that's it as far as announcements go.
We have the story that we talked about in weeks past, maybe even beyond that.
It certainly has been making the rounds and various news organizations.
Not enough.
Certainly not enough in this country.
What I'd like to do, I'd like to to read something briefly.
Then we're going to make a phone call.
This is a story or part of a story from last year.
And it's dated June 17th.
And of course, obviously, we have updates since then.
But this is where it stood back then.
This is how incredible it all seemed.
The the question in this story, which comes comes from the Web site tech dirt.
The question is, why is the Justice Department pretending U.S. copyright laws apply in the U.K.?
We already mentioned the attempt by the U.S. to extradite Richard O'Dwyer,
who was a U.K. student who ran TV Shack.net and TV Shack.cc, both of which were seized by I.C.E.
Who would like to say what I.C.E. stands for, Mike?
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And we also ask you, is it proper to say I.C.E. or should I be saying I.C.E.?
I would say I.C.E.
I don't want to say I.C.E. That makes them sound cool.
They don't deserve that.
I'm sorry.
Call them Immigration Enforcement.
I don't have that much time.
You can call them La Migra.
You know what?
I'm calling them I.C.E. because that's what I feel like calling them.
And write a letter if you don't like it.
Unfortunately, most of the press reports out of the U.K.
I can say U.K., so why can't I say I.C.E.?
lack details.
And I wasn't even entirely sure that an actual attempt at extradition had been made,
this according to columnist Mike Mesnick,
or if there was just fear on the part of the O'Dwyer family.
Now, after some digging, it appears that this is absolutely the case.
The Justice Department out of the Southern District of New York, that's us.
That's right here.
The same DOJ offices that have been involved in the I.C.E. seizures
and I.C.E. via the U.S. Embassy in London made the request to extradite O'Dwyer.
Basically, what it comes down to is that O'Dwyer has not violated any U.K.
O'Dwyer has not violated any U.K. law.
Pretty much everyone agrees on this.
In the initial post, we discussed a few similar cases in the U.K.
that showed such site administrators were not liable.
U.K. legal experts have been saying that what O'Dwyer did is legal in the U.K.,
as it matches up almost entirely with previous cases
where people doing nearly identical things were found to have not violated the law.
So, this is a massive jurisdictional and sovereign disaster waiting to happen.
Basically, the U.S. appears to be claiming that if you do anything on the Internet,
you're subject to U.S. laws.
That's crazy.
Yes, and that was in italics.
That's crazy and is going to come back to haunt U.S. law enforcement.
Do they not realize that this is the same thing that other countries have tried to do to U.S. citizens?
The U.S. even passed a law, the Speech Act,
to make it clear that U.S. citizens were not subject to the liability of other national laws
just because such things happen on the Internet.
To then turn around and pretend the opposite is true for everyone else is just massive hypocrisy.
I'm kind of surprised this guy is that shocked by it.
Separate from all that, it's highly questionable if O'Dwyer is even violating U.S. criminal copyright law
because there is no such thing as contributory criminal infringement.
There is for civil copyright law, but it's nowhere to be found in criminal law.
That's a legal question we'll be getting into in just a little bit.
Effectively, it appears that the U.S. government wants to seize someone
and drag them across the ocean to face federal charges for doing something
that was perfectly legal in his home country and probably legal in the U.S.
Do they not see how that might create some issues?
All right.
Well, what we are doing right now is we are connecting to England.
Do you want to hear a dial tone?
No, I was hoping it would be dialing by now.
Okay, go ahead and dial the number.
We have the number there, and we are connecting to someone very familiar with the case,
Richard O'Dwyer's mother in the U.K., and let's hope that this goes through in the first attempt.
Okay, there's a U.K. ring right there.
Hello?
Hi, is this Julia O'Dwyer?
Yes, it is.
Hello, it's Emmanuel from Off The Hook.
You're live on the radio in New York City right now.
Okay, right. Hi.
How are you doing? What part of the U.K. are you in?
Do you know the U.K.?
A little bit, a little bit.
Up northwards towards Sheffield.
Sheffield? No kidding, really?
Just a little way outside of Sheffield.
That's extraordinary. I just saw a film last night that was all about Sheffield.
Have you ever heard of Threads?
No.
It's about a nuclear disaster.
It's not the most cheerful film ever, but I highly recommend it,
because it shows how we can get dragged into real hell by our leaders if we're not careful.
I guess that's sort of a prelude to what we're talking about here tonight.
More like the hell that we're in now.
Exactly, exactly, yeah.
It might not be a nuclear hell, but it is a hell all the same.
We just looked at a story from last year that seemed to be approaching this whole thing with a bit of shock.
How could such a thing like this actually happen?
And it's not something that seems at all likely.
However, the postscript to what I just read now is that on January 13th of this year,
a U.K. magistrate ruled that your son can be extradited to the United States for running a website.
And we should say what the website did.
The website allegedly was posting links to pirated TV shows and films.
Not hosting the content, posting links.
This is something that, as far as I understand, is not even a crime in the United Kingdom.
So far, is that correct?
No, it's not.
That's what we are trying to argue, that fact.
But we'll have to do that at an appeal.
Uh-huh.
The court that we were at in January was just the magistrate's court.
In fact, just only really an extradition court.
So it wasn't, you know, those judges, all they do is extradition cases.
So it's very difficult for them to think outside of that box.
Uh-huh.
It seems like it almost is a case where they just agree to extradite whoever is being requested to be extradited by whatever government.
They do that with the U.S. government.
This is standard procedure for all American extradition requests to the U.K.
Can you tell us something about how this all unfolded back in, I guess, last year when it all started?
What was your first inkling that this was going on?
Well, first of all, about six months before, well, in November, it was November 2010, police came to question Richard about his website.
And he told them all about it.
They took him to the police station to be questioned.
He had no lawyer with him because he never had any dealings, really, with the police.
So he didn't even know that he would need to do that.
And they took away his computer.
And then they told him he was on bail for six months.
We never heard a word from them in all of that time.
So I went with him to the bail in May, May, the end of May 2011.
We went to London to the bail, and they said the criminal investigation in the U.K. had been dropped.
So we kind of had a brief sigh of relief.
And then in the next sentence, they said, but we've got an extradition warrant for America now instead.
Wow.
Wow, yeah.
So it was like handcuffs on and straight down to the nearest court to start to be processed for extradition.
So it sounds like they basically traded charges.
We'll drop the charge, but now we're going to hand it over to the United States.
Is that how it played out?
Well, they have to do that, you see, because you can't be charged for the same offense twice.
You know, he couldn't be charged.
He has never been charged with anything yet.
So if they charged him in this country, they would have to prosecute the case in this country.
So I think it was all intentional that it was going to be an extradition.
Are you there?
Yes, sorry.
They just didn't tell us that, you know.
Now, what was the reaction when you first heard about this push for extradition?
Well, you know, I was there with Richard, so we were just totally shocked.
But we didn't really know what all that meant because they never gave us any information.
So, you know, we were quickly taken, well, Richard was quickly taken to the court and locked up there
and had to wait several hours to go into the court where loads of people were being processed for extraditions to Europe.
So I was watching all these people being rubber stamped through for extradition,
and I just thought, God, this is going to be happening to Richard in a few minutes.
We had no assistance, you know, because we didn't expect that to be happening to us on that day.
And so when we got out of there, you know, I had to go home and start looking on the Internet
and trying to find out all about the law and places where I could get help, you know, from other people who might know about this.
And so that's really what I've been doing ever since.
So you're saying on that day, when you went into court, you had no idea that extradition was even on the table
and you were actually looking at the possibility of it being approved on that very same day?
Well, when we went to the court, we knew we were going there about the extradition because they told us that at the police station.
But we didn't know because I was watching all these other people going to Europe to be extradited really quickly, you know.
I thought, God, when it's Richard's turn, that's what they're going to do to him.
Now, it's interesting, too, because Richard has not been to the United States since he was five years old.
And apparently because this is the logic that is being used here because the website that he was running ended in .net.
The United States is alleging that that means they have jurisdiction.
Any site that ends in .com or .net.
And they actually phrase this in an interesting way.
They seem to think that that means that it goes through the United States at some point.
But obviously, if you have any knowledge of the internet, that's not the way it works.
You do not have to actually route it through the United States in any way.
We're bringing in Mitch Stultz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Mitch, are you with us in California?
I'm here. Hi there.
How are you doing? Are you familiar with this case?
I am.
Well, it's mind-blowing because we're hearing all of this developing week by week.
And it just seems extraordinary that somebody who has done something in the United Kingdom where it's not even a crime can actually, in reality, be extradited to this country to face charges.
I mean, if we applied it to United States citizens and we were being exported to, oh, I don't know, countries like Iran or Malaysia for various crimes that we might have committed online in their country but not here, it just seems bizarre.
But apparently it doesn't work the other way.
It is bizarre.
And I'd add on top of that, it's not entirely clear that this is a crime in the United States or should be.
Now, could you tell us something about how that could be?
I understand civilly it might be considered a crime but not criminally.
Is that right?
It's actually not even clear that it's a civil offense.
Richard's website, as I understand it, only provided links to files that may have been infringing.
It didn't host any files itself.
And in the civil area, the cases go both ways on that.
But for the most part, the consensus is that just linking to infringing content is not a copyright violation.
And that's doubly true in the criminal world.
It's never been a criminal conviction based on linking as far as I know.
The closest I can think is our own case with the MPAA back in 2000 where we were basically ordered not to link to the ECSS code anymore.
And what we wound up doing to counter that is simply taking out the link part of it and just listing the URLs instead.
I'm not sure if that tactic would have worked for Richard's case.
Probably would have angered the authorities even more.
But it certainly doesn't bode well.
Is this the first case that you're aware of of something so egregious where someone doing something so –
I want to say harmless because it is harmless.
Simply, it's not doing anything that Google doesn't already do as far as pointing to where certain things are.
Are you aware of any other case where someone is actually in threat of being extradited for this?
No, I'm not.
There may be some parallels to Mega Upload in which some residents of New Zealand were arrested in their houses.
And I think the U.S. is seeking extradition.
But that was, again, a site that actually stored files rather than just pointing people to files that were stored elsewhere.
Julia, your son doesn't have mansions or lots of cars or things like that?
Well, no.
I mean, when the police came – because they came here to the home as well as to Richard's flat, you know, his student accommodation.
And they were looking for, you know, trappings of wealth.
You know, it was funny on that day because we had no staircase because the joiner was putting new stairs in for us.
But, you know, there was no trappings of wealth.
And when they searched Richard's belongings, they said, well, he hasn't got anything, has he?
You know, he's got his TV and he's got his computer and a camera and his iPhone.
That's it.
He doesn't have anything.
He's got, you know, no trappings of wealth.
So he's not a Mr. Big, the Mr. Big that they thought they were coming looking for.
Did the police seem to realize the absurdity of the situation at any point?
I'm not too sure because they were just doing this work for the Americans.
You know, they were obviously doing the primary bit of, you know, information gathering for the U.S. in preparation for this extradition.
They weren't, you know, I mean, they were a bit sloppy anyway because they came here and they took away a couple of computers, you know, the home computers.
And after they'd gone, you know, we found another laptop.
Because they're all over the, well, they're not all over the place, but we've got a couple of broken ones as well, you know.
So they were just there.
And they'd not even looked, searched the place properly.
They were supposed to be searching the place, you know, for, they thought they were going to find a load of knockoff DVDs or something.
There was nothing like that because that's not what Richard's website was about.
They expected to find a pirating studio or something like that.
Yeah, they found a great big, we have a great big basket full of CDs and DVDs.
And they went to this box thinking, oh, great.
But they were all legitimately proper, the proper ones bought.
You know, there weren't any copies or anything like that.
They must have been so disappointed.
Yeah, they were disappointed, I think.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's unbelievable.
Now, when this happened, when this first occurred, and when was that raid last year?
That was on the 29th of, I'll tell you when it was, it was 29th of November, 2010.
Oh, wow.
And it was the same day that they did all the others in the Operation In Our Sights thing.
It was that day.
So, now, when this happened, what was the media coverage like in the UK?
Did they get the story or did they just blindly follow?
Well, no, they didn't.
So, there was nothing on that day because, you know, Richard only went to the police station.
So, it wasn't until we went to the second extradition court that there was any media coverage, really,
because the first time we went, we didn't even know we were going and there was no journalists there
because, you know, it's not that kind of a court, really, unless there's a prominent case,
which they didn't know about Richard then, so there was no publicity.
But then the next time we went, the press knew about it because somebody had seen the list, the name listed,
you know, and decided to turn up.
So, after that, every time we've been since, there's been a lot of media coverage.
And what has that coverage been like for the most part?
Good. Very supportive.
Everybody's horrified.
You know, the press coverage, TV and the newspapers has all been, you know, more or less saying,
this is ridiculous, why is this happening?
So, there hasn't been the kind of tabloid journalism that is making Richard out to be evil?
No, no, no, not at all.
In fact, you know, I'm on Twitter a lot of the time and I've got so many people sending me messages of support,
like copyright lawyers, tech people, even film-makers, you know, people out of the movie industry contacting me,
sending me information, giving me messages of support.
I haven't had any bad, you know, we haven't had any bad press, we haven't had any bad messages or anything.
It's all been really positive and good.
And how is Richard holding up?
Well, he tries to, not ignore it, but he's just trying to get on with his life, really,
because, you know, he's at university, he's on a work placement this year,
he's got his mates, so he just tries to ignore it as much as he can,
except when there's a court appearance or something like that going on.
I'm sure it's on his mind all the time, but he doesn't want to talk about it much, you know,
and he doesn't want it in his face.
Well, it's amazing how quickly you can be in the limelight just by starting a simple website
that simply gives addresses of other websites.
Now, Mitch, let me ask you, this contention that the United States controls anything
that happens on a website that ends in .com or .net and presumably other top-level domains as well,
do you think that has any legal standing whatsoever?
I think there may be legal standing for the idea that the government can,
or at least this is what they claim based on a law that was passed in 2010,
that for websites that end in .com or .net, the registry,
the official organization in charge of handing out those names is in the United States,
and based on that, they could presumably go to that registry and say,
I want you to shut down this domain name.
But that's not 100% airtight, but that is the basis of the seizures,
the operation site seizures that they are claiming to rely on.
That's just shutting down a website, taking away the domain name,
but actually prosecuting somebody because of something that happened on that domain
because it ends in .net or .com.
That seems like a big stretch.
That does seem like a big stretch.
That is a pretty bold assertion of the U.S. jurisdiction potentially anywhere in the world.
If the extradition were to proceed and it would be tried in the U.S.,
what kind of trial would be held?
It would be a standard of criminal copyright infringement trial.
They've charged copyright infringement and conspiracy.
Now, I think the conspiracy charge is an attempt to get around this linking problem.
Like I said, there's been no case that I know of saying that simply linking to infringing material
is itself an illegal act.
I think what they might try to do is say that by linking,
he was somehow forming a conspiracy with the people who were actually hosting the movie files.
Probably anonymous and anywhere in the world.
That, too, is a theory that I don't think has ever been tried or in a serious way,
none that I've heard of.
But I think they're trying to make a new law,
and if that becomes the law, the implications are pretty scary.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe that since the registries are located in the U.S.,
that whenever a query is being sent out,
that at some point queries for the URL still at some point are traveling back to the U.S. occasionally.
There's a request for the IP address of the domain in question,
but even that doesn't necessarily have to,
the server answering that query doesn't necessarily have to be in the U.S.
It could be located elsewhere.
Now, I believe that in general that there are many machines,
but I'm wondering if this also somehow plays into them trying to say that the crime somehow is connected to U.S. soil.
I don't know. This seems very shaky.
I think that's what they're trying to do,
but the implications of that, again, are pretty astounding
because that will cover almost any activity on the Internet anywhere in the world.
Now, if I were to get on the Internet, on Twitter or whatever,
and say that if you were right now at this moment to go to YouTube.com,
type in the name of your favorite television show,
and some of the results back would be the copyrighted material uploaded by people who don't own it,
if I were to say that on the Internet or even on the radio,
would that be comparable to what Richard's website was doing and on a practical level?
On a practical level, I think the only difference would be volume.
And also YouTube would be liable, too, under that.
The safe harbor laws, which basically as long as they take down the content when they receive a request from the copyright owner,
then they're not liable for it,
which is good because otherwise there'd be a lot of things on the Internet that wouldn't exist.
Well, obviously the danger in this is that people can be flown all over the world now
every time they violate some kind of rule in different countries.
Mitch, let me ask you, where does it end?
Once they open up this door, how do they prevent U.S. citizens from being shipped all over the place
and U.K. citizens and European citizens and people from all over the world being sent to foreign prisons?
This certainly sends that message.
Now, I don't think it directly opens that door because this is based on a particular treaty between the U.S. and the U.K.
From what I've seen, a lot of people in the U.K. have criticized that treaty because it's not very symmetrical.
It gives the U.S. the right to extradite British citizens under a lot lower threshold than in the opposite direction.
And Julia, let me ask you about that.
Obviously there's been a lot of talk about that treaty.
What's your understanding of how exactly it works and how something like that got to be signed in the first place
where it's easy for the United States to extradite citizens of the U.K. but not the other way around?
Well, firstly, it was signed at this side in a hurry, really, and it was not given any parliamentary scrutiny
because it was done as a response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
And so the U.K. signed it up very quickly, but the U.S. took several years later before they actually signed their part of the bargain.
That's the first thing.
But actually, I think, and I don't know an awful lot about American law and the Constitution,
but as I understand it, U.S. citizens have some greater protection against being extradited
in that they are allowed a bit of a trial to which they can challenge and bring evidence to fight their extradition.
And I'm not too sure whether America would allow a citizen to be extradited for something the same as Richard's done from America.
They wouldn't let an American be extradited to the U.K. on a copyright charge for something on the Internet.
Well, copyright laws are very different in different countries.
Yeah, but I don't think America would allow a citizen to be extradited for something that they have done in their own country.
My understanding is that when the motion picture entities and recording industry,
when they try to reach a settlement with an alleged violator, in the United States it's ridiculous figures, millions of dollars,
whereas in the U.K. it's something a lot more, well, reasonable, putting that in quotes, but something like $1,000 or something like that.
Mitch, is that your understanding, too?
Well, I haven't really gone into that because previous cases of linking sites in the U.K. have all been dismissed and found not guilty.
So that issue has never arisen.
Well, that's interesting, too. Mitch, you were saying?
Oh, the law in the U.S. provides automatic penalties in, and this is civil copyright law, this isn't even getting to criminal cases,
minimum of $750 per copyrighted work and maximum of $150,000.
And that's regardless of what the work is actually worth, whether we're talking about a $0.99 sound song download or a $10 movie download, minimum of $750.
And that's the basis for those huge settlements because if you go to court, that's what you risk.
Interesting. Go ahead, Mike.
Julia, you said that this had started not last November but the November before. Do you have any sense of how much longer this process can be drawn out?
Oh, we don't really want it to be drawn out a long time because we have this hanging over us and interfering with our lives, really.
And Richard's about to, next year is his final year at university, so that's a very important year.
And the other thing is that the MPAA, through their British organization, FACT, have offices in this country,
and so there's absolutely no reason why they couldn't have dealt with this in this country, where Richard has been at all times.
They have the facilities, they have the connections, they could have easily done that,
but I guess maybe they didn't do that because they knew they wouldn't get a prosecution here because, as I said to you,
previous cases of linking websites in the UK have been found not guilty.
Now, Julia, you mentioned the day when you went in and everyone was being rubber stamp extradited.
Could you tell us some of the other offenses that some of the other people were facing versus Richard's one?
Well, it's a little bit different because there's a different kind of arrangement between the UK and Europe.
So there are many more cases than the ones that are getting extradited to America.
And the ones who are getting extradited back to Europe, they are usually European people who have left Europe and come to live in the UK,
and then somebody's trying to get them back to Poland or somewhere for an offense.
And they can be offenses like non-payment of a mobile phone bill, you know, or the theft of a couple of chickens.
Really trivial, minor little offenses.
Wow.
Well, Richard was in the United States when he was five years old.
Did he do anything while he was here that the authorities might want to get him back for?
No.
He just enjoyed himself around Disney.
Julia?
That sort of thing.
I have some others.
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead, Barney.
Hi, Julia. This is in Philadelphia.
I was reading about this case online, and I've got to say Richard is one very lucky lad to have such a supportive mom.
Over the past year and a half, you have gone to so much effort to try to publicize this injustice.
And it's really extraordinary what you've done.
You've set up a blog.
And one thing that really struck me is something that you were quoted as saying on the BBC.
It was just a short paragraph, and I'm wondering, do you happen to have what you said?
I have, yeah.
Because it made such an impact on me when I read that.
Could you say that again?
It's a little out of date because it's – I'll read it out to you anyway because I have it here.
And I made this comment, you know, a week or so ago.
And I believe this is where you refer to other people who are also either facing the same extradition process or have already gone through it.
And I said today another – what happened was another man got signed for extradition.
So I made this statement of today yet another British citizen is being sold down the river by the British government.
Richard's life, his studies, his work opportunities, financial security is being disrupted for who knows how long
because the U.K. government has not introduced the much-needed changes to the extradition law.
The U.S. is coming for the young, the old, and the ill, and our government is paving the way.
By rights, it should make for an interesting conversation between the Obamas and the Camerons aboard Air Force One.
But I'm not holding my breath.
If Richard appears to have committed a crime in this country, then try him in this country.
But instead, the Home Secretary wants to send him thousands of miles away and leave him languishing, just like Christopher Tappan,
in a U.S. jail before he has a chance to demonstrate his innocence under British law of any allegations made against him.
Julia, you set up a blog, too, haven't you, detailing information about this?
Oh, yeah.
Could you read that URL over the air?
Right, just let me find it then.
Actually, I have it here.
Actually, I think I have it here.
You know what, I'm not sure.
I'll get it.
Yeah, Julia's blog dash the fight of our lives.
Well, this dash is between all those words.
Yeah, yeah.
One more time.
You see, I've had to learn a few techie skills in order to find out how to set up a blog.
Well, you've done an amazing job.
I have to say you hit the ground running with the activism here.
Were you prepared to do that as soon as the raid happened back in 2010?
No, no, not at all, really, because this came about because I was looking on the Internet,
and then I found out about the other people who had been extradited
or who they were trying to extradite.
So, you know, I just looked them up on the Internet,
and I managed to get in touch with these people, and I joined on Twitter.
And so, you know, I could see what was going on,
and a few people said to me, have you got a campaign website?
And I thought, well, I haven't even got a campaign, never mind a website.
And I knew that Richard wouldn't want to make a website about extradition
because he just wouldn't want that in his face all the time.
So I just thought, well, I'd better find out what a blog is then,
and maybe I can make something myself.
So that's what I did.
I just found on the Blogspot thing, and I thought, well, I'll just make this blog,
and I'll keep, like, a diary of events.
That was the main thing.
I just wanted to keep a bit of a record of what was happening at the time.
And so it's just grown from there, really.
And that's what I've done.
Julie, you'd mentioned just then that the conversations between the Obamas
and the Camerons, your prime minister, David Cameron,
he was over here visiting our president just recently, a week or two ago.
And I understand from reading some U.S. reports that Obama and David Cameron
were one of the topics of their conversation here in the U.S.
was this extradition treaty.
So this is really being discussed at the highest levels of these two global superpowers.
And it's amazing to me that this is not getting the media coverage in the United States that it should.
Well, I mean, I don't think the two of them will have discussed Richard's case,
but they will have discussed probably the Gary McKinnon case, and you might have heard about that.
This is a man who's been fighting extradition for nearly ten years.
He hacked into the Pentagon ten years ago.
He's got Asperger's syndrome, and they've been trying to get him over to America ever since then.
And he has frequently been mentioned at these types of meetings of the President Obama and David Cameron.
So I'm sure they've mentioned his case.
I'm not sure they'll have mentioned any others,
but they did definitely speak about extradition anyway when they were together.
I'm not too sure whether it would be a good thing to have more publicity over there or not, really.
I mean, we've had a bit of publicity with President Obama's Hangout session.
I don't know if you know about that.
Google+.
Yeah, yeah.
But he got asked a question about Richard at the Hangout.
What did he say? Do you know?
The president doesn't get involved.
I had a question.
I don't know who's best equipped to answer this, Julia or Mitch,
but if you were to win the appeal and Richard weren't extradited to the U.S.,
what would that mean vis-a-vis his traveling to the U.S. in the future?
Would he be in danger of being arrested here if he came to the country?
Or what would happen, I guess?
Exactly.
In fact, not only would he be at risk, he would be at risk even if he stepped out of the U.K.
because many other countries have security arrangements with America.
So even if he went to Europe, he would be at risk of being picked up.
So even if we win the appeal, that is not over.
Do you know what the statute of limitations is on the law?
Do you know what the statute of limitations is in terms of how long it is before he can be charged?
No, I don't know about that.
I believe it's four years.
Oh, is it?
Does the United States even respect that?
But that's potentially longer if he's essentially—
No, I take that back.
I believe it's four years.
Okay. Rob?
I would like to ask you, Mitch.
Let's assume for a moment the worst happens,
and the appeal fails and Mitch gets extradited here.
What sort of precedent do you see that setting for other cases that might be like this that might come up?
So I'll talk law and I'll talk politics and atmospherics.
On the law, like I said, I don't think there's ever been a case where pure linking has led to a criminal conviction, I think.
I think there will be a lot of parties very interested in Richard's defense.
I think a lot of people will be very interested in seeing that that bad precedent does not get set,
but of course ultimately it would be up to a judge.
I think you'd see a lot of, probably some more conversation about criminal copyright law in general,
whether it goes too far, whether this is really a civil issue,
whether this is really about certain companies like movie studios suffering financial losses.
What are those losses? Are there really losses?
Shouldn't they be able to go to court and sue for their losses without the government's help?
Is this really a criminal issue?
And the lines there are pretty blurry to the point that criminal cases are rare,
and especially on the internet, criminal cases are usually for people who have bootleg DVD factories,
where the infringement is massive and obvious and you can photograph it, point to it.
So two questions. One, you mentioned that it would be up to a judge, so this wouldn't be a jury trial?
This would absolutely be a jury trial.
Oh, it would be, okay. So it would be up to a jury. Okay, that's it.
Okay. Now we're speaking with Julia O'Dwyer, the mother of Richard O'Dwyer,
who is facing extradition to the United States for the crime of running a website that had links,
that linked to various videos that various entities in the United States claim were done without permission,
pirated movies, pirated TV shows, things like that, did not host the content by all admissions,
just simply had links to various websites, facing extradition to the United States for that.
And we're also speaking with Mitch Stoltz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Has there been any talk about a worst-case scenario?
He's extradited to the United States and put on trial. What kind of penalty is he facing?
Are you asking me that?
Well, anybody who knows.
The legal penalty is five years in jail. Again, I don't know how often that happens.
I think when that happens, it's usually against, like I said, people who run bootleg DVD factories and the like.
Well, I understand there are two charges. One is the conspiracy, one is the copyright infringement,
and the maximum is five years for each of those.
But they haven't kind of said, they'd never be able to count the links for a start.
I'm not a criminal law expert, but as far as I know, if you're convicted of both conspiracy
and the thing that you are conspiring to do, then it's just one penalty.
Oh, is it?
So that would be five years.
Julie, obviously this has taken quite a toll on your family life and on Richard's school career and all that.
Are you happy with the legal representation that you've gotten so far? Has it been adequate?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's good. We've got one of the top extradition barristers.
But the thing is here, though, we're not fighting the crime. We're fighting the extradition law.
And it's most frustrating because if Richard was charged with a crime, whether it was in America or here,
then you'd expect to, you know, you could mount a defense and you'd either be found guilty or innocent
and you'd take the penalty. But we're not even doing that. We're fighting the extradition law.
And it's extremely difficult to fight extradition to America because for a start, America won't let go.
That's our slogan, in fact.
Huh?
We won't let go. That's the government slogan.
Yeah, they won't let go. But the other thing is everybody who gets extradited to America is imprisoned immediately in a federal prison.
There is no bail. And they don't want you to have a trial because they want to deal with you quickly
and they want to get a conviction and they want to tick all the boxes.
They let you stew in that jail until such time as you decide to go for a plea bargain.
And if you don't do that, they'll just leave you there until you do decide to do that because they don't want you to have a trial.
And you're not even allowed in the same room as your lawyer.
So I don't know how you're expected to even mount a legal defense because you can't.
You're in jail. You can't meet with your lawyer in the same room.
You can't store papers in your cell or, well, if you don't have a cell, wherever you're kept.
But, you know, this makes it extremely difficult to even mount your defense and have a trial.
And they don't want you to have a trial, so you either plea bargain.
And even whether you're guilty or innocent, you have to pretend you're guilty, don't you, just to get out of jail kind of thing.
So like in this country, nobody would ever be put into prison like that for a copyright infringement.
You know, you'd be – in fact, you wouldn't be put in prison at all for even doing it.
You know, you'd just get on bail, and then you'd probably get a fine or a probation.
And in the United States, it's extremely rare.
Yeah, but it's because of extradition because they won't allow you bail because they consider that you're a flight risk.
Even though they've taken your passport away, they just insist on you being like the guy who went there a month ago, the retired businessman.
He's in a federal prison in New Mexico.
Well, he's harmless. He's not a danger to society. He hasn't got any money. He hasn't got a passport.
How can he leave the country?
They could easily tag him and put him somewhere, but they have him in this federal detention center in New Mexico.
It's sad with all these cases too because it almost feels like the prosecutors are testing what they can get away with.
And in the meantime, they're basically experimenting with people's lives.
And so it's really sad that it's come to this kind of thing.
And these are really victimless crimes.
I mean, it's crazy that they're extraditing people for putting bits on the internet.
Now, I'd like to just jump in and just amend something that Red Hack just said.
I wouldn't even want to call it a crime.
I mean, yes, this arguably could be against some U.S. law.
The point that we're all dancing around here is that someone's life is in the wind here, blowing in the wind,
and it's based on laws of the country that he didn't even know he had to pay attention to.
Julia, I wanted to ask, if your son Richard is extradited to the United States, and I hope that doesn't happen,
he will most certainly need a lawyer, a United States lawyer who's familiar with both federal criminal copyright law here in the U.S.
And that could be a rather expensive proposition.
In this country, we're all too familiar with you have the best justice that money can buy.
And I'm really concerned that to mount an effective legal defense in this case,
and it seems like the whole United States government is really gunning for your son in this
or they wouldn't be going to all this effort to extradite him,
you're going to need a serious legal defense team to defend him.
So I'm wondering, is there anything that our listeners could do to help financially?
I know we're probably putting the cart before the horse here,
but I imagine your blog, if you could read it one more time, we'll have information about that,
should Richard be extradited, how people can help.
Well, I haven't got to that stage on the blog because we're trying not to envisage that happening.
But first of all, as I said to you before, it would be unlikely for there to be a trial
because that would mean that Richard would be in prison, in jail, waiting for a trial,
and they would try and actively persuade him not to have a trial by keeping him in the jail
so that he would agree to plea bargain instead.
That's the first thing.
But on the matter of a trial, an American citizen has already offered to fund any legal costs in America
should Richard need them.
Oh, that's wonderful news.
Pardon?
That's very good news.
Yeah, that's a billionaire called Alky David.
Do you know that name?
We don't really hang out with very many billionaires,
but I'm sure there will be many people that will come forward and offer help in various ways.
I know we'll certainly get the word out.
There'll be mass rallies in the street if necessary,
and this is a news story that needs to be known by everybody in this country,
and if it actually comes to that, where they force him to come to this country to face these charges,
I think we all have the obligation to make sure that everybody knows about it.
We have only a minute or two left, but I wanted to ask you, Mitch,
is there any way to sort of make the U.S. government stop short of bringing Richard here?
Is there any way to start something in the U.S. court while Richard's still in the U.K.?
In court? Not that I know of.
I think there are ways to influence the government outside of court
and at least have a public conversation about this.
The movie and music industries have repeatedly tried
and are continuing to try for more and bigger copyright enforcement mechanisms.
If the government do more and more to enforce the copyright of those industries,
they go to Congress, they go to courts, they go to Internet service providers,
wanting more and more.
I think for us simply to say this,
look what they are doing with the tools they already have available to them
that they can reach across an ocean and try to drag in a citizen of another country
based on the laws that they already have,
and yet they're still wanting more, that's a conversation we really need to have.
Well, we are pretty much out of time now.
We've been speaking with Richard O'Dwyer's mother, Julia O'Dwyer from Sheffield in the U.K.
and EFF staff attorney, Mitch Stultz from San Francisco.
I want to give you guys the opportunity to give out any web addresses,
email addresses, anything that you'd like to share with our listeners in the remaining moments.
Well, I guess I'll shout out our website, it's EFF.org.
We have a blog there where we cover this and similar issues.
Okay, Julia?
Yeah, and you've got my blog, and I'm on Twitter mainly.
That's where everything's going on for me, which is at JRODWYER.
I'm on Twitter.
Okay.
We wish you the best of fortune, and we certainly will be following this story.
Hats off for all the strength that you've shown,
and please make sure that Richard knows that we all support him,
and we will be fighting for him if necessary.
I will, and thank you very much for giving this some good air time.
All right, well, it's definitely a story that needs to be heard.
Our email address, othat2600.com.
This has been Off The Hook.
We'll see you again next week.
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Fuck you.
you