The founder of internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia has called on Britain’s Home Secretary to stop the extradition of a British student to the US on copyright charges, reports Global Legal Post.

The Independent newspaper reports that Jimmy Wales, 45, has backed a campaign seeking to block the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer, 24, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of charges relating to his website, TVShack.net, which linked to other web sites that included pirated television programmes.

Mr O’Dwyer’s supporters argue that as the site did not host material itself he should not face any charges and should therefore not be extradited.

Mr Wales – who in a petition on the Change.org web site said TV Shack was ‘similar to a search engine’ – described the case as ‘the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public.’

Mr O’Dwyer’s extradition was approved by a district judge in January, but Mr Wales – who has born in Alabama but lives in London – wrote: ‘ Mr O’Dwyer is not a US citizen, he’s lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.

‘The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online.’