I think separation of church and state was a good ideal, but now more than ever it feels like we need separation of corporation and state.
in the past decade the RIAA/MPAA have increasingly gone after the idea of piracy instead of actual piracy. Tor and end-to-end encryption recently made their public shit list but theyve been wardrumming against any and all pushback against the DMCA for a long time.
When they received a copyright notice, they would immediately remove only the link that was referenced in the notice, but would leave the file with all the other links still pointing to it. Which was the difference between "running a file-hosting service" and "knowingly hosting copyrighted material".
Every digital file is copyrighted (in practice). Some people are allowed to distribute some files, others aren't. You are claiming it's up to him to know who were allowed and who were not, but I don't thing that's clear in any way.
Let’s say I buy and losslessly rip a DVD and upload it to Megaupload as a backup or to have access to it on the go. I don’t share the link with anyone and thus don’t infringe on the copyright by redistributing the content publicly.
Now someone else buys the same DVD, rips it the same way and ends up with the exact same file (so their link actually points to my file because of deduplication), however they then decide to infringe on the copyright by distributing the link publicly.
Their link should indeed be disabled, but the original file should stay (with its other links) as there is no way to tell whether those other links are used legitimately.
IANAL so maybe the plausible deniability here is enough legal protection, but this is an argument that rings hollow to me from a technical perspective. Usually content ripped from physical media is not stored in its original format, especially during the timeline of MegaUpload's existence. The data is going to be encoded in a different format and therefore could have a variety of different potential hashes. A bunch of people having exactly the same version of this media indicates that it is a single encoding being repeatedly shared.
> Let’s say I buy and losslessly rip a DVD and upload it to Megaupload as a backup or to have access to it on the go. I don’t share the link with anyone and thus don’t infringe on the copyright by redistributing the content publicly.
this right here is (sadly) already a DMCA violation for the person who rips the DVD. I'm not sure whether or not that makes it a different situation for megaupload vs. a person uploading a rip of a DVD they didn't own in the first place.
second, the lawyers can probably argue that megaupload knew (or should have known) how widely each upload was being distributed. it's hard to argue you don't know that infringement is going on if you see hundreds/thousands of downloads through a link to a file whose hash matches a known illicit copy. maybe they were at least smart enough not to keep these kinds of logs, I dunno.
Yes, because we all live in America... right? Megaupload wasn't even a US company, why should it “enforce” some foreign legislation on non-concerned parties?
Pretty much. The US makes other countries adopt laws that are similar to their own via trade agreements. The whole purpose of doing that is to make it easier for american businesses to sell stuff in other countries. The whole world is economically forced to converge into the same set of general laws that just happen to be very friendly to the interests of american corporations. Intellectual property laws are included in the package.
There are countries in the world where governments struggle to provide basic infrastructure to their populations. Why would anyone in such a miserable situation even care about protecting american copyright industry interests by prosecuting copyright infringement?
An MPAA official once visited my country to lobby politicians and push their agenda. Journalists asked him point blank: do you think copyright is a priority in a country where people do not have basic sanitation? I wish I had saved the article where I read that...
> Megaupload wasn't even a US company, why should it “enforce” some foreign legislation on non-concerned parties?
Good question... The US can probably just do whatever it wants though. If they hate you enough, they'll just kidnap you and fly you to wherever it is they need you to be. They call it extraordinary rendition.
Nothing he or his company did was illegal in NZ.
Put it like this: if a Pakistani courts tried to extradite Zuckerburg for blasphemy because some of Facebook's users said bad things about islam, then they'd be rightfully laughed at.
But a US court trying to extradite a NZ CEO for something the company's users did... different story. Because America.
I think I missed this news. Can you please elaborate?
People vote based on their opinions. Their opinions can be influenced by many things. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by their religious affiliation. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by comments on HN. But HN has no actual leverage over the state and neither does the church.
Seems like it should be banned on their side too, but that's a bit thorny.
It may so happen that only one candidate vehemently opposes dancing, and as long as they don't make that connection out loud, it stays on the level.
What a weird meme to appear twice on this page.
Corporations don't exist as an entity except via the authorisation from government.
Separating corporation and state really means giving corporations autonomous powers. That's not the conclusion that you are hoping for.
I suppose you could argue the government creating the money allowed the market but alternatives currencies would be created like gold or now crypto.
This is historically inaccurate.
The fact that the term "black market" exists is proof enough to demonstrate that claim.
That states have always tried their darndest (with varying degrees of success) to control markets to e.g. tax them is a better way of looking at things.
> it is the state that created the markets they operate in
There's many large corporations who are only still around because of the state, they wouldn't survive on the kind of market you're probably thinking of.
Eliminate corporations from being legal entities. They shield employees from their illegal actions and provide a shield against lawsuits. Then we could avoid the extra litigation necessary for Peircing the corporate veil.
"Separation of corporation of state" should be interpreted in the same light as separation of church and state - using the state to clearly define boundaries and avoid interference on the state from the church (or corporations), not to give them autonomous and unregulated powers.
Citizens United gives corporations leeway to spend as much as they want to help elect officials and influence citizens' electoral decisions, thus inverting the power structure and reinforcing the de facto oligarchy. To separate, we need to regulate.
There's also a clearly defined boundary where the church is immune from government influence.
So, if the government isn't allowed to regulate what churches preach, what's the equivalent for corporations? Not being allowed to regulate what they sell?
I'm a bit confused here. I think we're using the word regulation differently.
I don't tend to think of regulation as paying attention to people who do legal things that happen to correlate with doing illegal things. I don't particularly like this practice, but out of the many labels I could think of to apply to it, regulation isn't one of them.
I tend to think of regulation as making a specific behavior (or perhaps a specific way of doing something) illegal, especially if there are financial penalties applied to preforming said behavior.
Would you mind elaborating on what definition you were using here? I don't think I've ever run into this particular use of the word before.
This has nothing to do with innocence or guilt.