How exactly do we hold people in other countries accountable for US law? Isn't this US imperialist bullshit getting a little out of hand? And for what, to uphold the Entertainment Guild.
Next thing you know we're gonna be extradited to Britain for insulting the queen.
The Crown Prosecution Service looked at the case and decided it wouldn't be in the public interest to proceed with a case. They decided there wasn't enough evidence, indeed the Crown Prosecution Service has been denied access to the evidence that was supposedly used to extradite him.
> The Crown Prosecution Service looked at the case and decided it wouldn't be in the public interest to proceed with a case.
If it's not in the public interest to do it in the UK, why is it in the public interest to do it in the USA? It seems to me that the judge is contradicting the crown here, which seems a bit off, even if you assume it's his right to do so.
The CPS != "the crown" (at least not today). The CPS is the UK equivalent of the DA's office. It's a political bureaucracy (I could literally complain for days about how much of a bureaucracy it is, but you'd get bored of me :)).
The judge, theoretically, is more of the expert on the law and whether it should be tried - but the CPS have to decide to bring the prosecution to him/her. Which is why you regularly get cases that should be seen in court, but which a suit decides is statistically unlikely to prosecute favourably.
Don't English and Welsh law allow for private prosecution of crimes in cases where the CPS declines to prosecute?
Wouldn't that provide an avenue of relief to the copy right holders without removing a UK citizen from the jurisdiction of UK laws?
This whole thing seems troubling to me.
How many US Internet companies collect VAT from sales to folks in the UK? Would that make founders of a US startup subject to extradition to the UK for tax avoidance? What if it's just a tiny DBA "company" with no liability shield?
I think it's somewhat unfortunate. IANAL, but I think he can be extradited because the judge thinks an offense has occurred even though the CPS has decided not to prosecute (it's what he seems to be saying here: 'Parliament has made conduct found to be contrary to S.107 (2A) criminal. No court can change the statutory offence').
Unfortunately, there's no clause in the Extradition Act in power at the moment which allows a public interest defense, so it's not the job of the judge to decide such an issue. The forum clause (linked to a bit further down) would change this.
You could make the case there are victims in the US though, no?
I don't support the concept of extradition (period, I think?), but there is a case to be made that the U.S. is aiming to protect its citizens (the media companies in this case) against wrongs.
Incidentally, this is what I found in the terms of service for a certain popular website. I alerted them to it, and they are looking into rewording it to be less absurd.
I'll concede my claim requires a belief in an absolute morality, which I don't necessarily, but take it my claim in the following form:
1. You believe that copyright infringement is a "wrong" committed by one party on another party (the victim).
2. A British national commits copyright infringement where the victim is in the United States.
3. The United States conceivably has a moral right to seek punishment against that British national.
I mean, to say otherwise would be to say that copyright existed within a border. We have treaties explicitly so that isn't so - if there were a place in the world where copyright law didn't apply, you couldn't post things on the Internet and expect it to retain its copyright.
I don't support extradition in this case. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in an absolute morality, and I'm not even sure I believe that intellectual property is a good idea on balance, but the moral argument can be made if you're willing to speak in more concrete terms (i.e., if you're willing to accept the premise that copyright infringement is a global "wrong")
Not the same though - if a murderer fled the US, the crime was still committed on US soil, by someone in the US at the time, against (presumably) a US resident/citizen. In other words, it's rightfully American business.
The other country would simply be returning the person to the correct jurisdiction.
Note that even this is not clear-cut at all - many countries will refuse extradition even in this case if there is evidence that the person will face the death sentence or torture.
The USA simply doesn't have the right to prosecute crimes abroad, with no relation to the USA whatsoever - whether in defense of its citizenry or its corporations. That's what the whole concept of sovereignty is about!
I would really urge everyone to read the above linked (by njs12345) PDF of the ruling. It's written very clearly in the main, and, for me, really threw a lot of light on what this case meant (and, I admit, changed my opinion somewhat - the media reports seem to be really diminishing how commercial the operation was).
However you expect you'll react though, it's well worth a read to get the whole story.
The case mentioned "R v Rock & Overton at the Crown Court in Gloucester (T20097013)" (http://www.obs.coe.int/oea_publ/legal/reginavsrockoverton.pd...) is interesting. It discusses the site TV Links which did exactly the same as TV Shack, the only difference however appears to be that TV Links attempted to remove any links reported as copyright infringing (a la DMCA protection). A few interesting snippets:
"In summary Mr Bridge contented that the prosecution of the defendants amounted to a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Mr Overton's right to freedom of speech. He said that The Guardian newspaper had carried an article dated 24th February 2007 describing TV-Links in detail. TV-Links did no more than any other TV listings site or indeed The Guardian newspaper. TV-Links merely expressed the fact that films could be accessed on other host sites."
"It was argued that TV-Links was in a similar position to Google or YouTube in that all of the material could be accessed by persons who used TV-Links could also be accessed through their use of those sites as well. ... The essential difference between TV-Links and sites that directly provide pirated material in breach of copyright (it was not suggested that Google or YouTube fall into this category) is that those other sites store the illegal material and make it available to users of the site. TV-Links did not store any such material. It was simply a sign post pointing the way to where such material could be accessed by those members of the public who chose to do so."
"The prosecutor in this case, he said, had a cast iron case against the viewers of the material accessed by the use of the TV-Links site and against the broadcasters of that material. He did not however have a case against the middle man, namely the defendants and who had not made available this material. The defendants themselves were not making available the copyright material."
The distinction with the NatWest Three though is that the Enron situation meant that there were grounds for the US to have a stake in the prosecution. I can't see in this case how the US have a stake.
I realise that having such a stake is not required by the Treaty, but perhaps it should be?
I'd agree that the US's claim to a stake in the NatWest Three case is probably more legitimate. Of course, TVShack had a lot of commercial activity with US advertisers, but doesn't seem like it would be difficult to establish this in a UK court.
The forum clause, which was passed by both Houses, would require such a stake, but it hasn't been implemented by either the last government or the current one, apparently because it breaks the treaty we signed with the US which led to the act in the first place. A shame, because it looks eminently sensible to me: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/83A
I had the same question about Marc Emery, Prince of Pot -- well known in Canada for selling marijuana seeds and a public advocate of legalizing marijuana.
Long story short, the US gov't got him extradited and he's now serving a five year sentence in a US prison.
No doubt there are countless situations like this but I just remember being incredibly shocked (no doubt naively) that the RCMP would go and arrest the guy just because the US asked them to.
Next thing you know we're gonna be extradited to Britain for insulting the queen.
I don't believe that's an offence in the UK. (Thailand has a law like that). Remember Parliament in the UK can despose and appoint a new monarch, so I doubt they'd make it a crime to insult the monarch.
Remember the Queen is part of a massive and powerful family that has helped run most of Europe for several hundred years, just because she is deemed a public image doesn't mean the family power would ever be replaced without considerable force.
Insulting of the Queen, called Lese-majesty, was only abolished in Scotland in 2010, it was prior to that a common law criminal offense, thought that last time it was ever prosecuted was in 1715.
ps. Also of note, offending the queen was the last step in the expulsion of Genesis P.Oridge (1980's?), when he and his cohorts mailed her their ejaculate.
The UK has a legal/constitutional system that appears, on the surface, to say one thing, but in reality says something else. On paper, de jure, the monarch has all the power, the parliament operates in their name, they appoint and dissolve the parliament, they sign all the laws, etc.
However in reality, parliament has all the power. The queen has no veto on laws, if they were to refuse to sign a law, they would have to resign (or there'd be a civil war). In theory the queen appoints the government and prime minister, but they must appoint the person who parliament has choose. In theory PM goes to the queen to dissolve parliament, but the queen cannot refuse. The monarch has mo power anymore is more of a formality.
And the Act of Settlement of 1700ish defines that only the protestant descendeds of Sophie of Hanover can be monarch. This is an example of Parliament defining who is (and more importantly for the Stuarts) who cannot be monarch.
Next thing you know we're gonna be extradited to Britain for insulting the queen.