Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales is joining the call for Richard O’Dwyer’s extradition to be stopped. O’Dwyer is to be extradited to the United States for alleged crimes committed in the UK by a website he ran.

The charges are criminal infringement of copyright and conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. O’Dwyer created a search engine for television shows – tvshack.net. The site provided links to legal and unauthorized sites – much like any search engine. When offending links were brought to his attention, they were taken down.

The Guardian calls the case absurd and suggests if the American government wishes to send a message about hosting links to copyrighted material, “they have plenty of options in their own country. Among some of the more famous names they might try are companies such as Google and Facebook.”

Copyright is critical and needs to be respected, however, the target must be the offenders, not the sites that provide such links.