TVShack Admin Extradition Ruling To Arrive January 2012
As reported previously, Richard O’Dwyer, the former administrator of the now defunct UK-based video links site TVShack, is continuing with his fight against extradition to the United States.
Richard appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court Tuesday, as usual with support from his mother Julia.
“Yesterday we were supposed to continue with the arguments on dual criminality i.e that linking is not a crime in the UK,” Julia told TorrentFreak.
“However, the US Prosecution did not send us their response to Richard’s challenges on the accuracy of their earlier statements until 16hrs before court.”
Due to the lateness of their submission this US response was not taken into account at all, so Richard’s legal team’s argument centered on Human Rights issues and how disproportionate extradition would be for the alleged offense of linking to copyright works.
“Mr O’Dwyer is a young man yet to complete his degree and his social environment would be removed from him,” Richard’s barrister Ben Cooper told the Court.
“That is going to impact on his reaction to finding himself surrounded by the sort of people who will inhabit a federal detention center in New York. He would be a fish out of water in such an environment. One cannot underestimate the risks that would pose to him.”
Mr Cooper added that the US were delaying proceedings against Richard in order to gain “tactical advantage” over him as part of their quest to obtain evidence from other witnesses.
“So now the judge has 6 weeks to go away and read the files which include, and which haven’t been shown in court, our video on ‘linking’ and [evidence on] TVLinks which will help to confirm that both sites operated nearly identically,” Julia concludes.
A decision on whether to extradite Richard will be handed down Friday January 13th 2012.
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