British student could face U.S. prison for running a website that is legal in his country, but illegal in the U.S.
A British student faces up to a decade in a U.S. prison for actions which are not even a crime in the UK. - Campaigners say Richard O’Dwyer, 23, is being abandoned by his country in the same way as computer hacker Gary McKinnon. Mr O’Dwyer is accused of listing places where films and TV programmes could be illegally downloaded, on a website he ran from his university bedroom in Sheffield. Legal experts say this is not an offence under British law, and he did not download any of the entertainment himself. Yet the ‘quiet and vulnerable’ son of a GP could spend ten years in a high-security American jail after he lost his fight against extradition yesterday. The case has chilling similarities with the attempt by the U.S. to extradite Asperger’s sufferer Mr McKinnon, who hacked into Pentagon computers from his north London bedroom. Instead of putting the men on trial in the country where their alleged offences took place, the British legal system is permitting them to be bundled on a plane to America.
The Guardian: TVShack's student founder can be extradited to US, court rules