IPKat passes on a report from TorrentFreak that Hew Raymond Griffiths has pleaded guilty to the charges for the hearing of which he was extradited from Australia, adding:
The IPKat is pretty horrified. Copyright infringement, particularly on a large scale, is clearly wrong, but extradition seems disproportionate.
This attitude generally accords with that of Mr Justice Young in a recent issue of the Australian Law Journal ((2007) 81 ALJ 223 at 225):
There have been previous notes in the Journal about the bizarre fact that people are being extradited to the US to face criminal charges when they have never been to the US and the alleged act occurred wholly outside the US.
…
International copyright violations are a great problem. However, there is also the consideration that a country must protect its nationals from being removed from their homeland to a foreign country merely because the commercial interests of that foreign country are claimed to have been affected by the person’s behaviour in Australia and the foreign country can exercise influence over Australia.
No attack is being made on the Federal Court in this note. Assuming the decision is correct, should not the Commonwealth Parliament do more to protect Australians from this procedure. An article in The Sydney Morning Herald of 16 February 2007, pointed out that the US had not sought to extradite nationals from other countries allegedly involved in the same misconduct.
The SMH article to which Mr Justice Young refers was noted at the time by The House of Commons, Larvatus Prodeo, catallaxy, and The Legal Soapbox (among, I’m sure, others).
Personally, I thought the comparison with David Hicks was overblown. Griffiths could only be extradited if the offence with which he was charged was also a crime in Australia. Jacobson J at first instance (United States of America v Griffiths [2004] FCA 879) and a Full Court on appeal (Griffiths v United States of America (2005) 143 FCR 182; [2005] FCAFC 34) accepted that this was the case. The High Court did not grant special leave (Griffiths v United States of America [2005] HCATrans 666).
That said, the policy considerations to which Mr Justice Young and IPKat refer are compelling—particularly the singling out of Australia. I suspect that the issue has not attracted wider attention because the typical persons being extradited do not engender much sympathy. Griffiths was an alleged serious warez pirate, as is Sean Patrick O’Toole (Indictment, USDOJ press release, The World Today, SMH, The Age). Neither is a mere music sharer ensnared in a web of enforcement litigation.
Additionally, Australians (including some from Brisbane) were named—but not charged—in an indictment from the Northern District of Illinois about child pornography (Indictment, USDOJ press release). I think it is only a matter of time before a country seeks the extradition of an alleged child pornographer who, again, will not engender public sympathy.
Finally, I note that since Griffiths wasn’t an Australian citizen, even if he was tried and convicted in Australia, he may well have been deported to the United Kingdom after his release from gaol: see Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs v Nystrom (2006) 81 ALJR 1; 230 ALR 370; [2006] HCA 50.
I posted earlier about the Griffiths saga: July 2004, August 2004, September 2004, November 2004, 11 March 2005, 19 March 2005. I also posted on Nystrom: July 2005, January 2006.
