Drink or Die or Rot

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Great story here from The Age in Melbourne, Australia, about Hew Griffiths, a purported leader of Drink or Die, which used to be one of the best known warez groups. (Among DoD’s claims to fame: it developed and distributed the first program to copy movies on DVD, called DVD Speed Ripper.) After four years of trying, U.S. authorities finally succeeded in extraditing Griffiths from his native land to face trial in Virginia. He pleaded guilty last month to violating copyright law and is awaiting sentencing; he faces a maximum prison term of 10 years. He’s already spent about three years behind bars in Australia, as he unsuccessfully fought extradition.

The case has upset some Australians, who understandably question why one of their residents should have to do time in prison in a country he’s never set foot in. The answer is that he admitted to violating U.S. copyright law by conspiring with people inside and outside the U.S. to crack, copy and redistribute software. And that’s how the Justice Department insisted on treating Griffiths, unlike 10 other foreign DoD members who were tried in their home countries. One possible explanation for why Griffiths didn’t get that kind of treatment: prosecutors viewed him as a ringleader of DoD. Another problem for Griffiths was his citizenship: he’s a citizen of the U.K., not Australia, his home since age 7.

There’s no question that the Justice Department took an expansive view of the reach of U.S. copyright law in this case, but Australian courts aren’t exactly innocent on this front, either. Witness their assertion that Australians can bring defamation claims against any publisher whose works appear online. At any rate, the moral of the story is that the Internet makes borders evaporate not just for users, but also jailers.