[Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer

[Phil Nash]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Kolbe" <jayen466 at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 5:48 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer


Further to Jimbo's championing O'Dwyer, here is the court document from
O'Dwyer's January extradition trial:

http://www.europeanrights.eu/public/sentenze/WMC13gen2012.pdf

Some quotes:

---o0o---

O’Dwyer did not charge users of TVShack.net to download or stream content.
Instead he earned money from hosting advertisements on various portions of
the TVShack.net website.

[...]

According to Alexa.com, an organisation that ranks website popularity based
on frequency of visits, as of on or about June 28, 2010, TVShack.net was
the 1779th most popular website in the world and the 1419th in the United
States”. Following seizure of the original domain name on 29th June 2010
“within one day O’Dwyer and one of his co conspirators… registered a new
domain name, TVShack.net to TVShack.cc which was hosted on a server located
at an ISP either in Germany or the Netherlands.

[...]

TVShack.cc continued to offer copyrighted movies and television programs
under the new domain name without authorisation from the copyright
holders… Also posted on the homepage of this new website was the photograph
of a rap music group and the title of one of their songs “F*ck the Police”.


In interview, relied on in the U.S. Request, he is said to have accepted
owning TVShack.net and TVShack.cc “earning approximately £15,000 per month”
from online advertisements hosted on those sites.

[...]

[The US prosecutor argued] there was no attempt to protect copyright, he,
Richard O’Dwyer, knew materials were subject to copyright and actively
taunted already cited efforts in June 2010 to seize TVShack.net.

---o0o---

So Jimbo is saying that a chap who, according to statements in this court
document, made well over 20,000 advertising dollars a month from copyright
infringement (under the motto "fuck the police") reminds him "of many great
Internet entrepreneurs".

It looks like these – rather than NPOV – are the values that Wikipedia has
been co-opted to support.
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I might have supported this guy but for two things-

1. It's obviously in issue whether his activities amount to assisting 
copyright infringement, so I don't feel confident in saying yea or nay 
before a full consideration of the facts has occurred, and

2. Wales supports him. This is, in my view wrong for three reasons; (a) see 
1 above (2) it's an overtly political act in which Wales is seeking to use 
his reputation and influence (if any) to gather support for Dwyer and (3) 
having been treated appallingly badly by Wales and his Arbitration 
Committee, I feel disinclined to offer my own support.

Forgive me if I am being less than sanguine, but some pain just does not go 
away, particularly the toothache I am currently suffering. Ask again next 
week, perhaps.