From paragraph 1 of the judgment (Lord Phillips's opinion):

More (NSFW?) details of the alleged offences are set out in the High Court judgment (which actually considered them) and the relevant press release, which can be found here - the important part being in the introduction.

He hasn't been charged with anything, he is wanted in connection with those offences which he is merely accused of. That is enough, under EU law, for an extradition.

Iirc they're on charges of conspiracy to defraud, which is a separate offence to fraud. Fraud is quite narrowly defined (by the Fraud Act 2006). Conspiracy to defraud is one of the most controversial criminal offences in English law as it is incredibly broad and vague, potentially criminalising an agreement to do something that is of itself perfectly legal. It's popular with FACT and the MPAA at the moment as it is far easier to prove than criminal copyright infringement.

A crime was committed .... I know the MPAA is just supposed to roll over and let everybody steal from them, but they didn't do anything wrong or even questionable.

Firstly, a crime was *allegedly* committed. The couple involved are on trial at the moment, and they may be found not guilty.

Secondly, this is a UK situation, so there is no issue of "stealing". Plus I don't think the MPAA actually own that much to steal, being just an association.

Thirdly, what they did was definitely questionable, which is why the couple involved were able to sue them (or rather, their UK front company) and the local police. The couple won the initial case but then lost on appeal. So while that may not be wrong, at least a few English judges thought it was questionable.

If it helps, they did complain. They sued the police and FACT to get their equipment back after the charges were dropped (or rather a decision was made not to charge them). They lost on appeal.

England doesn't have plaintiffs any more, and this is a criminal case anyway, so it's a prosecutor.

But yes, they did try to get it thrown out, or rather, they sued the police and FACT (the MPAA's UK enforcement minions) to get back their equipment, but lost on appeal. Apparently it was all perfectly legal.

The MPAA (through their UK minions, FACT, a "private commercial organisation, representing the interests of the audio-visual industry") did some investigating to find out who the operator of SurfTheChannel.com was. After various undercover meetings, fake deals and that sort of thing, they were able to identify the operators as a UK-based couple. Then they set the police on them.

The police turned up, with FACT people, and arrested the couple, seizing a load of evidence, and a FACT specialist was able to copy a load of data from the computers (and may have done so illegally). While in custody the couple were interviewed with FACT people present, FACT were able to examine the evidence, and eventually most of it was handed over to them for analysis.

Eventually, the couple were released and the CPS (who decide whether or not to bring prosecutions) decided not to charge them. The police then handed the rest of the evidence over to FACT who wanted it so they could run a private prosecution. The couple sued the police and FACT to get their stuff back (after their direct requests were refused). These facts all come from the resulting case (Scopelight Ltd & Ors v Chief of Police for Northumbria & FACT) which FACT won on appeal.

The initial arrests were in August 2008, the CPS gave up in December 2008, FACT filed their private prosecution in February 2009 and that appeal was ruled on in November 2009. This new information has come to light because that private prosecution is currently being heard in Newcastle Crown Court.

The other major fact that emerged was that the US programmer who worked on the site was arrested by US authorities, but managed to get out of being convicted for his part in exchange for agreeing to testify in the UK case. So the US let an alleged criminal go so he could help a private, UK-based company win a private prosecution in the UK.

Actually, England *does* have a Bill of Rights, written in 1688 and mostly still in force. Unfortunately, the only free speech that protects is the Freedome of Speech of MPs, which is increasingly being abused for political gain.

England also does have a written constitution; unfortunately, it's scattered across hundreds of Acts of Parliament, and Court judgments. There are advantages and disadvantages to not having a codified, supreme constitution; for starters, we don't have people wandering around with assault rifles claiming they're part of a well-regulated militia needed to protect the country from invaders.

That said, the UK does now answer to two "higher powers" in a sense, the EU and the ECHR, both of which offer some protection for freedom of expression (a slightly broader idea than just freedom of speech).

Last I checked, the 4th amendment to the US Constitution prohibits any sort of "unreasonable search" without "probable cause" (although, of course, that seems to have been rather watered down over the last 200 years).

It doesn't really matter what the rules say, what matters is that you have a bunch of law enforcement officers, with considerable power over individuals, without the training or experience to know the limits of their powers, but with the arrogance to assume that they are always right. But hey, it's keeping us all safe from those evil terrorists the FBI and CIA keep training, right?

Ah, but the UK didn't decide to block The Pirate Bay. An English (and Welsh, but not Scottish or Irish) court ruled that some of the UK's ISPs should block The Pirate Bay. That's a judicial decision rather than a governmental one, so would be challenged by an appeal. But as the ISPs weren't interested in fighting it in the first place, and no one else has both the resources and will to do so, it will probably stand forever.

Were a UK public body to block a website without a legal reason, that action/decision to do so could probably be challenged in the courts via a judicial review. That's using the basic legal principle that public bodies aren't allowed to do anything unless a law says they can (hence that case over prayer in a local council meeting recently).

But the UK governments have been sneaky about website blocking; they've left it to the courts, the police and the ISPs. So far, courts have ordered the blocking of at least 2 websites (Newzbin and now The Pirate Bay). Not sure how effective those will be.

The police seem to do it by seizing servers etc. in the process of investigations, or simply asking service providers to shut down websites (seize domain names, block financial transactions, SOPA-style stuff) - which is usually done through the service provider's contract with the target (i.e. "we can refuse your service if we have reason to believe you might be acting illegally"). This sort of thing seems to get used against financial scam sites as well as copyright cases (the police force that does it - the City of London one - happens to be near many of the major banks and the offices of the IFPI).

ISPs have also been doing their own web-blocking through the IWF blocklist system, set up under pressure from the government, but is run independently (thus making it immune to things like judicial review, Freedom of Information requests and the Human Rights Act). That mainly targets child abuse images although may have expanded now to cover racial hatred material. It's a bit unclear, which is kind of the point.

But anyway, the fear of the government being sued is partly why they haven't imposed laws about blocking certain websites (be it porn - the latest moral panic in Westminster - piracy or child abuse images). Their legal people will have advised them that blanket blocking proposals are likely to be illegal under EU and/or ECHR law.

Not particularly surprising given that the ISPs had no interest in fighting this (due to the high costs) and The Pirate Bay wasn't given an opportunity to put forward any arguments. The order itself seems to have been granted without any kind of hearing, just on the application.

While there was a judgment earlier in the year that found tPB was probably infringing copyright, there was no examination of any of the various defences (particularly the EC Directive limitations on liability) or a discussion of whether or not blocking the entire website was proportional to any intended aims.

Judicial oversight is pretty much worthless when there is no one there to argue the case.