[nicholassmith]

True enough, but in this case he didn't directly cause harm and I imagine it'd never go through the courts all the way. Unless we start saying that Google directly causes harm and so on, it's the same purpose and Google profits the same, and oddly enough they're based on US soil.

As a British citizen I'm truly sickened by the idea that someone can be extradited over something which is potentially not even a crime, when the biggest name in the game is still sat with million dollar legal teams ready to pounce if they get pulled up on it.

[jahewson]

I agree that the problem is that it looks unlikely that a serious crime occurred, and yet extradition has been requested.

However, the "Google do the same" argument doesn't fly, because Google follow the DMCA and so are exempt from being prosecuted for any copyright infringement from user-generated or crawled content.

PS - "harm" is a very general concept, so if I facilitate copyright infringement in the US from the UK, the "harm" occurs in the US, even though I'm in the UK.