Software pirate extradition a first of many, legal expert predicts

What does the Hew Griffiths case mean for copyright owners?

I think this case is extraordinary, and is a wake up call to copyright pirates, and I think it has certainly been welcomed by the major copyright owners, particularly software companies and the entertainment industry.

I think the American government is delighted by what's happened, and it should definitely cause people in Australia who are engaged in pirating to really reconsider, because it does mean that you won't pay though the Australian criminal justice system; you'll pay through the American criminal justice system.

Are there any other issues that still stand for content owners?

I think content owners and copyright owners are relatively happy with where the Australia copyright law has gone. There were recent reforms to it and those reforms sought to strengthen the rights of copyright holders and also to recognize that there are now some different technologies which challenge the old copyright laws.

So we had things like the iPod amendment, which basically allowed people to use iPods, whereas previously to the amendment, the use to iPod was an infringement.

With the constant march of content-copying technology, do you think the model of content ownership is realistic?

There is certainly a movement out there that is suggesting that copyright is outdated and there needs to be a fundamental change of thinking on that. [But] I think it's going to be a very long time before we see such a change, if at all.

I get back to the idea that America's number one export is intellectual property, so there's a massive amount of money at stake, and [a lot of] investment in the current copyright regime.

Simply because technology allows people to copy a lot more easily does not necessarily mean that they should be allowed to do that. So while the ease of copying has become much greater, the business model around the ownership of copyright is so well entrenched, and there's so much money involved, that it's hard to imagine how you move to a different environment.

Are we likely to see any changes to current copyright regulations in the future?

What you'll end up seeing, I think, is a lot more flexibility around the current business model. YouTube is a good example of that, I think. YouTube had a lot of material up there that was other people's intellectual property, most notably music and also TV and film material. Basically YouTube has become very successful and done a couple of deals with major copyright owners which allows YouTube to use their material.

So I think the underlying legal structure of copyright is here to stay, but what you'll see is a movement away from the traditional approaches of copyright licensing and so forth. It's a move away from the traditional 'pay for a whole CD' idea, and more to what's happening to YouTube, where users are actually able to use the material, and YouTube ends up paying a royalty to the music company.

Would extradition have worked in reverse? Say, if a U.S. software pirate had stolen Australian intellectual property, would the pirate have been extradited and sentenced here?

I'm not an expert on U.S. extradition law, but certainly the dual criminality is there, so I suspect that it is likely. Because there is that dual criminality, then fundamentally it seems like that could work in the reverse.