'Piracy' student Richard O'Dwyer loses extradition case

A Sheffield student can be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement allegations, a judge has ruled.

Richard O'Dwyer, 23, set up the TVShack website which US authorities say hosts links to pirated copyrighted films and television programmes.

The Sheffield Hallam University student lost his case in a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Yes, the Constitution supports Congress granting monopoly rights for a particular purpose -- to promote Progress of Science and the useful Arts -- and to particular people -- Authors and Inventors. I do not insist on calling it a government granted monopoly to raise a boogeyman, but to clarify that it is not property.

At present monopoly rights are granted to publishers, estates of authors and inventors, and companies that had nothing to do with inventing a device, all because the monopolies the Constitution proposes to grant to Authors and Inventors (on the model of the Statute of Monopolies of 1624 and the Law of Queen Anne) has been reified as "property" which can be sold or inherited, and the effect is now contrary to the stated purpose in giving Congress the power to grant such monopolies.

There is nothing "libertine" about wanting early cinema to be digitized before it turns to cellulose dust, or culture to progress as it always has -- by building on existing culture -- a process that depends more on the "for limited times" than it does on the grant of a monopoly. Jazz could not have existed is the present copyright regime had been in place: publishers' lawyers would be tossing out lawsuits left and right for borrowing riffs or chord progressions. But maybe you have a point: the world would be so much better off if the current "life + 70" terms had applied to Beethoven's oeurve so that Liszt wouldn't have been able to make his piano transcription of Beethoven's symphonies, and Brahms hadn't been able to write his Variations on a Theme of Paganinni, without jumping through legal hoops and paying fat royalties to whatever publishing house had the rights!

Once copyright and patent law becomes principally a tool for rent-seeking by persons other than the author or inventor, as it has now, it has gone outside the Constitutional mandate, and has become bad law. And like most laws gone bad, it becomes the excuse for more bad law: in the case on this thread extraterritoriality, possibly in the near future the introduction of felony provisions against online copyright infringement, which you can bet your bottom dollar will be used to suppress political speech in forums like this one, should anything like even the current version of SOPA minus the DNS shut-down provisions passes.

“Not property?” LOL!

What do you think makes up a property right? The words of the Constitution are very clear, and confirms the essence of the bundle of rights which make up a property right.

Property rights predate the Constitution and are among the most precious rights that human beings possess. It’s what separates a free society from a Communist one.

It is quite telling that you are so cavalier in pretending that the right doesn’t exist, presumably because you want to steal what belongs to others.

You laugh too easily.

I suggest you actually investigate the history of patent and copyright law, and how such things were understood at the time of the American Founding.

Property rights predate the Constitution, but the notion that a copyright or patent constituted property is an invention of the late 19th century as I have pointed out before. All forms of what the Founders would have recognized as property have the quality that possession of them by one person denies another of possession: if I own a house, you do not; if you have a (particular) gold sovereign, I do not. Theft necessarily deprives the rightful owner of the enjoyment of the property stolen.
If another wealthy family had built an exact copy of The Breakers, the unoriginal family would not have stolen the Vanderbilts’ Newport residence.

Not so with so-called “intellectual property” — what is called “piracy” does not, like actual piracy on the high seas, deprive anyone of the thing copied, but at most deprives someone (usually not the Author or Inventor) of monopoly rents (and only then under the assumption that the “pirate” would actually have bought a copy were a free one not available). I am not, however, much interested in “piracy”, but in the harmful effect reifying patent and copyright as “property” that can be bought and sold has had on the advance of culture, most especially the creation of derivative works in the arts and the analogous sort of progress in science and technology. Tech companies as lawsuit factories and not being able to use Robert Frost’s poetry as lyrics are not desirable outcomes.

Had the Founder thought of it as “property”, what’s with the limited term qualification? Real estate, furniture, particular physical books, and everything else that the Founders would recognize as property passes from one owner to another until it ceases to exist or the world ends. Rent-seeking publishers and such calling patents and copyrights “property” even though they have inveigled courts to join them in this conceit, does not make it so.

A question for you since you appeal to the pre-existence of the notion of property at the time of the American Founding: under what circumstances would you regard a monopoly granted by a medieval kings or princes to a tradesman to produce and sell a particular product within the prince’s domain to be property?

a) if the monopoly were for a limited term and not transferable?

b) if the monopoly were for a limited term and could be inherited by the tradesman’s son, but not sold or granted to another by the tradesman?

c) if the monopoly were for an unlimited term and could be inherited by the tradesman’s son, but not sold or granted to another by the tradesman?

d) if the monopoly were for a limited term and could be inherited by the tradesman’s son, and freely sold or granted to another by the tradesman?

e) if the monopoly were for an unlimited term and could be inherited by the tradesman’s son, and freely sold or granted to another by the tradesman?

In which cases would it make a difference if the monarch made the grant irrevocable or retained the right to give the monopoly to another or permit competition?

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