Pretty sure. Private prosecutions in England are just like Crown prosecutions, but brought (and funded?) by an individual. The CPS abandoned the case way back in 2008 (see para 11ish of this for more details).
Dishonesty isn't the same thing as not being honest (law is weird that way). Or rather, it is, but "honest" in the sense of honourable, rather than truthful.
In the case of actual fraud, pretending to be a copyright owner (something that certain large companies who will remain nameless seem to do quite frequently) could amount to a fraud (by false representation) but in conspiracy to defraud (which wasn't created for, but was greatly expanded to cover copyright cases back in the 70s, before the 1988 law closed some holes) the dishonesty is more about conduct.
Here, I imagine the argument was "this guy is making huge amounts of money doing something obviously illegal therefore must be dishonest" - even though what he was doing seems to only be illegal because he was dishonest in doing it...
Because prosecuting people is expensive and it is far cheaper to get a government to do your dirty work for you. The SurfTheChannel case has been going on for 4 years now and is a private prosecution, meaning FACT and the MPAA are paying for it (the UK prosecution service quickly dropped the case). However, with O'Dwyer they were able to convince the US authorities to bring a case themselves, so the US government pays for everything.
As usual, it's all about the money. Hollywood may claim that these sites are costing them tens of millions of dollars a year, but they don't want to spend a penny more than they have to to stop them.
Interestingly, if they had managed to convict him for online copyright infringement (under s107(2A) CDPA), the most he could have got would have been 2 years in prison. So 'facilitating' online copyright infringement = 4 years in prison, whereas online copyright infringement itself = < 2 years.
Conspiracy to defraud is a ridiculous law. The Law Commission attempt to repeal it a few years ago, when English Fraud laws were updated for the 21st (or 20th) century. The Government accepted that the law was bad, but refused to repeal it just in case they wanted to use it later...
And now it is being used by the Hollywood types to ruin people's lives through private prosecutions, where, I guess, they feel that locking someone away for 2 years just isn't enough.
The Bourne Identity is available from the Kindle store here in the UK so I would find it strange if it weren't available in the US.
Ah, but you've made the basic mistake of thinking that this Internet thing is a big international network that doesn't care about borders.
A bit of digging shows different companies published the book in the UK than the US. It seems that HarperCollins (part of News Corp) was responsible for the UK publications, and Random House for the US ones.
That said, it seems that the e-book is available in the US anyway, and for $8.02. David Pogue should ask for $1.97 back, provided he doesn't get done for "copyright theft", attempted bribery (paying them off to not report him), encouraging and inciting "copyright theft" by publishing the blog post, trade mark infringement for mentioning the title of the book without a licence, maybe throw in libel and conspiracy to defraud for suggesting the book wasn't on Amazon, and whatever else those creative people at the publishing groups can come up with.
It's also worth noting that no one cares about this. Even copyright lawyers and commentators generally recognise that the original ruling had no practical effects, and none of the big lobby groups are that interested. As for the government - why would they want to waste time on the Internet; they're not going to win any votes by changing a law that no one follows anyway? The original ruling was back in 2010 and the Supreme Court won't be hearing it until late 2012 or early 2013 - the law can wait.
Contrast this with the situation that developed last year with police bail conditions, when a court ruled that the police were breaking the law by holding people on indefinite bail without charge, the case was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court (within a couple of months) but the Government (under pressure from the police lobby groups) rushed through a new law in a week, completely undercutting the work of the courts.
The other fun part of the original case was where the Judge found that *receiving* an email involved an act of copying. So... if someone sends you an email with something covered by copyright (such as a picture of a kitten with an amusing caption, or merely some forwarded text), simply by opening the email you may be breaking the law (if you're in England or Wales).
This was discussed in the case, but only briefly. Yes, there can be "implied licences" such as when you publish something on the Internet, however they can be defeated by express licences.
In the case itself, this issue didn't really arise as all the newspapers involved apparently had some sort of express statement in their T&Cs that the content could be copied etc. but only for personal use. Meltwater was doing something that wasn't personal use, so there wasn't really an issue with this.
Practically, of course, no one cares. Just another example of the law being completely out of step with reality when it comes to copyright or the Internet.
This didn't go to the Ministry of Defence; if you read paragraph 13 of the judgment (also available in html here) the second airport security person was supposed to refer threats to the MoD if they were "credible", but just to the airport police if "non-credible". Which was another piece of evidence that the tweet wasn't considered menacing.
It's not quite clear who put pressure into bringing the charges; whether it was the local police who arrested him, or someone at the CPS (who aren't really "government", but the local prosecutor), but whoever it was screwed up, and it is nice to hear the High Court make that clear.
Of course, the scary thing is to wonder how often this particular offence (under s127 Communications Act 2003) is being used against "trivial" comments such as this, but which don't get international attention. In the 2nd reading debate of the upcoming Defamation Bill, this and similar "anti-trolling" offences were discussed, and the Government minister claimed that "[s]ome 2,000 criminal prosecutions for trolling" had happened in the last year (see in column 261).
While some of these are likely genuine cases of what should be considered criminal activity, one has to wonder how many are simply people who did something a bit silly, like Paul Chambers, but who weren't able to get international support, top lawyers and to change their guilty plea at the last minute, enabling to actually fight their case. Today's ruling may put a damper on prosecutions under this law, but I still worry that it has been, and will continue to be used as a blunt instrument for suppressing speech online.
Ah, isn't it nice when legacy artists (or the lobby groups behind them) manage to show just how out of touch they are. Why, only a couple of weeks ago the PRS (record label collecting society) published a fascinating report (jointly paid for by Google) into the status of "illegal websites" and found that search engines had a very minor role. So even their own lobby groups are saying they're talking complete nonsense.
Of course, the whole "search engines are promoting illegal stuff" argument is great in itself because it tells us a couple of key things:
Firstly; people want to find mp3s of popular music that they can download. If they didn't, they wouldn't be searching Google for them.
Secondly; Google, as a search engine, is there to give *its users* what they want. They're not there to serve the BPI (or whoever was behind this). It has all those complicated algorithms to work out what is popular and ... surprise surprise, sites allegedly offering free or cheap mp3 downloads of popular music do well.
Thirdly; If the first n pages of a Google search for "Adele mp3" (to use the example given in the programme below) are all to supposedly unlawful sites, what has happened to the lawful ones? Why aren't they right at the top of the list? Because the sites that do that don't exist. And if they do exist, they're hidden behind terrible websites, paywalls and the lot, so you can't find them easily through a search.
So, what do we do about this? Well, if these legacy musicians want to fix their little problem, it seems the solution is quite easy:
1: Have sites that provide legal downloading of mp3s and similar stuff.
2: Recognise that the consumers (including 'pirates') actually want music, but they want it a certain way, and if you're going to try to act as a consumer-facing business, you should try to match their demands.
3: Make sure that the sites in 1 are easily accessible, well-designed, and will actually turn up in search results.
Sadly, signing a letter that says "blame Google" is less effort.
For those interested, they even got the BBC to do a Newsnight segment for them on this rubbish. Interestingly, I did a search for "adele mp3" on Google; the top few results appear to be theoretically legal in the US (only hosting information, or previews, with DMCA-compliant stuffs, and linking to paysites in the Ukraine and Russia which may be legal over there due to collective licensing rules).
The other thing I found particularly illuminating was that the top page has 10 search results (including one for amazon.com) and 8 notices covering 18 entries removed following DMCA notices. Somehow I don't think the takedown requests are doing that much good anyway.
Yes, it could show such a predisposition... which would prejudice the trial. The question the jury was asked (assuming it was unlawful act manslaughter) would have been "was what he did dangerous?", not "do you think it was likely that he might have done something dangerous based on his actions in the past?"
If you tell the jury that he has been accused of being a dangerous thug or something similar, they're more likely to say "we're not sure whether or not he did this, but let's lock him up anyway."
And why weren't the jury allowed to know that he has been accused before?
I'm not an expert on criminal evidential procedures, but I imagine it wasn't allowed because it wasn't relevant to the case he was charged with (which was about a specific act) but might have influenced the jury into assuming he was a vicious, dangerous person from the start, rather than focusing on what he actually did on the day.
And yes, this sort of thing can happen in any case, but usually only if there is a good defence team.
As for libraries; this new ruling (although I haven't read it yet) probably turns on the idea of "publication". There's a general rule (if a slightly odd one) that a page on a website is published every time it is viewed, whereas a physical book is published only once. The library is probably safe.
Technically Harwood wasn't acquitted of killing the guy, but of manslaughter. Manslaughter (presumably "unlawful act manslaughter") has three steps, only one of which is that the defendant killed the victim, so Harwood may still have killed him.
As for the main point, this case seems similar to last week's mess with the BBC programme on the riots; in both cases you have a judge seemingly going to great lengths, inhibiting freedom of expression, to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice (i.e. jurymen being influenced by material from outside the courtroom).
I think this comes down to legal/cultural differences between countries; some courts, particularly the English and Welsh ones are very protective of their juries and will go to great lengths to ensure just verdicts are returned. It is possible they go too far sometimes.
Not really... Extradition law is rather complex, as it tends to come from treaties rather than acts, but if you're interested:
Extraditions from the UK to the US are governed by Part 2 of the Extradition Act 2003, extraditions from the US are generally governed by 18 USC Chapter 209, but that mainly refers to treaties, which in the US/UK case, appears to be this one, Article 8 being the important part.
The main imbalance seems to have been from 2004-2007, when the UK had put in place its law, but the US hadn't ratified the new treaty; as such extradition from the US required "probable cause evidence", whereas extradition from the UK only required "information satisfying the reasonable suspicion test". However, now the US has ratified the treaty, their side goes down to "information satisfying the probable cause test".
The 2011 independent review of UK extradition law (which can be found here) examined the US/UK extradition situation in detail (in part 7) and concluded that there was "no significant difference between the [tests]" and that the difference is "semantic rather than substantive" (see 7.42-7.44). The review also concluded that many of the criticisms raised of the 2003 treaty were actually about the previous treaties, or over the US criminal justice system in general.
That part is worth a skim if you're interested in this area of law.
Also, the US/UK extradition treaty isn't actually that imbalanced. The US doesn't have any special relationship, legally, as far as extradition goes; if you're interested, the last time I checked the list of countries in exactly the same position as the US was something like this. They're mostly countries that aren't in the EU, but are either in within the scope of the ECHR or that we trust enough to have fairly decent criminal justice systems and respect for the rule of law.
As someone trying to campaign on extradition and human rights issues, this sort of story is very, very frustrating, because it completely misses the point, and it is rather disappointing that Mike has fallen for it. Actually, it misses several points:
1 - This article is about deportation, which is completely different, both practically and legally, from extradition. Deportation is when a country kicks someone out because they don't want them, extradition is when a country gives someone to another country because the second country does want them.
2 - Deportation is generally far less serious, so human rights factors are likely to be more significant. In an extradition case, the person is going somewhere to face trial for a sufficiently-serious crime. In deportation cases the person has usually done their time in prison, and in some cases, any conviction may well be spent. They are supposedly "safe".
3 - Terrorists and paedophiles (and for the record, paedophilia isn't actually illegal in the UK) have precisely the same protections as anyone else. It is a common criticism of European Human Rights law that is provides greater protection to "evil criminals" than ordinary citizens, but legally this is complete nonsense. What happens is that it is the "evil criminals" who are far more likely to suffer abuses or interferences of these rights, as these are the people states tend to want to do nasty things to. The only way we can guarantee that Human Rights actually apply to all of us is to ensure that they apply to everyone, including the worst elements of society.
4 - Even if she wanted to, Theresa May doesn't have the legal power to block O'Dwyer's extradition! Extradition (in the UK) is a legal process governed by a law. She can't simply say "We're not going to extradite him because we don't feel like it", she has a list of (5) very specific grounds on which she can block extradition. No more, no less. Human Rights issues are not one of them (although as a public authority she must act compatibly with the ECHR when making decisions). And surely this must be right? We don't want ministers having huge discretion over a legal process, particularly given their political, rather than judicial background.
5 - O'Dwyer's situation is pretty terrible and seemingly unjust... but it is a legal situation and has a legal solution; hence he is going before the High Court next week (iirc) to argue, on legal grounds, that he shouldn't be extradited (on the basis of dual criminality and possibly human rights grounds). Hopefully he will win his appeal.
6 - Perhaps most importantly, this article isn't about attacking extradition or deportation, this article is about attacking Human Rights (something the UK press hate, as they keep losing cases under the HRA). It is yet another in a long line of cheap shots taken by the UK newspapers against the fundamental freedoms that they seem to hate so much. Any individual who would like to maintain these rights should have nothing but contempt for this sort of biased, manipulative and self-serving journalism.
Reading through the judgment (which can be found here), it seems the judge simply applied the general principle of English defamation that you cannot defame too wide a group. Despite being a solicitor, Tilbrook shot himself in the foot where (as noted at 17 in the judgment) he alleged that, by calling the English Democrats "racist" the defendant had, by extension, called all its members, including him, "racist". Thus if he can claim, all of them can claim - but all of them can't claim (as that would be too wide a class) so he can't claim either.
For those interested, the reason he had to try to sue personally was that, as a general rule, political parties (or senior political figures) cannot bring defamation claims under English law; something about the importance of political speech with regard to freedom of expression.
The English Democrats seem to have a small number of elected officials, at the local level, but most look to be defections from the BNP. So the English Democrats are the members of the BNP who are so nationalistic/racist they don't even like Scots, the Irish or the Welsh?
[That said, the principle behind the party - that England is under-represented politically - is a reasonable one.]
In fairness to the "brand police" issue, there are 300 of them, but the security shortfall was around 3,500 people, so it isn't as if those 300 could fill in the gap.
Plus, brand protection is worth a lot of money to big companies (or so they believe), normal security is just about saving lives and protecting ordinary citizens from crime. It makes far more sense for a government to priorities the way it has; companies donate to Parties and politicians, people just get in the way by doing that pesky voting thing, and sometimes they have the nerve to vote for the other side.
The "not allowed to link to us without permission" thing seems to be a deeply-embedded misunderstanding either by lawyers, or by the rest of the world, as to how the Internet works with the law.
I was recently skimming through a book on (English) IP law, and it was suggesting that linking to a site could count as an infringement of copyright (in the site) and that the only way a set of bookmarks would be legal is if you could fit them in the fair dealing for private study exception. And this is the 2010 edition (based on a really dodgy 90s case involving Scottish newspapers).
If that is what lawyers are being taught, it is no wonder they think they can impose conditions when they "license" out the right to link to their sites. Of course, everyone else thinks that linking is just linking; providing a sign-post sort of thing. Only one side can be right...
On the post: SurfTheChannel Owner Anton Vickerman Sentenced To Four Years In Jail For 'Conspiracy'
Re: Re:
On the post: SurfTheChannel Owner Anton Vickerman Sentenced To Four Years In Jail For 'Conspiracy'
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: SurfTheChannel Owner Anton Vickerman Sentenced To Four Years In Jail For 'Conspiracy'
Re: Re: Re: 4 years for facilitating
In the case of actual fraud, pretending to be a copyright owner (something that certain large companies who will remain nameless seem to do quite frequently) could amount to a fraud (by false representation) but in conspiracy to defraud (which wasn't created for, but was greatly expanded to cover copyright cases back in the 70s, before the 1988 law closed some holes) the dishonesty is more about conduct.
Here, I imagine the argument was "this guy is making huge amounts of money doing something obviously illegal therefore must be dishonest" - even though what he was doing seems to only be illegal because he was dishonest in doing it...
On the post: SurfTheChannel Owner Anton Vickerman Sentenced To Four Years In Jail For 'Conspiracy'
Re:
As usual, it's all about the money. Hollywood may claim that these sites are costing them tens of millions of dollars a year, but they don't want to spend a penny more than they have to to stop them.
On the post: SurfTheChannel Owner Anton Vickerman Sentenced To Four Years In Jail For 'Conspiracy'
4 years for facilitating
Conspiracy to defraud is a ridiculous law. The Law Commission attempt to repeal it a few years ago, when English Fraud laws were updated for the 21st (or 20th) century. The Government accepted that the law was bad, but refused to repeal it just in case they wanted to use it later...
And now it is being used by the Hollywood types to ruin people's lives through private prosecutions, where, I guess, they feel that locking someone away for 2 years just isn't enough.
On the post: NYTimes Columnist Explains How He Torrented 'The Bourne Identity' Because It Wasn't Available... Then Sent A Check
Re: Weird
A bit of digging shows different companies published the book in the UK than the US. It seems that HarperCollins (part of News Corp) was responsible for the UK publications, and Random House for the US ones.
That said, it seems that the e-book is available in the US anyway, and for $8.02. David Pogue should ask for $1.97 back, provided he doesn't get done for "copyright theft", attempted bribery (paying them off to not report him), encouraging and inciting "copyright theft" by publishing the blog post, trade mark infringement for mentioning the title of the book without a licence, maybe throw in libel and conspiracy to defraud for suggesting the book wasn't on Amazon, and whatever else those creative people at the publishing groups can come up with.
On the post: UK Politicians Don't Seem To Mind That Every Web Page You Load Is Copyright Infringement Under Current Law
Re:
Contrast this with the situation that developed last year with police bail conditions, when a court ruled that the police were breaking the law by holding people on indefinite bail without charge, the case was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court (within a couple of months) but the Government (under pressure from the police lobby groups) rushed through a new law in a week, completely undercutting the work of the courts.
On the post: UK Politicians Don't Seem To Mind That Every Web Page You Load Is Copyright Infringement Under Current Law
Not just visiting websites
On the post: UK Politicians Don't Seem To Mind That Every Web Page You Load Is Copyright Infringement Under Current Law
Re:
In the case itself, this issue didn't really arise as all the newspapers involved apparently had some sort of express statement in their T&Cs that the content could be copied etc. but only for personal use. Meltwater was doing something that wasn't personal use, so there wasn't really an issue with this.
However, back in the rest of the Internet, it comes down to what is enough to count as an express licence. For example, many websites have something along the lines of "© All Rights Reserved" on them. That could be enough to override an implied licence. So if you're in England or Wales, are browsing the Internet and see something like that, there is a good chance that you're breaking the law.
Practically, of course, no one cares. Just another example of the law being completely out of step with reality when it comes to copyright or the Internet.
On the post: UK Court Comes To Its Senses: Realizes Tweeting A Joke About Blowing Up An Airport Is Not A Threat
Minor Correction and Major Concerns
It's not quite clear who put pressure into bringing the charges; whether it was the local police who arrested him, or someone at the CPS (who aren't really "government", but the local prosecutor), but whoever it was screwed up, and it is nice to hear the High Court make that clear.
Of course, the scary thing is to wonder how often this particular offence (under s127 Communications Act 2003) is being used against "trivial" comments such as this, but which don't get international attention. In the 2nd reading debate of the upcoming Defamation Bill, this and similar "anti-trolling" offences were discussed, and the Government minister claimed that "[s]ome 2,000 criminal prosecutions for trolling" had happened in the last year (see in column 261).
While some of these are likely genuine cases of what should be considered criminal activity, one has to wonder how many are simply people who did something a bit silly, like Paul Chambers, but who weren't able to get international support, top lawyers and to change their guilty plea at the last minute, enabling to actually fight their case. Today's ruling may put a damper on prosecutions under this law, but I still worry that it has been, and will continue to be used as a blunt instrument for suppressing speech online.
On the post: Legacy Artists Sign Letter Demanding ISPs & Search Engines Pitch In To Return Them To Their Former Glory
Out of touch
Of course, the whole "search engines are promoting illegal stuff" argument is great in itself because it tells us a couple of key things:
Firstly; people want to find mp3s of popular music that they can download. If they didn't, they wouldn't be searching Google for them.
Secondly; Google, as a search engine, is there to give *its users* what they want. They're not there to serve the BPI (or whoever was behind this). It has all those complicated algorithms to work out what is popular and ... surprise surprise, sites allegedly offering free or cheap mp3 downloads of popular music do well.
Thirdly; If the first n pages of a Google search for "Adele mp3" (to use the example given in the programme below) are all to supposedly unlawful sites, what has happened to the lawful ones? Why aren't they right at the top of the list? Because the sites that do that don't exist. And if they do exist, they're hidden behind terrible websites, paywalls and the lot, so you can't find them easily through a search.
So, what do we do about this? Well, if these legacy musicians want to fix their little problem, it seems the solution is quite easy:
1: Have sites that provide legal downloading of mp3s and similar stuff.
2: Recognise that the consumers (including 'pirates') actually want music, but they want it a certain way, and if you're going to try to act as a consumer-facing business, you should try to match their demands.
3: Make sure that the sites in 1 are easily accessible, well-designed, and will actually turn up in search results.
Sadly, signing a letter that says "blame Google" is less effort.
For those interested, they even got the BBC to do a Newsnight segment for them on this rubbish. Interestingly, I did a search for "adele mp3" on Google; the top few results appear to be theoretically legal in the US (only hosting information, or previews, with DMCA-compliant stuffs, and linking to paysites in the Ukraine and Russia which may be legal over there due to collective licensing rules).
The other thing I found particularly illuminating was that the top page has 10 search results (including one for amazon.com) and 8 notices covering 18 entries removed following DMCA notices. Somehow I don't think the takedown requests are doing that much good anyway.
On the post: UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court
Re: Re: Re: Re: Libraries
If you tell the jury that he has been accused of being a dangerous thug or something similar, they're more likely to say "we're not sure whether or not he did this, but let's lock him up anyway."
On the post: UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court
Re: Re: Libraries
And yes, this sort of thing can happen in any case, but usually only if there is a good defence team.
As for libraries; this new ruling (although I haven't read it yet) probably turns on the idea of "publication". There's a general rule (if a slightly odd one) that a page on a website is published every time it is viewed, whereas a physical book is published only once. The library is probably safe.
On the post: UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court
Technicality and Jury influence
As for the main point, this case seems similar to last week's mess with the BBC programme on the riots; in both cases you have a judge seemingly going to great lengths, inhibiting freedom of expression, to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice (i.e. jurymen being influenced by material from outside the courtroom).
I think this comes down to legal/cultural differences between countries; some courts, particularly the English and Welsh ones are very protective of their juries and will go to great lengths to ensure just verdicts are returned. It is possible they go too far sometimes.
On the post: Terrorists And Pedophiles Get More Protection In UK Than Guy Who Hosted Links To TV Shows
Re: Re: Re: Re: Very frustrating
Extraditions from the UK to the US are governed by Part 2 of the Extradition Act 2003, extraditions from the US are generally governed by 18 USC Chapter 209, but that mainly refers to treaties, which in the US/UK case, appears to be this one, Article 8 being the important part.
The main imbalance seems to have been from 2004-2007, when the UK had put in place its law, but the US hadn't ratified the new treaty; as such extradition from the US required "probable cause evidence", whereas extradition from the UK only required "information satisfying the reasonable suspicion test". However, now the US has ratified the treaty, their side goes down to "information satisfying the probable cause test".
The 2011 independent review of UK extradition law (which can be found here) examined the US/UK extradition situation in detail (in part 7) and concluded that there was "no significant difference between the [tests]" and that the difference is "semantic rather than substantive" (see 7.42-7.44). The review also concluded that many of the criticisms raised of the 2003 treaty were actually about the previous treaties, or over the US criminal justice system in general.
That part is worth a skim if you're interested in this area of law.
On the post: Terrorists And Pedophiles Get More Protection In UK Than Guy Who Hosted Links To TV Shows
Re: Re: Very frustrating
Also, the US/UK extradition treaty isn't actually that imbalanced. The US doesn't have any special relationship, legally, as far as extradition goes; if you're interested, the last time I checked the list of countries in exactly the same position as the US was something like this. They're mostly countries that aren't in the EU, but are either in within the scope of the ECHR or that we trust enough to have fairly decent criminal justice systems and respect for the rule of law.
On the post: Terrorists And Pedophiles Get More Protection In UK Than Guy Who Hosted Links To TV Shows
Very frustrating
1 - This article is about deportation, which is completely different, both practically and legally, from extradition. Deportation is when a country kicks someone out because they don't want them, extradition is when a country gives someone to another country because the second country does want them.
2 - Deportation is generally far less serious, so human rights factors are likely to be more significant. In an extradition case, the person is going somewhere to face trial for a sufficiently-serious crime. In deportation cases the person has usually done their time in prison, and in some cases, any conviction may well be spent. They are supposedly "safe".
3 - Terrorists and paedophiles (and for the record, paedophilia isn't actually illegal in the UK) have precisely the same protections as anyone else. It is a common criticism of European Human Rights law that is provides greater protection to "evil criminals" than ordinary citizens, but legally this is complete nonsense. What happens is that it is the "evil criminals" who are far more likely to suffer abuses or interferences of these rights, as these are the people states tend to want to do nasty things to. The only way we can guarantee that Human Rights actually apply to all of us is to ensure that they apply to everyone, including the worst elements of society.
4 - Even if she wanted to, Theresa May doesn't have the legal power to block O'Dwyer's extradition! Extradition (in the UK) is a legal process governed by a law. She can't simply say "We're not going to extradite him because we don't feel like it", she has a list of (5) very specific grounds on which she can block extradition. No more, no less. Human Rights issues are not one of them (although as a public authority she must act compatibly with the ECHR when making decisions). And surely this must be right? We don't want ministers having huge discretion over a legal process, particularly given their political, rather than judicial background.
5 - O'Dwyer's situation is pretty terrible and seemingly unjust... but it is a legal situation and has a legal solution; hence he is going before the High Court next week (iirc) to argue, on legal grounds, that he shouldn't be extradited (on the basis of dual criminality and possibly human rights grounds). Hopefully he will win his appeal.
6 - Perhaps most importantly, this article isn't about attacking extradition or deportation, this article is about attacking Human Rights (something the UK press hate, as they keep losing cases under the HRA). It is yet another in a long line of cheap shots taken by the UK newspapers against the fundamental freedoms that they seem to hate so much. Any individual who would like to maintain these rights should have nothing but contempt for this sort of biased, manipulative and self-serving journalism.
Right... that's enough ranting from me, for now.
On the post: UK Court Says You Can't Be Defamed If The Article You're Complaining About Doesn't Even Mention You
Skimming the judgment...
For those interested, the reason he had to try to sue personally was that, as a general rule, political parties (or senior political figures) cannot bring defamation claims under English law; something about the importance of political speech with regard to freedom of expression.
The English Democrats seem to have a small number of elected officials, at the local level, but most look to be defections from the BNP. So the English Democrats are the members of the BNP who are so nationalistic/racist they don't even like Scots, the Irish or the Welsh?
[That said, the principle behind the party - that England is under-represented politically - is a reasonable one.]
On the post: Olympics Can't Hire Enough Actual Security, But Fully Staffed With 'Brand Police'
Plus, brand protection is worth a lot of money to big companies (or so they believe), normal security is just about saving lives and protecting ordinary citizens from crime. It makes far more sense for a government to priorities the way it has; companies donate to Parties and politicians, people just get in the way by doing that pesky voting thing, and sometimes they have the nerve to vote for the other side.
On the post: Olympic Level Ridiculousness: You Can't Link To The Olympics Website If You Say Something Mean About Them
Re:
I was recently skimming through a book on (English) IP law, and it was suggesting that linking to a site could count as an infringement of copyright (in the site) and that the only way a set of bookmarks would be legal is if you could fit them in the fair dealing for private study exception. And this is the 2010 edition (based on a really dodgy 90s case involving Scottish newspapers).
If that is what lawyers are being taught, it is no wonder they think they can impose conditions when they "license" out the right to link to their sites. Of course, everyone else thinks that linking is just linking; providing a sign-post sort of thing. Only one side can be right...
Next >>