they have no business going after just a single man so fervently, he's a foreign national and the websites weren't based in the US
meanwhile US is losing influence and trust on geopolitical stage, shouldn't that be the bigger issue
edit: im being rate limited so heres my response to comment below:
I didn't say anybody was replacing US, merely they are losing credibility and prestige on world stage and this isn't recent and not slowing down.
I don't think any country will be able to replace US and its freedom of maritime navigation anytime soon.
China is in no position to project as its undergoing internal turmoil. Neither is Russia. BRICS also won't offer much.
One potential non-zero chance scenario is the northern artic sea routes opening up due to rising temperatures melting ice bypassing the need to route through singapore and suez canal which would put Russia back on the power map.
US is a hyperpower and there is no equal.
Maybe a unified Korea with extended northern manchuria territories can fill the vacuum left by China and Russia in the region. I don't really see any other candidates.
National security is very far from the only scenario where the government will intervene in geopolitics, for better or worse.
If you say the US is losing influence, then who is taking their place in your view? Is China / the EU actually gaining influence?
To "steal" is to take another's rivalrous property without permission, such that you now possess it, but they no longer have it.
To "infringe a copyright" is to make and distribute a copy of another person's work without their permission.
Both illegal, but very different things. What targets of copyright infringement are losing is not their property, but the potential extra profit they could have made if they'd retained their monopoly on the ability to copy and distribute their work.
Stealing is illegal because it deprives people of their property. Copyright infringement is illegal because (theoretically) it leads to a world where people are less incentivized to create things because they won't be able to profit as much.
a. Go and correct them about using language wrongly
b. Find the heart and return it to its owner
c. Understand the meaning correctlyLet’s say you write a book. I copy its pdf and sell it without your permission. You really think there is nothing immoral here?
IP theft is a form of stealing fruits of labor.
The definition of theft is:
a : the act of stealing
specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to
deprive the rightful owner of it
b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
> [...] just like in wage theft. But you are not debating that for political reasons as wage theft won’t be theft going by your definition.
Please assume good faith when discussing here. I personally don't think that the concept called "wage theft" is actual theft, for the same reasons I don't think copyright violations are theft. In fact, I don't think I ever used that term anywhere, in this thread or in the past. So please don't attribute to me thoughts that I didn't express.
> You really think there is nothing immoral here?
Why does the fact that something is or isn't theft imply whether or not it is immoral? A lot of things are immoral but aren't theft.
> Let’s say you write a book. I copy its pdf and sell it without your permission. You really think there is nothing immoral here?
Sure, that offends my moral sensibilities. But it's still not theft.
That said, I think it's a gray area.
Let's say you develop a recipe and start cooking it for people. Perhaps you're the first person to ever make chicken parmigiana. Then I copy that recipe and start my own restaurant that sells chicken parmigiana. Does that feel immoral to you? Probably not, because we've grown up in a world where (due to arbitrary cultural traditions) we're okay with "stealing" creative food recipes but not creative musical or story elements.
My personal moral intuition is that, the more complex a creation gets, the more I feel it's immoral to copy it. For example I'm less upset at someone who copies a riff from a song, or at someone who writes fan fiction, than I am at someone who copies a book wholesale and tries to pass it off as their own.
But they have no jurisdiction as he was not doing that IN the US. When the Pirate Bay guys were persecuted, the US got Sweden to convict them. They weren't extradited to the US.
>..charged in 2012 with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.
Often with US law enforcement where there's a will there's a way even if it doesn't strictly stick to normal legal practices. See also Assange, and if you read Howard Marks book Mr Nice there's another example of where they got him in an unconventional way. Plus of course a variety of drone assassinations.
Although NZ has agreements with Aus and the US, you'll find on the ground that kiwis are actually not super fond of the US.
We won't let US nuclear ships into our waters, and we actually have quite a good relationship with China.
NZ is also quite self sufficient in many ways and so far from other countries that it's fairly sheltered from potential conflict.
I suspect the small size of the economy, the small number of people in it, and lack of strategic importance in military matters are what keep it protected from potential conflict more than it's self sufficiency and distance. In fact, if anything was to create conflict would be someone trying to capture that self-sufficiency to support their own population.
Small country, fairly neutral stance, little involvement in international conflict, and huge distance.
Follow that up with alliances and there's not much reason to come to NZ, other than for a holiday!
https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/treaties/parties/remarks/NZ/... says it wasn't until 6 years later that it joined. But maybe a different treaty?
Also what he was doing is also a crime in NZ otherwise he wouldn't be extradited.
That is how Dotcom wants it characterized. Everyone else sees a fly-by-night website run by an eccentric millionaire making money by playing fast and loose with the law. It is one thing to be an outlaw subverting oppression by distributing free bread to poor people. It is another to be a bootlegger selling vodka under the table and then throwing huge invite-only parties with the profits.
How would US citizens would feel if another country, say China, wanted to extradite a US citizen because he allegedly violated Chinese copyright law?
Dotcom is absolutely right in saying that US is playing world police.
International crime can be a tough problem to solve. Who gets to decide what is a crime, how it should be judged and punished?
Probably how Swedish citizens felt when China 'extradited' Gui Minhai. At least in US you have due process?
See also https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/230000-policing-expan....
> US is playing world police
NZ and US have a bunch of shared laws, trade and extradition agreements and stuff. It's not like US dropped in and snatched Dotcom without any NZ cooperation. Not world police, just boring international justice.
This is underlined by other US excesses, ie [1] or the fact that US prisons are have many citizens of other states, but there are very few US citizens detained elsewhere (in democratic systems, not used for some political deals).
[1] "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody. The antithesis of fairness and basic human equality rights.
Americans commit exceedingly little crime internationally. Even in ultra-low crime countries, US citizens rank below native citizens per capita. That is probably why.
I applaud the USA for fiercely defending its citizens' rights, even against the governments of other countries.
Relatively recent, though involved diplomatic immunity too: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/23/politics/us-declines-uk-extra...
If those two things are present... well, then it is what it is. Now, I doubt China would be able to provide the fair trial part, but if we're trying to compare your situation to what Kim Dotcom is going through, it's a question we have to answer. I'd much rather take my chances in a US courtroom than a PRC courtroom.
Hmm, excellent question. And for context, America is going to give Kim Dotcom a functional life sentence in what Americans like to call "pound-you-in-the-ass prison". For sharing files. He'll be given more years than harsher than most murderers.
Dragging a foreigner (especially) into the country to be put into a metal cage for violating copyright is disgusting.
Unlikely. He'll probably be sentenced to a minimum/low/medium-security prison facility/farm. Over 80% of American federal inmates are in a facility meeting one of those classifications [1].
The federal sentence (using that for comparison since the federal government carries out IP law in the US) for first-degree murder in the US is either life in prison or death by lethal injection. Dotcom is exceedingly unlikely to spend the rest of his life in prison and is obviously not eligible for the death penalty. He'd probably be looking at a decade or two at most. Obviously, that sucks for him, but your assertion that he'll be treated worse than murderers and be SA'd regularly in a prison housing violent inmates is simply not true.
[1]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_sec_l...
So, no, what you said isn't absolutely true.
Many of these are public companies that anyone can buy shares in. Tons of people have part of their life savings in US stocks - these people all own a slice of the rights to various works of art.
Are you saying if they own a large enough amount of it, it's OK to ignore their rights?
As an aside, here's a list of public companies [0]. 7-8 of them are "trillion dollar companies", and only one (Apple) has a stake in media (that I know of) and that's a very minor part of their business. The media business is not a very good one to be in.
Let's not pretend these companies give the slightest hint of a shit about morality. They'd destroy the world next year if it meant they could earn a penny more of profit this quarter.
As long as companies like Disney are pulling moves like this [1], I'm not going to sit here and pretend as if these companies are in the right.
The only reason Dotcom (a non-US individual with 0 ties to the US in any way that should matter) is being extradited is because US politicians are pathetically cheap and easy to buy off, and Disney and all the other big media companies have infinite coffers with which to do so, not because of some vague bullshit about morality or property rights.
It's like that for companies. It doesn't matter if Disney sucks in many ways, if they own something, they own it.
If you think this is vague bullshit, then I'd invite you to read up on how societies tend to work without it. Even communist China instituted reforms and amendments in recent decades cementing the concept of private property ownership.
And Dotcom does have a tie to the US that he willingly and knowingly created: he committed a crime against their citizens and companies.
You can argue that there's too much protection, or that it doesn't afford equal protection under the law for smaller parties.
I don't think anyone other than Disney shareholders gives an iota of a damn if others pirate movies/shows/music from the big guys. And I especially don't think most people would seek extradition for a guy who hosted a piracy website, especially, that's the type of thing psychopathic execs and their ilk seem to be into. Especially someone who's not even a US citizen or has any affiliation with the US.
Also, keep in mind we're talking companies like Disney here, who are currently fighting a legal battle [1] because someone died due to their negligence and using the argument that agreeing to the T&C of their streaming service absolves them of wrongdoing in a person's death.
So yeah, don't expect anyone to feel sorry for the plight of the poor soulless megacorporation here, they'd destroy the earth if it made them half a nickel more in yearly profits.
Again, you can make the argument that these protections are too broad or too durable, but it's not in anyone's best interest for intellectual works to be unprotectable under law.