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Comment by brink | Hacker News Reader

> Prosecutors allege that pirated movies and other content shared through his site cost copyright holders more than $500m (£322m) in lost earnings, making it one of the biggest cases of its kind.

I doubt the point / accuracy of this statement. Those who downloaded the content would have just gotten the content somewhere else. As much as the FBI would like to, you really can't point the finger at Dotcom for this loss of revenue.

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Correct. They're probably trying to calculate that number by assuming that every person who downloaded something copyrighted would have otherwise purchased it. Pure bunk.

That's not the point. This whole case has been just testing the water for the FBI - seeing how far the public (and the NZ government) will let them go. Whether they have grand designs for after Dotcom nobody knows (conspiracy!), but this case is clearly about more than all that money copyright holders supposedly lost (I'm in agreement with you on that - I doubt they would have lost any less without MU).

I never suspect conspiracy when incompetency is much easier. Men with badges hiding behind organizations often forget the scope and source of their vested powers.

I doubt there is a conspiracy behind this; I just left the comment (too?) open to the possibility.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I'm intrigued by the FBI presence off US soil. I thought they were a domestic-only agency.

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