Megaupload Founder Goes From Arrest to Cult Hero
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Not only did he try to sneak his way out of trouble, he actually tried to make a profit by selling his insider information.
The obituary to Gravenreuth (the lawyer he teamed up with) by gulli.com[1] has some information about what Schmitz' was up to in the 90s.
[1] http://www.gulli.com/news/12565-nachruf-guenter-freiherr-von... (German)
That being said, I don't have any problem with the services that megaupload is providing even if it tremendously anger copyright holders.
Not all countries have the same penal system for copyright infringement. This of course does not favor the US. Where is ACTA when we need it? ;)
Even under US law, criminal copyright infringement only carries a maximum of 5 years. Legal experts correct me if I'm wrong. Can we assume that's not 5 years per item?
Now, assuming that's true, what if he does not get the max penalty? A couple of years is not too severe. Why not just sue him for damages? He has assets. He can pay. It makes a lot more sense. The answer is likely because they are trying to send a message. Why do they need to send a message? Isn't getting sued for millions enough of a message?
Let the readers answer that one.
So, what can we do if a sentence of a few years is not scary enough? We can allege a "conspiracy". A "mega conspiracy". Then we can accuse him of racketeering. And the sentence can be much longer.
The whole thing is just a little over the top.
They should have just sued him, taken his assets and left him a broke hacker.
Instead they want to brand him a serious criminal. Not just a petty one. People are not buying it. What they see is overzealousness. The punishment does not match the crime. So he becomes a hero.
Interesting.
“Two helicopters and 76 heavily armed officers to arrest a man alleged of copyright crimes — think about that,” he wrote. “Hollywood is importing their movie scripts into the real world and sends armed forces to protect their outdated business model.”
What were they thinking when they sent such a large force ?
Take it up with New Zealand. Though you can hardly blame them as Kim is clearly a nutjob.
If Hollywood had chased a civil case against him, they would have almost certainly won it and shut down his business, which would have then paved the way for them to pursue a criminal investigation (although I am far from convinced that he has done anything explicitly illegal as opposed to merely unlawful).
This way round it looks as though they could lose badly on all counts and make themselves look like malicious and incompetent fools in the process while simultaneously souring US relationships with their political allies.
Perhaps they are just malicious and incompetent fools however. It would certainly seem to be the simplest explanation for the current situation.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/kim-dotcom-says-m...
The problem to me is the amount of physical violence he endured, compared to the amount of physical violence he caused.
It's as if the police would beat down someone who didn't tip a street performer.
My understanding is that what some of the users were doing was possibly illegal under US law, but probably unlawful most everywhere else, and that what he was doing was possibly unlawful but not illegal pretty much everywhere, including in the US. Knowingly facilitating copyright infringement is a charge that can be leveled at every industry that provides consumer equipment or services that copy or transmit data, from ISP's through to the manufacturers of video recorders.
1. The millimeters on my defensive gun were very off. I don't know about guns. Just imagine a typical handgun.
2. The handgun analogy is not about how much damage one causes over the other nor is it about the severity of the consequences. The point is that we can all relate to the average homeowner buying a handgun for protection and most people can understand that and trust that your neighbor isn't buying it to commit crimes. But when your neighbor buys an assault rifle and claims its for self defense you start to wonder because we all know, on average, most of the time, it's common sense, stop being fucking pedantic, that assault rifles are not for self defense and when someone claims that it should set off alarm bells just like when someone says "I only used MegaUpload to share Excel spreadsheets with my coworkers and so did everyone else I know or have ever heard of" you've got to wonder if that person is living in a bubble or just straight up delusional.
Can we? Where I live, buying a pistol or an assault rifle for self-defence would get you viewed the same by your neighbours. I'd actually be more concerned if I heard someone on the street brag about their pistol because it's much easier to carry about secretely than a rifle.
This reminds me of the term 'security theatre', which is why I think the analogy is a bad analogy.
[edit] Also, in a hell of a lot of cultures around the world possession of a handgun is not considered defensive, but lets ignore that point as it would break your metaphor, and not only did you politely ask me not to, but you also probably have a handgun. < whistles innocently while slowly sidling out of range >
But to address your argument - a large portion of the gun lobby and gun enthusiasts aren't necessarily uncomfortable with just a handgun for defense, but they are uncomfortable with a technically ignorant government deciding what is sufficient and allowable for that purpose. Similarly, what's to say a precedent established with Megaupload cannot be used to hamstring or shut down Dropbox or similar services? Though you can understand and make the distinction between the intents of the two services, can you trust a judge to properly frame why Megaupload is bad and Dropbox is good? Or for prosecutors, lawyers, and the assembled IP industry to not leverage any legal precedent to shut down what they feel like?
You've got a point but I can honestly say I can trust a judge, prosecutor, or a 5 month old to tell the difference between MegaUpload and Dropbox. What MegaUpload was encouraging was too obvious to even argue about.
That said, you are right. My argument was geared more toward MegaUpload defenders who, for some reason, have deluded themselves into thinking they're defending an innocent service and turning Kim Dotcom into some sort of freedom fighting hero. Your stance on copyright law is irrelevant here because what MegaUpload was all about is illegal in most first world countries. If you think MegaUpload was "just a file storage service" you've got to be lying to yourself.
However, your argument is important because not all cases are so cut and dry. So yeah, in the future it is important to keep an eye on the Feds and make sure the law and due process are upheld because I'll concede that if people are lax (like I am in this case with MegaUpload) then in the future it might be a truly innocent Dropbox that's next. You never know.
Makes for pretty fun sport shooting, though.
There are music artists that have put their own albums on MegaUpload as a central place where anyone can come download. There are people like myself who put a collection of high res photos in an archive and hosted it on MegaUpload for any of my family or friends to download. Analogizing MegaUpload to an assault rifle is saying that there's no reason for civilians to have access to it, where there are actually many legitimate use cases for using a filesharing service for mass distribution.
What are you talking about? Here is a dropbox public link to a photo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1rw9irkhyn400d/Boston%20City%20Fl...
Just as with megaupload, any person with that link is able to download that file. The paying customer is the person hosting the file, and just as with dropbox, anyone who only has a small volume of files doesn't have to pay anything.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are using dropbox, google drive, and any number of other companies today for EXACTLY the kind of piracy that megaupload stands accused of. The main difference seems to be that those other companies are not as successful and try very hard to present a public face that emphasizes their other features, like file syncing.
For that reason, the tool that Dotcom provided (Megaupload) was used mainly for legal purposes.
K.C's appeal comes from the fact that he quite rightly criticizes the incompetent and heavy-handed actions of some very unlikeable people - DC insiders and lobbyists. His portrayal of events is, if perhaps exaggerated, certainly plausible and more possessing of verisimilitude than the official party line.
As with Assange his appeal comes, not from a reasoned appraisal of the totality of his person, but rather from a shared dislike of his powerful enemies.
They maybe managed to shutdown and destroy his business but they also involuntarily made sure that his next business venture will have an enormous amount of free publicity by been talked about on all tech blogs and social news web sites.
Breaking copyright is so normal, at least among those younger than 40 that almost any reponse would be seen as too heavy handed. Choppers and armed police, however are completely of the scale.
But wasn't that NZ's decision. I think a good deal of people believe it was US troops.
But US troops on foreign soil is properly over what they would accept.
Of course it is. What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it isn't the latest attempt to bludgeon other countries in toeing the USA's (i.e. the MAFIAA's) line in IP?
> Like the whole pirate revolution fantasy, there is no basis in reality.
There are currently Pirates elected in 7 countries, which is good going for a movement that's only been in existance for 6 years. Other politicians, for example in the EU, are already modifying their policies to take account of the Pirates' popularity, which they wouldn't be doing if it was just a "fantasy".
> IP is not going away anytime soon, at least in free countries.
IP in its present form is clearly going away. Consider shows like Game of Thrones which more people downloaded than legally watched. While IP law will change slower than IP reality (because law is a trailing indicator), it too is likely to change as Pirates win power in Europe.
> The pirate party would have to be, at least in the US, one of the two major parties and even then it would be difficult.
The Pirate Party wouldn't have to win in the US at all. If it gains power in Europe, it'll have the clout of the world's largest economy behind it, and the USA will no longer be able to impose its IP laws on the rest of the world.
Nor will the USA be able to prevent unauthorised copying via websites in other countries, unless it disconnects its internet from the rest of the world's, which isn't practical.
> Either people can choose how to license their work or there are no licenses.
Once a work is published, it will increasingly be out of the control of the creator. Savvy creators, such as Amanda Palmer or Cory Doctorow, already realise that and have adapted to the new reality. Those who refuse to adapt will go excinct.
The exception to this is works that are programs, which will be able to use DRM systems running on the internet, such as Valve's Steam.
Other savvy people realize that the way things are going, making any kind of living at creating information goods is going to be increasingly difficult, so they go do other things. In some cases, that's no great loss, in other cases, we are the poorer for it in terms of never getting to see what they may have created.
See: "that which is not seen" ( http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html )
That's true. When goods are both non-rivalrous and non-excludable, they tend to be underproduced in a market economy. One solution would be for the state to produce such goods (e.g. in the UK, the BBC). Another possible solution would be my proposal for a broadband tax -- http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/a-broadband-tax-fo...
> See: "that which is not seen"
On the subject of things not seen, how much innovation has the current IP regime destroyed? I can think of several websites that ought to exist, but which don't, due to copyright law.
"Asked why he had become so active online, Mr. Dotcom said he was using the most efficient way to respond to all the good-will messages he had received."
Everything else -- the FBI fuckups, the legitimate users losing data, and so on -- is a secondary justification for supporting a warez site. Those issues can be opposed on their own without making the warezer-in-chief into a hero.
He is (not by choice, but still) fighting the US government, particularly in an area where many perceive the latter to be bound by lobbies. That's enough to make him seem like a knight in shiny armor.
Personally, I'd like for both to lose ;)
I could not have cared less about the man until I read about how little due process had been involved leading up to the raid on his home. There is something fundamentally wrong when one of the most powerful countries in the world can't use due process to arrest someone violating a copyright law.
Of course there is pirated stuff on MegaUpload, there's pirated stuff on every cloud hosting service.. every single one of them. Anecdotally, I use Google Docs and Dropbox to share music with people, should the government raid them and take all of their servers?
Whether or not you feel this is a piracy hub is beside the point, because if there was a reason to shut the site down, the people responsible should be able to present evidence of criminal activity in order to justify their actions.
The fact that they undertook a military raid, and tried to collect evidence after the fact is a clear sign that they did not have a strong case to begin with.
More than anything he's becoming a hero because the RIAA and MPAA have been using lawsuits to demand hundreds of thousands of dollars from middle-class parents, the elderly, and many others who are often innocent of crimes they are accused of. This has become a rallying point for many to stand up to these organizations tactics, because it's only been a one-sided battle using questionable practices for the past decade.