Posts by Danny Craig

McKinnon's UK trial bid rejected by DPP

Simple Answer to extradition?

Ok, so the way I see it, the CPS have nothing to prosecute him in their view, so even with a signed confession, the extradition to the USA will go ahead. Well heres an idea, if he'd committed a crime in the UK, he would have to pay his debt to UK society before he could be extradited to any other country, right?

Any suggestion as to what he could do to get the CPS to prosecute, hey if deported he'll probably end up spending the rest of his days in an american jail being beaten and screwed. So in his shoes, I might just give the CPS a reason to prosecute me.

McKinnon wins extradition delay

UK

For the likes of Jacqui Smith and the rest of the government, this is simply about sacrificing Gary for the sake of the special relationship between britain and america. They couldn't care less how he is treated by the americans or wether he did everything they accuse him of, they put on this farce that they've made agreements about how he will be trialed with the americans, just to keep up this pretense that they are the party of fairness & equality. The french (and other nations) have the balls to stand against america at times, but they pay the price by doing less business with them. Don't expect a british government (wether conservative or labour) to ever do the same. I think many of you are saying extradite him because you see this relationship as being more important than one man. And as i've said before, if he'd actually been to america and commited a crime whilst there, I would be all for extraditing him back to america, as this is why I thought extradition agreements were put in place in the first place (seems I was wrong and america will seek to exploit these agreements).

If the US government had any respect for Britain, they would stop nagging the british government for extradition and just give gary a lifetime ban from ever stepping foot on american soil. He's hardly public enemy number one and all they've suceeded in doing so far is highlighting just how uselessly protected their systems were.

He was in the UK, he should face trial here.

He commited his crimes from the UK and should therefore face trial in the UK and under UK laws. Of course we should take it seriously when a british citizens hacks into a foreign governments system (although wether any damage was done is down to who you believe), but if he had hacked into a communist country's systems, would anyone seriously consider there requests for extradition? Just because it's the USA and they are so important to our economy, our government just caves in and to hell with the rights of british citizens.

We should trust in our own laws and systems to deal with this issue. Americas demands for extradition shows a total lack of respect for the british justice system. It also shows our own politicians have no back bone and simply see extradition of one of our citizens to be the easy answer. Extraditing citizens to america should only be done when a british citizen has commited a crime in america and then fled back to britain to avoid american justice.

If this extradition order is eventually approved, I hope we can stage some sort of a peacefull protest. Maybe we all just surround Gary like some massive human shield and the police have to lift every one of us out of the way. It wouldn't stop the inevitable, but it would get a strong message of disaproval across.

McKinnon's lawyers hope UK prosecution will derail extradition

he commited the crime in the UK and should face trial here

Simply put he is a UK citizen who commited his crimes from the UK and should face trial in the UK and by UK law (using all the evidence the american authorities present) . In a reverse situation would we expect an american who had hacked into british government networks from the USA to be extradited here to face trial, I certainly wouldn't, but I would expect america to try him on our behalf using evidence provided by us but under AMERICAN law.

What punishment he deserves is irrelevant in this argument and I don't wanna get into that (leave that to a judge in a BRITISH court), this is a point of principle, has he even ever set foot in the USA???

I'm sure most britains (myself included) believed that extradition would only be used in circumstances where a british citizen commits a crime in the USA (like murder, bank robbery, whatever) and then runs back to britain. These are the circumstances where extradition back to the USA is perfectly acceptable. But with the McKinnon case, america is abusing this system because he embarassed them.

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

Bluray will take off eventually

Bluray will take off and become the format of choice eventually, the problem is that the studios think they should be able to charge more for their movies on bluray than consumers are prepared to pay. When this is addressed the mass market will come on board. When DVD first came out, studios were able to charge a large premium for the DVD version over the VHS because the advantages of the DVD were obvious for all to see, but as time has gone by, DVD isn't seen as being so special and so they have had to drop prices. The difference between DVD and bluray are a little more sutle to the average man on the street.

Obviously, the studios see bluray as an opportunity to jack up the price once again, except this time people arent prepared to pay much more for a movie on bluray than they are for the same movie on DVD. Of course the studios see no point in spending the time developing this new format, if they can't charge a heavy premium for it, so they are bound to resist reducing prices. If the difference was a pound or two, and the bluray players were under £100 (which will happen eventually), then most of the population would come on board. So all this talk of bluray already being a flop and digital streaming/downloading to kill of bluray is BS. It's only a matter of time before the studios have to change their bluray strategy, bluray players to become more affordable and the mass market to come on board with it. After all much of the population has already bought a hd-ready TV and you'd find it difficult to buy a new LCD TV without it being HD-ready. The other issue is that with no competition (many studios decided to stop supporting HD-DVD and killed it off, remember the consumer never chose between the 2 format, it was made for us), their is nothing to push them into reducing prices quicker.

UK ISPs agree to menace their filesharing users

Further errosion of your civil liberties

Since when should it be the problem of ISPs to stop their customers from downloading pirated content. If the music companies give us music in a DRM free format that we can use on any device we life and charge a reasonable price like 50p a track, then only the die hard will bother to keep pirating and there isnt much you can do about them.

It's like saying it's the responsibility of car manufacturers when someone drives in a reckless manner, maybe the government should insist that car manufacturers install black boxes in our cars, that log everywhere we go and automatically informs the police when we break any speed limits. After all if you've nothing to hide, why on earth would you object?

Maybe BT should be taken to court everytime their lines are used to arrange criminal activities. Or how about the makers of DVD writers, what are they doing to stop you from burning pirated content to the media and then selling it on, not a lot, i'd say.