The New York Times' Arcticle about TV-Shack.net

Goddammit.

Okay, I read this article today...and I rolled my eyes at the first goddamn sentence:

"Richard O’Dwyer, an enterprising 24-year-old college student from northern England, has found himself in the middle of a fierce battle between two of America’s great exports: Hollywood and the Internet."

This bullshit has to stop. Seriously. Stop. There is nothing enterprising about this guy. He wasn't the first or the best internet pirate. You could make an argument that someone much larger was a better internet pirate.

I mean, where was your $18 million dollar mansion, Rick?

Good lookin' out, bro.

I also rolled my eyes at the next paragraph.

"Although the site did not serve up pirated content, American authorities say it provided links to sites that did."

Right. It provided links...to illegal content (and only illegal content).

Legal question: let's say a person wants to publish a "drug dealer directory." So they contact local drug dealers, have them purchase advertising space (like the Yellow Pages), then they publish the directory. On top of that, they sell advertising space around the drug dealer contact info. Is that legal?

Legal answer: no. It isn't. It's called aiding and abetting, and provided the defendant "has knowledge of the crime before or after the fact, and may assist in its commission through advice, actions, or financial support" it is against the law.

Shit.

I knew this article was going to be a struggle to finish. Luckily, the rest of the was a kind of top-down look at piracy, chock full of quotes from O'Dwyer's mother.

Yeah. His mom. That's some amazing, un-biased journalism right there -- well done.

First, let's talk about tv-shack.net, which is the website that Mr. O'Dwyer ran for several years. I can't talk about the specifics regarding my role investigating this site over the years, but like all anti-piracy industry professionals, I was was familiar with this site while it was active.

But I can talk about the site.

tv-shack.net is what is known in the industry as a "linking site." These sites are the middle-man sites that allow users to locate content -- this is so everyone keeps their hands clean.

If any of you have seen "The Wire," you can look at it as a drug sale. One guy takes the order and collects the money. Another guy (usually a juvenile) gets the drugs and gives it to the customer. Later, after all of the money has been collected (and away from the prying eyes of the police) it is then distributed to the underage runner.

This way, there is no direct exchange of money for drugs. At least...not in plain sight.

Linking sites work the same way. They take the order while someone else delivers the content. The site can then claim that only the users posted the links, and because of safe harbor, the site owner is not responsible.

In instances like this, typically that's a bullshit argument.

If you're wondering what an "Internet site dedicated to infringing activities" looks like, look no further than tv-shack.net. At its peak, the site had links to hundreds of TV shows and movies (all infringing). It did not appear to offer legitimate user-generated content (as can be found on YouTube) -- everything belonged to someone else.

This is what the front page of the site looked like in 2009, courtesy of crunchbase.com. Do you buy the argument that "some" links were infringing? Or is it more likely that "every single goddamn link on the site" was infringing? Do you see any original content here, or even any attempt at indicating there is original content available?

LOL thumbnail!!!

These site operators know what they're doing; they know what they are doing is illegal, so they attempt to hide behind what they perceive to be legal grey areas (such as safe harbor) without fully complying with the DMCA (such as being required to designate a DMCA agent if you can afford to).

And could he afford it?

Yeah. He could. It costs $115. O'Dwyer made over $230,000 from advertising revenue on tv-shack.net, and the site operated from December 2007 to June 2010. That's over $92,000 a year. That might not seem like a lot to you rich motherfuckers out there...but this was all done while he was a full-time student at Sheffield Hallam University...so he was basically running TV Shack in his spare time.

How much of that $230,000 did he give the studios to distribute their content? Probably about the same amount you and I did.

How much did the movie industry lose? That's a hotly contested topic, but helpfully, Mr. O'Dwyer gives us some idea:

The Justice Department examined the site on June 15, 2010 and found that the most popular films were “Sex in the City,” with 37,000 views and “The A Team,” with 29,000. They were both playing in theaters at the time, the authorities concluded.


Helpfully for the authorities, Mr. O’Dwyer also did the math for his users, spelling out, according to the Justice Department, exactly how much money its users were saving. It reminded users that they could have spent up to $10 on a movie ticket, $10 on "a typical US nacho-Coke or popcorn-Coke combo," and another $5 on "typical US parking."

 Dumb.

So, if he's a UK citizen, and all of his crimes were committed in the UK, why is he being extradited to the US?

Well, firstly, the films pirated by tv-shack.net were mostly US films (as the screen capture shows). Pirating these shows put him in violation of US law, and we have a nifty little extradition treaty with the UK. Other web operators with the same business model as tv-shack.net have already been convicted.

He is not going to rot in jail. If convicted, he's going to spend up to 2 years in jail for his illegal activities, then he can go back to the UK, where he can continue "playing Super Mario games on his computer."

Oh, and Jimmy Wales? Please just shut up.