You see, I see him, in this case, acting as a virtual market stall.


Yes, because 200 years of international trading law and the Berne Convention were so useless, we need to just tear them up and do whatever comes immediately to mind [/quote]
On the other hand, why should a rights holder in another land be expected to stump up the expenses to travel to the UK for the prosecution, when they are the "innocent" party?

As I said over on PC Pro, I sit in the middle, I don't think it does the industry any favours going after small time piraters, they should see it as additional advertising, but as long as they are too bone headed to see that and the law where the IP is protected allows them recompense, why shouldn't they be allowed to use it?

For individuals, I don't think it is worth the bad press of going after them, for large scale operations, offering hundreds or thousands of items, then they should be brought to justice.

Here's the thing.. there ARE hundreds of market stalls around the UK (and, I suspect, Germany) selling counterfeit goods. Do any of them get arrested and extradited to the US to face charges? No, of course they bloody don't. Even the idea of it is silly. Nike, Chanel etc leave it to the local authorities to decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn't. In any case what he did simply isn't a crime. It's just not. There is no crime for which he could be charged and prosecuted. Thats why he isn't being prosecuted in the country in which his actions occurred. So this is a civil matter not a criminal one, and extradition simply should not be part of this case.

The US media conglomerates seem to have got it into their head that the best way to serve their customers is is to take legal action against them. Only a group of people who think that is a good idea think this one is. Yes, it means Warner and Sony and others have to put forward the case in the UK, but do you really think they don't have UK offices that could handle that anyway? It's not as if they'd have to ship lawyers across the atlantic en masse to handle the case (not that they could anyway, since they wouldn't be familiar with UK law or be licenced to practice it).

Besides, as I say, he's not in any sense making or selling counterfeit goods. The analogy is simply incorrect. At best, you could say he was being paid to tell people where counterfeit goods are available. Which, again, is morally dubious but not a crime. In fact, if it is, you'd have to prosecute every local newspaper in Britain, since half the car boot sales they advertise are filled with counterfeit goods.


Err.. yeah. This is one individual. Hadn't you noticed?
Jon