Outrage for US to prosecute Sheffield ‘TV Shack’ student, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales, 45, supported Richard O’Dwyer, 24, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of charges relating to his website, TVShack.net, which linked to other sites that streamed pirated television programmes.

Mr O’Dwyer’s supporters argue that as the site did not host material itself he should not face any charges and should therefore not be extradited.

Mr Wales, in a petition on the Change.org website, said TV Shack was “similar to a search engine”.

Mr Wales, who has met Mr O’Dwyer, called on Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the extradition, which was approved by a district judge in January, calling the interactive media and animation student “the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public”.

“O’Dwyer is not a US citizen, he’s lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US,” he wrote.

“America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.

“The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online.”

And Mr Wales told The Guardian: “Given the thin case against him, it is an outrage that he is being extradited to the US to face felony charges for something that he is not being prosecuted for here. No US citizen has ever been brought to the UK for alleged criminal activity that took place on US soil.”

Mr Wales argued that Mr O’Dwyer, who is from Bolsover in Derbyshire, always did his best to play by the rules, saying that on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied.