Obama Responds to Looming Extradition of “Pirating” UK Student
Last year Richard O’Dwyer, the 23-year-old UK-based administrator of TVShack – a TV show and movie links site – was arrested by police.
Following his detention in the UK’s largest prison, the admin is now at risk of being extradited to the U.S.
Many people are outraged by the move of the Department of Justice, and during a YouTube address today President Obama responded to the issue. Sort of.
The question was put as follows, and received the most votes of all questions asked.
“Why are you personally supporting the extradition UK Citizen Richard O’Dwyer for solely linking to copyright infringing works using an Extradition Treaty designed to combat terrorism and to bring terrorists to Judgement in the USA?”
While some had idle hope that the President would say something substantial, Obama simple said it was not his call.
“I’m not personally doing anything,” were his first words.
“One of the ways our system works is that the president doesn’t get involved with prosecution or extradition decisions, and this has been a decision by the Justice Department.”
The President then moved on to comment on copyright enforcement in general.
“What I can say, broadly, is that we want to make sure that intellectual property is protected. We want to make sure that the creative works of people in this country aren’t expropriated. But, we want to do it in a way that is consistent with Internet freedom.
“We’re just going to keep on working on it.”
“When SOPA came up on the Hill, we expressed some concerns about the way that the legislation had been written, told folks let’s go back to the table and figure something out that works for everybody.”
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