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| After a swift defeat last March, the American government has won an appeal in an Australian court to have Hew Raymond Griffiths extradited to America to face trial - on charges of copyright infringement. Griffiths is accused of being the ringleader of a 'warez' group known as DOD (Drink or Die), using the alias Bandido. So-called warez groups reverse engineer software, freeing it of any copy protection, and spread it across the Internet free of charge. Don't be swayed by the US DOJ's propaganda about warez - its claim, for example, that it costs millions (per group) and billions (in sum total) to the software industry each year. These are the same erroneous, inflated figures pumped out by the BSA annually. What's really at stake here is the legal sovereignty of Australia. Admittedly, they gave some of that up by accepting a recent trade pact with the US, and importing the DMCA into .au law as a result. But the implications of the Griffiths' case are much more serious. 'Bandido' never profited from his crimes - he was and still is, in fact, unemployed and living with his parents. He showed public disdain to those who would profit from the work of others. Nor does the American government contend this. They also don't contend a more obvious fact - Griffiths has never set foot in America in his life. Still, despite Australian law being more than equipped to deal with such a case, the DOJ under Ashcroft has decided to impose U.S. law on the world at large. Why is there a need for America to cast aside the Australian legal system like a weak little brother (then again, in 2004, it basically is the weak little brother, and John Howard personifies this to a T)? Consider this another step in a downward spiral. It began with the No Electronic Theft Act - prior to the NET Act of 1997, actions such as Bandido's were permissible under United States law because he did not profit from them. The NET Act closed the loophole at the behest of Music Industry officials and others. It was the first major victory in a lobbying campaign that continues today, robbing consumers of their rights and industries of free competition. The PIRATE Act and INDUCE Act have this piece of legislation to thank for their consideration (and, most likely in one form or another, eventual passage). Then came the DMCA, universally regarded as one of the worst technology laws ever. Implemented in 1998, it outlawed the work of professors, researchers, corporations, and has done nothing but stifle competition and criminalize actions that should be legal - such as backing up a copy of a DVD that a person has purchased. In 2000 came raids on another warez group, PWA - Pirates with Attitudes. At the time one of the oldest pirate groups on the net (dating back to the days of underground BBSs), the group found themselves at the mercy of the Department of Justice's new push into intellectual property crime and copyright infringement - areas that in the past had been regarded as civil matters. After originally fighting the charges, group members eventually pled guilty, but not before the government re-calculated its damages claim (to a considerably lower number), assuring themselves of relatively lenient sentences (the longest was 17 months in prison - still harsh if you want to picture millions of Americans facing this simply for using KaZaa to swap MP3s or Doom 3). Papers such as the Wall Street Journal followed the case, setting off faint alarm bells - as Lee Gomes of the WSJ put it in a 2000 article, 'This sort of naughtiness has been around the personal-computing world from the very beginning. The very first business of Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs was selling the '70s-era "little blue boxes" that allowed people to make free long-distance phone calls.' After that came the lesser takedown of a group known as Fastlane (who didn't crack software themselves but rather traded it, making them essentially an advanced group of file sharers). Then in 2001 came the much heralded Operation Buccaneer, which saw the raid of Bandido's group Drink or Die. American Drink or Die members have seen sentences upwards of 40 months in federal prison. Apparently, since the DOJ is having such a rough time catching - let alone convicting - terrorists, they feel the need to give college kids (a Duke University student saw a sentence of over 30 months) swapping software multi-year prison terms, despite no valid research pointing to warez groups costing the software industry anything close to a remarkable amount (take, for example, the aforementioned Doom 3 - how many people downloaded it from Bit Torrent when it was leaked to stores. How many still bought it anyway? A lot. Maybe most. At the time of that leak, Doom-related forums overflowed with comments like 'I have it on pre-order but I just can't wait.'). But then, the victims of terrorists don't give hundreds of thousands of dollars to John Ashcroft's alum. They don't line the pockets of senators or finance FBI investigations. Which brings us to the Australian case. Unnecessary. Unwanted by the Australian public, who must now fear America even if their actions in Australia are legal (could America extradite Australians who use MOD chips, even though they're legal in .au for use with imported games?). Worse, prosecutors seem to have hand-picked a pro-American judge, one who belittled the original ruling from the very start. Not the sort of thing which gives someone faith in the sovereignty of their legal system. How long before the US tries to extradite a Canadian for downloading MP3s, even though it is legal to do so in that country (they pay taxes to the music industry for the privilege, although the Music Mob that is the RIAA/CRIA doesn't like to mention that fact in public). How long before the DMCA is used to extradite foreign researchers (sure, there was Skylarov, but he was hijacked in America, not dragged into the country against his will). If this ruling holds, it is a sad, sad day for Australia, and another step towards an American legal system bought and paid for interest groups who get what they want, when they want, with no thought of whether the punishment fits the crime. Ten years for trading software? I wonder how many movies and MP3s are on the hard drives of the Bush girls, or any relatives of John Ashcroft. Hey, should any of you happen to know, we'd love to hear from you! |