One-way flight to Russia? His Twitter feed for the last decade does give merit to the idea that he's been on the payroll.
"Two weeks later on 20 January, Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were arrested in Coatesville, New Zealand by the New Zealand Police, in an armed raid on Dotcom's house involving 76 officers and two helicopters. Seized assets included eighteen luxury cars, large TVs, works of art and US$175 million in cash. Dotcom's bank accounts were frozen, denying him access to 64 bank accounts world-wide[...]"
No one legit has 175MM in cash sitting around. That's the realm of dictators and drug lords.
Not that that justifies anything, people should be free to keep as much physical cash as they want.
Don't see what's wrong to preserve your property outside of the modern banking system if you are against the US.
But no matter how big/small he is, I don't approve of other countries extraditing their citizens to the US for things they did while physically outside the US. Especially when the US wouldn't do the same when it comes to its citizens.
In general "That's really unusual behavior" shouldn't be enough to forfeit a fortune.
Remember: he's not being charged just for copyright infringement. If he was, then freezing his assets would be unusual. He's being charged with money laundering and racketeering, two crimes that involve illegal flows of money.
I feel the same about Musk's or Bezos' mind-boggling fortunes; Jeff isn't making $2M per hour while his exhausted employees make $16/hr (while peeing in bottles on a breakneck pace through the warehouse) because he's foregoing all human needs and limits, packing boxes at hypersonic speeds for 60 hours per day without rest. Obviously, he makes $2M/hr because their labor is worth $25/hr or more and he diverts the excess for himself.
Like it or not, but if he would do anything illegal other than "copyright violation" of US companies he'll surely be in prison in New Zealand a long time ago.
Bezos and Musk provided more value to society than one of their employees.
The convenience of Amazon wouldn't exist and it saved normal people a ridiculous amount of man-hours.
If you contributed something more valuable to the world you could also get more than $1M for your lifetime.
That's now how it works though. Someone with an iq of 101 isn't 1% more valuable than someone iq100. A man can easily be worth 10,000 times more with an iq of 150 than some average shlob.
> it's far more reasonable to assume that he assigned the value of the efforts of others to himself, stole, manipulated, scammed, or otherwise acquired that $175M illegitimately.
Easy, sure. Reasonable? No, it isn't. He wasn't phishing Grandma's facebook to get her to send him her life's savings. He had a service that other people wanted to use, they paid him for it. None of them complained that he wasn't providing the service. One user even sued the US government, claiming they seized his own personal documents when they seized the servers (had no backups of it). Quite a few were using it in ways most would consider legitimate.
> I feel the same about Musk's or Bezos' mind-boggling fortunes; Jeff isn't making $2M per hour while his exhausted employees make $16/hr (while peeing in bottles on a breakneck pace through the warehouse) because he's foregoing all human needs and limits,
Jeff Bezos was never making $2mil/hour at all. This is what happens when your economics education consisted of a dozen r/latestagecapitalism meme pictures.
Jeff Bezos famously had an $80,000 salary. I make more than that, and I'm a loser. The rest of you are probably making x2 or x3 as much, maybe more. He had assets of many millions of shares of stock, with an estimated worth of many billions depending on share price on any given day. It'd be like claiming you make $750,000/hr because your home's worth that much (according to Zillow, and only until you try to sell it and find out it's quite a bit less).
The people using the word to say that Kimmy D isn't smallfolk don't even understand the vocabulary they favor.
Definitely not "small folk like us".
If he was a drug lord or if he was even remotely connected to malicious security services he would have been long taken by force. New Zealand is a close US ally.
How do you explain this part then:
> Dotcom's bank accounts were frozen, denying him access to 64 bank accounts world-wide
Can you explain why we should be fixated with how much money he has or how he stores his money wrt the criminal case being prosecuted? If there was something there wouldnt they have revealed it in their accusations years ago?
I was just pointing out the irony in your comment where you just assert that it was perfect in line with is character to have ALL is money in cash while literally the next line says he has 64 bank accounts scattered all over the globe.
Feels like we are being a bit pedantic.
This video of Kim is a classic (I think it came out origianlly c. 2009). The last shot of his table with a stack of Gold Bars in the middle is very revealing (or maybe moreso is his Rolls Royce with the plate "GOD")....
"At only 1.5 years of age, (kims kid) is already at the top of most xbox leaderboards." What??
His bodyguards are picked out by a Kung Fu master?? This is so ridiculously cliche. Nobody serious about their security would hire Kung Fu martial artists to train their team. I train a bunch of martial arts (boxing, muay thai, bjj, hapkido) and I would never use something like kung fu in a tussle. I've got 16yo junior amateur boxers that could probably knock that kung fu master out in a single hit.
Gold bricks are here https://youtu.be/A4TXAaqmj0E?t=365
I wonder what the threshold is for assets worth seizing. Anything under about 100” is going to cost more to seize than it’s worth. If the kitchen is full of AllClad do they seize the cookware?
Feds seem to be a bit more discriminating, tending towards larger amounts of cash, bullion, vehicles, and real estate. But I've seen more than a few news articles over the years where they seized property you might call petty.
I get that there’s a lot of corruption, but “nice GameBoy, my kid’ll love it after auction” seems like a stretch even for the US. If nothing else, it has a paper trail, right?
> I get that there’s a lot of corruption, but “nice GameBoy, my kid’ll love it after auction” seems like a stretch even for the US.
Choose to believe or not, matters not to me. But I would point you at the many mainstream news articles of places that make road trips through where the local police shake people down for valuables, and the many corvettes and sports cars painted in black and white that cops drive as squad cars. Are these confiscating those because they make such good vehicles for hauling people away to the holding cell?
I don't necessarily agree you should be taken away from your home-country because of that, seems relatively minor in the grand scale of things, but he was hardly "just sharing songs on the internet".
In this case, he annoyed powerful IP owners, and those people in our current society are as powerful as they get.
That's 2 orders of magnitude up the resources invested.
And not even for stealing in the case of Mega, but for assumed money people would have paid to IP owners if the service hadn't existed. Which is a premise pirates have been debunking for years.
When I used mega, I didn't have the money for the content. Today I pay for netflix and steam games.
This is not about justice, this is about power.
"Long time" is subjective.
> I don't necessarily agree you should be taken away from your home-country because of that
New Zealand doesn't agree either, it's not on the short list of crime categories that one can be extradited for. I seem to remember a headline from a decade ago where the US charges were amended to try to sidestep that. When the exact crimes one is accused of are subject to modification to squirm around protections, maybe the people prosecuting are worse than those being prosecuted.
Actually to that end he got millions in cash facilitating piracy of movies/tv/software
But, I misspoke--the point I intended to make is that MU was making far more from download users than upload users. I made it sound like subs weren't a part of that, but they were. It's a question of what they were actually paying for.
Technically the subscriptions were paying for storage, but the indictment also cites MUs on database as showing only 5 million out of 60+ million registered users ever uploaded anything.
I mean, is it really a file sharing service if the vast majority of your paying customers don't share any files?
Yes, the belief is that the source of his wealth was from MegaUpload and Mega.
He created a site where you can upload anything with complete privacy and anonymity. And then used it for racketeering, allegedly, which is where the government interest starts. The RIAA/MPAA want their pound of flesh, too, and it gave plenty of fertile ground for the US DOJ to build a case around so that they could get discovery and find out what they were really trying to get access to. But the piracy is not the point; not by a long shot.
As with anything that allows absolute anonymity AND absolute privacy, it's bound to attract bad actors. Yes, the "pirate music" types. But ALSO the "sell humans" and "provide criminal services (hitman/fraud agent/patsy agreement/etc)" types.
Dotcom can turn blind eyes all he wants, but if won't take responsibility for the damage he is facilitating, it is in the public interest for him to be held accountable against his will.
I'll never stop pirating media, and I'd never want a media pirate to go to jail. But I'll never defend a human trafficker either, no matter how "innocent" they allow themselves to remain via intentional ignorance.
Wait, where did that come from? Did Kim Dotcom facilitate human trafficking?
Using the strictest logic, you should not take my word for it. Maintain a healthy skepticism that human trafficking was ever facilitated via Dotcom's enterprises. I have not provided any direct evidence that anything like that was going on and, as stated, I'm not in a position to. Everyone is more than welcome to believe that nothing more untoward than media piracy was going on in a world-renown, legally-battle-tested, completely anonymous, completely private marketplace of data.
MPAA/RIAA needing to be saved from racketeering is epic levels of irony
Whether you think the particular laws are ethical or not, if you publicly break them, they will catch up with you.
...that is a summary of Kim's trial. Movie companies own the government.
This same foreign country who passed laws for invading the hague if they came under trial for crimes in the ICC.
[1]: See assange's bid for first amendment's guarantees when the same foreign country was trying to extradite and "trial" him
IP holder damages should take in consideration what the actual buying power of pirates is, not just multiply downloads by dvd costs, and copyright laws need a huge reform.
He's a modern day robin hood, people would prefer him to win over eg. disney... and disney is not doing itself a favour these days :)
>He's a modern day robin hood
He's run or partnered on multiple pump-and-dumps for the better part of 30 years, some of which capitalized on his fanbase.
We're talking about software and (well, mostly) media piracy, movies and music here.
I'm not going to defend the guy because he has been involved in a number of shady dealings, but this does seem like an extraordinary amount of effort to go after a guy who ran a website that facilitated pirating of music and movies over a decade ago.
Yep, especially compared to other people, who did worse (pedophillia-wise), like Polansky, etc.
Yeah and there is Logan Paul living in US running pump and dumps, scams and other things. But he look nice and popular so he'll continue to do it without any prosecution. As well as many other YouTube personalities. After all they pay taxes to US so they can do it freely.
Again, not protecting Dotcom or like him as person, but he is not some war criminal to justify this kind of effort US put into trying to get him.
Depending on the content, it is.
> He's a modern day robin hood
Robin Hood didn't enrich himself with the stolen goods.
Do you mean "would be paid"? But why would anyone pay the users? The uploaders were paid.
> The "theft" is propaganda.
No, it's juridical fact.
> In fact from the article itself it even says Mega had a notice and takedown system available to the rights holders.
Where does it say this? Anyway, this system was bullocks. It was just a poor lip service which they stalled and ignored the whole time.
"copyright holders, industry representatives, and legislators have long characterized copyright infringement as piracy or theft – language which some U.S. courts now regard as pejorative or otherwise contentious."
And also I'm unsure there is evedence it was ignored, it just seems like you are spewing more copyright propaganda. Might I dare to say they might be in fact lying?
I mean she doing gods work on making science more open to everyone, but if she were living in New Zealand she would land in US prison for 10+ years long ago.
As other comments noted, the man literally made millions distributing copyrighted material, while completely aware of what he was doing.
"What is motivating you to simp for the empire so hard?" is not such a question. Having been in such conversations before, if I responded with an honest answer like "I generally think the US is a pretty good country" or "I feel that it's important for criminals to be caught and punished", I'm quite confident that the original commenter would respond with personal insults and invective.
Fuck MPAA/RIAA. They're not good faith actors and they play dirty all the time. We need to fight dirty too. It's so rich of those guys to complain of racketeering of all things!
Kim is a modern day robin hood. Illegal, criminal, yada yada? Sure. Is he "bad" for the people? Well... that's very debatable.
And BTW since when has Kim any legit political stance? It has always been about money and fame for Kim. Political topics were never a serious part of him.
how come musk did it with 80% people fired why wasnt it adressed before? would you send the previous twitter ceo to jail?
No, they did not. User abused the platform, and the companies removed it when notified. Kim didn't do that, instead he even made a business of it. Youtube especially had a historical case about this, when they were sued by Viacom(?) for not removing content well enough, which then resulted in the creation of the contentId-system. This was BTW around 5 years before MegaUpload and Kim were raided.
And as you mentioned ChatGPT, AI and content-usage is a completely different story, and a recent problem around loopholes in the existing laws. Maybe the companies will also be sued for this, maybe not, we will see..
I understand when leaders in politics or industry make these character-assasination attacks as they do it for their own interests (political or economical) but why do you do it? Why would normal people throw baseless accusations like this? What is your motivation? What skin do you have in this game? Is your argument really "Kim Dotcom is an agent because he is opposing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and he is against a forever war in Ukraine"?
He is presumably some guy that youve never met that happens to be fighting against the US government and its copyright laws so why are you making these comments? Are you so passionate about copyrights because you are an artist that has lost money because of mega? What motivates you?
Thanks for articulating this, similar idea behind my sibling comment. Sadly i think the conclusion is that the vast majority of people are small minded, spiteful, and more or less accept whatever narrative the empire feeds them. Wish it wasn't like this
I just seriously doubt that likes of Dotcom, Musk or Trump need to be on Putin payroll. They just all have their own agenda to sell "strong russia, good putin" narrative.
Hailing from a country that joined NATO in the 90s I wouldn't brand a person arguing this as being on communist payroll - just ignorant beyond measure.
Russia has been a consistently bad neighbour for decades now and I for one am happy that in my country it was the post-communists out of everyone who spearheaded the effort to have a deterrent in the form of NATO membership.
Finland and Sweden appear to agree, considering how they joined the alliance.
If anything, NATO is now more relevant than ever.
I don’t expect them to stop fighting invaders. But what I do expect is to engage with their people and their neighbors on these issues in hopes of avoiding war and maintaining territorial integrity. They didn’t. Why I wonder?
This is a lot like asking, in regard to events of August 1939 -- "Do you deny that Poland has ethnic Germans in it territory"?
Of course it did, and in fact (though this is largely forgotten) Poland was abusing its German population somewhat (far more than anything Ukraine has ever done to its Russian-speaking population). But Hitler's claims of the extent of such abuses were wildly exaggerated and overdrawn. Just as the depiction above of Ukraine "crushing those Russians because of their dissent" (without providing specifics) is wildly out of touch with reality.
And his stated rationale of the need to to start a full-scale war in order "protect" this population was a big lie of course, created specifically to appeal to people gullible enough to believe such things. Putin's claims of the need to "protect" the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine are equally baseless, and are designed with a similar intent in mind.
But what I do expect is to engage with their people and their neighbors on these issues in hopes of avoiding war and maintaining territorial integrity.
Ukraine did engage with Russia on the issues -- they just weren't willing to bend over and give Putin everything he wanted. More specifically it definitely sounds like you were expecting the Ukrainians to agree to permanent large-scale territorial concessions. Because since 2014, that's been the bare minimum of Russia's terms for "avoiding war".
If we dismiss everything the Russians say and accept everything said by those arming Ukraine there is no point for debate on this topic: we can only accept the mainstream media narrative that Ukraine must fight and we must support it endlessly.
All I can say is we had similar situations in the past and decades after the fact we realized we were lied to. Too bad millions died I guess?
If you listen to Russians, then you're left with an impression that they are being surrounded by US weapons on their borders. If you look at the numbers, then that turns out to be a blatant misrepresentation of truth. For example, the US fielded ~5000 main battle tanks in Europe at the end of the Cold War. In 2013, the last 10 were removed. The opposite is true: post-Cold War era has brought rapid disarmament to Europe, which has emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine, because disarmament has limited how much and how quickly allies could help Ukraine.
> But I think it’s kind of obvious that the core Russian desire is to keep nato far from its borders.
Ironically, this is "obvious" only if you accept the premise that Russia is determined to violate the security of its neighbors.
But to address one aspect of what you're saying now:
I think it’s kind of obvious that the core Russian desire is to keep nato far from its borders.
This is broadly correct, and perfectly understandable.
However the war was never really about NATO expansion in the first place. And even if it were -- it definitely wasn't a rational response to that concern. And it certainly wasn't a response that the regime was "pushed" into taking.
The war was entirely optional for them - a failed gambit for enhanced "stature" and prestige on the global stage, basically[0]. Very much analogous to, and exactly as evil and stupid as the 2003 Iraq invasion, and supported by lies equally obvious and stupid. That unfortunately far too many otherwise perfectly decent and intelligent people were far to eager to believe.
If we dismiss everything the Russians say and accept everything said by those arming Ukraine there is no point for debate on this topic: we can only accept the mainstream media narrative that Ukraine must fight and we must support it endlessly.
I see plenty of room for debate on alternatives to the idea that Ukraine must keep fighting at the current pace until an unequivocal withdrawal (if that's what you mean by "supporting it endlessly"), and if you talk to Ukrainians directly you will very quickly find that they do as well.
However in order to even get there we first need to free ourselves of broken narratives in terms of what's actually been happening on the ground, and stop assuming that what the current regime says is interchangeable with what Russians in general say or think.
It would also be helpful to just completely forget about "mainstream media narratives", whatever those even supposedly are. When instead you can build your own far more reliable narratives from first principles (studying history, talking with people from there, or actually visiting the safer parts of the country if you like).
--
[0] Along with a desire on the part of the regime to promote and secure its longevity by keeping Ukraine out of Western economic and cultural influence, which it felt deeply threatened by, which is where the analogy breaks down somewhat (the US never had any specific obsession with Iraq in the way Putin has with Ukraine). And now that the initial gambit has clearly failed -- the war isn't about any of these initial motives; but rather a simple and desperate desire to save face, so that the regime can survive for a few more bloody years.
The main point being (as with the US in Iraq) its true aims were/are entirely different from its outwardly stated aims.
Unfortunately EU and US governments are not much better since they all put dumb limits on weapons usage and never supplied Ukraine enough weapons to actually get any superiority.
And "because he tweeted on X"?
I think you're going to need something a bit more substantive than that.
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-am...
Its like Americans complaining about how Chinese or Indian hit movies are covertly pro-Chinese or pro-Indian propaganda pieces. Ever heard of Hollywood?
Intelligence operative or peasant. Pick one.
Is everyone you don't like a Russian spy?
I weep for this world.
Kim Dotcom, the Critical Thinker, does. But he curiously suspends critical thinking when pandering idiotic conspiracy theories about biolabs weaponizing birds. Gotta love these selective critical thinkers.