160,000 Back Sheffield Student In Legal Fight

29 June 2012, 18:39 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Over 160,000 people have signed an online petition to stop Sheffield Hallam student Richard O’Dwyer being extradited to the US.

The petition, launched by the founder of Wikipedia has been signed by 164,000 people in just five days.

45 year old Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, came out in support of  24 year old Richard O'Dwyer, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of charges relating to his website, TVShack.net

O'Dwyer's supporters argue that the site only linked people to other web pages that streamed pirated TV shows, and it didn’t host any of the copyrighted material itself, so all charges should be dropped.

O'Dwyer's mother Julia said: “I'm blown away by the response to Jimmy's petition.

“It's been a tough year campaigning for my son but this outpouring of support from around the world has really made politicians sit up and take note of Richard's case.

“Now it's time for Theresa May to do the right thing by Richard.”