British student fights extradition to US over TVShack link site

By Timothy B. Lee

Richard O'Dwyer, the 23-year-old British college student behind the TVShack website, appeared in court Thursday to fight extradition to the United States. His attorney argued that O'Dwyer should not be sent to the United States because operating a "link site," which links to copies of copyrighted movies but does not actually host them, is not a crime under British law.

When we last wrote about O'Dwyer's case, we noted that his case is almost unprecedented. Only a handful of people have faced extradition to the United States for crimes committed entirely online, and most of those have involved computer hacking or direct distribution of copyrighted material.

The legality of "linking sites" in the UK is disputed. Last year, a judge dismissed a case against a similar linking site, called TV-Links, ruling that its actions did not constitute a crime.

O'Dwyer's attorney argued that his client's website was no different than Google or Yahoo!: it merely linked to content copied by others. He emphasized that O'Dwyer didn't charge users for access to his website. Instead, like Google and Yahoo he relied on advertising revenues.

But the US government disagreed, arguing that O'Dwyer had deliberately promoted links to content he knew to be copyright infringing. "TVShack had the top films listed on the home page so it wasn't merely a search engine," said government attorney John Jones.

Julia O'Dwyer, Richard's mother, told Ars that she's confident the court will agree that her son's actions are not a crime under British law. She also said there were key inaccuracies in the government's case.

"Richard has challenged the accuracy of the US skeleton argument," she said, "and so the US prosecution is now flapping around to get a response together which they couldn't do in time for today."

Her son is due back in court on November 22.