Britons could be charged with breaking U.S. copyright, even if they have no connection to America and the servers are on elsewhere

British website owner could extradition to the U.S. in the face of piracy charges, even if their company has no connection to America and not something that is very probably legally in the UK, the official leading U.S. Web Anti-piracy efforts Guardian said.

The U.S. 's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aimed at foreign sites, in his view of U.S. copyright law, whether their servers are based in the U.S. or is there a more direct U.S. link, said Erik Barnett, the agency 's assistant deputy director.

As long as a website 's address ends in. Com or. Net, if it is involved in the proliferation of pirated American-made films, TV or other media, it is a legitimate target or be closed for the prosecution, said Barnett targeted. While these web addresses are traditionally seen as global, all their connections through Verisign, an Internet infrastructure company based in Virginia, believes the agency is adequately relayed to find a U.S. Attorney.

Web sites that host or stream directly pirated material, ICE also focuses on those that simply links to other places. There remains considerable doubt as to whether this is also illegal in the UK - the only such case in a British court to be heard, where a site called TV Links was dismissed by a judge in February last year.

Barnett 's remarks follow in Richard O' Dwyer, a 23-year-old British student who faces extradition to America for the execution of another popular website, TVShack.net, which links to unlicensed streaming of movies and TV shows made available. O 'Dwyer' s family say that, why do American authorities, a British citizen without a U.S. connection and its servers are based web site used to try elsewhere, are at a loss.

Barnett, the ICE \ heads 's efforts to enforce intellectual property rights, said he could not on the O \ comment' Dwyer case. But in an interview with the Guardian, he explained the general ideas behind it.

"By definition that is violated almost all copyright infringements and trademark law transnationally. It 's very little purely domestic intellectual property theft," he said.

The agency has been operating a year-long campaign operation in our sites, to date "confiscated" 125 of the most popular unlicensed film, television and sports websites, including TVShack, as well as those selling counterfeit physical goods.

Apart from the violation of U.S. brands, website names central to the decision, which will be selected, Barnett said: "The responsibility we have on this site is now really using the domain name registry system in the United States, '.'s the key. "

The only necessary "nexus to the United States" is one. Com or. Net Web address for Verisign is acting as the official registry, he said.

Decisions about the search for the delivery, the U.S. Department of Justice. But Barnett said his agency - the more than 7,000 criminal - is actively pursuing the person concerned within its recognized jurisdiction: "Without me getting into the details on each case, the general objective of law enforcement to arrest and prosecute persons commit crimes . That's our goal, our mission. The idea is to try to track \. "

In our pages were already controversy elsewhere, a Spanish company to initiate a lawsuit after two of its sports streaming sites were confiscated prompted, even if they had been found not to violate copyright protection in Spain.

Barnett defended the decision, even going after the links pages: .. "I 'll give you a analogy Many drugs pass through a proxy is done - you rarely give money to the same person that you get the dope from me, the question to think, all these people are less culpable \?"

Civil rights and the freedom of the Internet organizations said that they were secure from the obvious intention of the U.S. copyright laws around the globe alarmed.

Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, said: "Many countries, including the US, are increasingly asserting jurisdiction over alleged actions that take place in other parts of the world. The internet increases our risk of falling foul of the law, making it possible to commit an offence on the other side of the world without even leaving your bedroom."

She called on the government to amend the UK 's extradition treaty with the U.S., too, won a British judge, where an alleged crime should best be tried. "It would enable British courts to extradition in the interests of justice, where behavior leads to an alleged offense has clearly taken place on British soil bar," she said.

Jim Killock, managing director of the Open Rights Group which campaigns to web-based freedoms, said that domain names like. Com were usually regarded as generic.

"It seems absurd," he added. "If you don 't have any idea that there' sa single country where you can be prosecuted for copyright infringement, that means you 're opening of an individual to potentially dozens of prosecutions."

Online piracy is certainly a huge business. The first 125 pages the seizure of ICE targeted - most of them selling counterfeit physical goods, which are almost all made in China - posted about 60 visitors between them, even after they have been replaced with a government health warning. In addition to TV shows and movies, there is a huge trade in unlicensed video streams of sporting events: only 10 of these sites receive nearly half of the 60 hits.

While physical imitation tends to be dominated by criminal gangs, said Barnett, entertainment sites are often run through the proverbial teenager in a bedroom - who can make a lot of money.

He said: ... "We seized a bank account for a single person on a sports streaming site, he lives with his parents and has no other source of income he had $ 500,000 (? 311,013) in his bank account, most people know that we 've targeted earned an estimated amounts between $ 10,000 and $ 20,000 per month You ". ve got to remember that the overheads are relatively low -. Your product isn 't paid for "