Richard O'Dwyer (born 5 May 1988) is a British entrepreneur & computer programmer who created the TVShack.net search engine[1] while a student at Sheffield Hallam University.

O'Dwyer's lawyer Ben Cooper opposed extradition, stating that the site acted as a mere conduit, and should be afforded the same protection given to search engines such as Google and Yahoo!.

[citation needed] On 13 January 2012, UK District Judge Quentin Purdy rejected those arguments and ruled that O'Dwyer could be extradited to the U.S. to face copyright infringement allegations.

[3] Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the judge, called the outcome "very satisfactory", adding, "It would be very nice for everyone if this was resolved happily before Christmas".

"[2] On 30 June 2010 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials seized seven domains for "violations of Federal criminal copyright infringement laws".

[citation needed] This action was authorized by a warrant issued by the Manhattan Federal Court following a request by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

[citation needed] The domain seizure was undertaken by the Complex Frauds and Asset Forfeiture Unit of ICE in partnership with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.

[2][11] At the time Kevin Suh, Vice President of Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said the domain seizure was the "largest takedown of illegal movie and television websites in a single action by the federal government.

[16] On 5 August 2012, a leaked memo from the Motion Picture Association of America showed the MPAA's attempts to recruit "third party surrogates" to write news stories and blog posts to back their own interests.

[18] The extradition request was made after the Department of Justice had filed charges against O'Dwyer for criminal copyright infringement at the Southern District Court in New York.

[16] O'Dwyer's barrister Ben Cooper opposed extradition and argued that any criminal prosecution should be brought in the UK, as TVShack was not hosted on American servers.

The High Court in the UK was told that he would travel to the US voluntarily to complete the agreement, which would entail him paying a small sum in compensation and giving an undertaking not to infringe copyright laws again.

[16] The review, completed in September 2011, concluded that the "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause" tests had "no significant difference", and that there was no imbalance in this respect.

"[16] According to Liberty, the forum clause would allow UK courts to "bar extradition in the interests of justice where conduct leading to an alleged offence has quite clearly taken place on British soil.

It would also require scrutiny of the prosecution decision making process", and that to do this would be "time consuming, costly and undermine the efficient and effective operation" of the Act.