U.S. Government Fears End of Megaupload Case | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Government Fears End of Megaupload Case

torrentfreak.com

103 pointsLightning106 comments

Fallacies. Fallacies everywhere!

Fact of the matter is, with the internet becoming such an important part of our lives so quickly laws haven't had a chance to catch up. For the most part, DOJ and other countries interpret the laws as "if you are effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws". Is that right? Probably not, but it isn't 100% wrong either. America is quickly converting its livelihood such that its chief export will be intellectual property. They, rightfully, should be defending themselves in any legal way they can. Until we correct the way laws are written they'll continue to interpret them to the way they see fit.

But then we have everyone here taking things to the extreme. What if I break some obscure law in some backwater land unknown to the majority of the world? Do you think they have jurisdiction granted to them by your government? Usually these things are part of a deal of friendship between governments as US and Australia would make deals with each other as there are mutual advantages to it. Would America cut deals with North Korea to hand you over for some obscure law? I'm betting no. Don't forget, there are people behind these decisions and although they may seem asinine at times they are still logical beings capable of rational thought.

It just pains me to see the article and want to discuss it intellectually on HN but all I find is fear mongering, straw men and countless other fallacies that don't really strengthen their point. I don't care whether you agree/disagree with the ruling/courts as written, I care to have a discussion or see good points on either side of the debate, not hogwash vomited forth for emotionally charged arguments.

The problem I see with this is that one doesn't need to agree to be bound by the social contract of an individual government to be prosecuted.

In the physical world, if you don't agree to the laws of a country, don't live there. It is that simple. In our digital world, people from all over the world can connect to my website even if that isn't my intention. It would be incredibly hard to block all users from a certain country from accessing my website or using my service, especially if I don't require any payments.

Also, what extent does "effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws" pertain to somebody. If I have information that is legal in my country but then somebody uses that information to harm somebody in their country, am I accountable? After all, without the information from my site, perhaps this individual wouldn't have harmed anybody.

I wonder if other countries could start using the US's liberal interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act against the US citizens/residents to protect their site. If a website puts in their Terms of Service that the site is only for non-United States residents only, would that rid them of this responsibility? If somebody from the US visits the site and the DoJ believes that the site is effecting the people/business on their soil and that the company should be held accountable then the company could have the DoJ prosecute the user based on the Terms of Use violation.

"Don't live there" is NOT that simple in the real world. How many people in North Korea want to live there? China? Germany during WW2? I'd guess that the majority of the world's population does not have a realistic chance to change what country they live in.

I don't think I was clear with my comment on the simplicity. What I meant was that the solution to avoid the laws of a certain country is simple, leaving as not being in a physical jurisdiction prevents you from being held accountable (pre-internet). I realize that the task of leaving a country isn't simple nor is it something to be taken lightly.

> In the physical world, if you don't agree to the laws of a country, don't live there. It is that simple.

No, it's not that simple. Your statement shows no empathy and lacks context. Is it that simple to leave North Korea? If I tried to leave the US now, they'd shoot me. I'd need to have arrangement with the country I'm immigrating to, pay a bunch of fees, etc. And why should I, a peaceful human being, have to leave when a single entity claims such vast areas of land? It's unfair and people's blind (probably tribalistic) acceptance of that idea is sad.

I never suggested people do that, I'm saying that that is the only surefire way (for the most part) to escape the laws in the country that you are currently in. If you live in a country, it is generally expected you follow those laws. That is my point, not "love it or leave it". I apologize that it came off that way.

> Also, what extent does "effecting people/business on our soil then you are accountable to our laws" pertain to somebody. If I have information that is legal in my country but then somebody uses that information to harm somebody in their country, am I accountable? After all, without the information from my site, perhaps this individual wouldn't have harmed anybody.

The example you give ("without the information from my site...") is what's called a "but for" test. That is not the test for effects in this context. The test has an intent element. Not only must your actions have some effect in a different jurisdiction, but you must have at some level intended them to.

Let's say that Thailand has a king and that publishing a caricature of the king on the Internet is punishable by death. Meanwhile, I'm an American and I make a website in the Unites States that I call kingofthailand.com that shows nothing but caricatures of the king of Thailand. Am I getting deported?

Unfortunately this case serves as a proxy for so many other issues that it is difficult to discuss the challenges of geography and jurisdiction on their own.

It can go the other way, too. Recently, the Supreme Court uncharacteristically upheld state protectionism in the case of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act only requiring the release of information to Virginia residents.[1] The arguments include obtuse statements by the usual suspects, but an interesting part of the law includes an exception for journalism that circulate Virginia.[2]

The law did not address whether that includes every news source that publishes online.

[1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/sjs/a-reivew-of-oral-argu... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-says-st...

These so-called "Rule 4" issues are a symptom of the DOJ's quest to become the world's police force. But the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure exist for precisely this reason. It is in the very nature of the mindless beast that is the DOJ to try to escape from its cage; it is the job of the judge to ensure that the cage door is never left open by enforcing the rules. Hopefully the judge will do his job in this case.

> It is in the very nature of the mindless beast that is the DOJ to try to escape from its cage; it is the job of the judge to ensure that the cage door is never left open by enforcing the rules.

And this cuts to the heart of the adversarial system, where both sides are out to win and the judge is meant to be an impartial referee. So it isn't just the DOJ that judges have to keep caged to some extent.

True, although I think that the DOJ is by far the worst offender when it comes to what most people would describe as ridiculous and even nefarious attempts at legal overreach.

It is mainly because the DOJ's resources are unlimited that, for "egalitarian" sake, it needs to be watched.

DOJ's resources are extremely limited. They're tasked with doing for more than they have the capacity to do thoroughly.

The reason their legal arguments are sometimes strained is because they're tasked with enforcing often stupid laws on a shoestring budget. They're the ones who have to articulate to a judge justifications in terms of Congress's stupid laws.

In comparison to whom they can go up against (at least on one end of the size spectrum), and the degree of resources they can exert via other arms of the executive branch, it is probably safe to state its power is unrestricted (if not fiscally unlimited) in scope.

Even a medium-sized company can bring to bear legal resources that would swamp a DOJ team.

Well, with an operating budget of $27 billion they certainly have more resources than I have, even if they only allocate a half million dollars worth of resources (which would be about 2 people if we grossly divide by headcount, which I admit is not accurate). So I certainly wouldn't want to get on their bad side.

Also not all small businesses have resources setup to counter DOJ actions since they might not be anticipating having to until it actually happens.

2/3 of the DOJ budget is just FBI and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. ATF and DEA are also part of the mix. Actual litigation resources is only $3.3 billion, or about the equivalent of three large law firms. For an agency tasked with prosecuting everything from rapes in Indian country to to international crime rings.

I'll take at face value that trial resources are limited at a mere $3.3 billion; having the FBI investigate you and being threatened with Federal Prison time is still within the power of the DOJ. If we assume a fairly high conviction rate of DOJ cases, then it is probably not because they all ended up at trial, but because the FBI had so much on you and the threat of mandatory prison sentences so onerous that deals will be cut to avoid an expensive trial.

No one wants to go to trial, so not having a big trial budget isn't surprising; most of the hard work in building a solid case is in the FBI and the most of the leverage is in the prison system.

Please don't read into this as a condemnation of the DOJ as a body, just my take that it needs to be kept in check by courts as fighting the DOJ is not just making good show at trial.

The FBI is under DOJ, but it doesn't make much sense to lump them together for the purposes of discussion, because the FBI operates mostly independent of the DOJ (as in most governments, there is a organizational barrier between the police force and the prosecuting entity).

No doubt going up against the DOJ is not easy, but it's not exactly an organization that's overflowing with resources given the enormous scope of its responsibilities. That's why it takes such a scorched earth approach--it can't afford to spend time on weaker cases or hashing out fine distinctions in cases.

Sounds reasonable enough.

This was called imperialism in the old days.

"When a person located abroad violates the laws of the United States, that person may be held criminally liable despite the fact that the person has never set foot in the United States."

Americans, you really need to do something about your goverment and laws. The sooner the better.

They claim that MU violated US laws on US soil without physically being here, over the internet. That makes sense to me.

In this case, can they take actions for blocking the website? It seems like a more logical solution to me.

I'm not sure Americans would feel better about the government blocking certain websites -- isn't that what SOPA was attempting to legalize?

Possibly the most distressing quote I've read in a long time.

Should I be following Irish law too? Indian? Israeli? I don't have anything to do with them, but I'm probably breaking their law in one way or another.

Are you targeting your activities in Ireland or India or Israel?

You can't just read out the "target people in the country/have a major impact on people in the country." If you're operating say a financial services website, and specifically allow users from Ireland to sign up, or advertise to users in Ireland, should you be surprised if you have to abide by Irish banking laws?

Nope, bu I run a website, people visit from all over the world on a daily bases.

There is a legal (and practical!) difference between simply making something available that people from different countries might might access and purposefully targeting a particular country. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlovich_v._Superior_Court. This is in the context of personal jurisdiction between sovereign U.S. states, but the principle in the international context is the same.

Did megaupload ever "target" US users?

Yes. They had colos on the east and west coasts, and ran AdSense ads.

A large portion of what is published on the public internet in the west is likely breaking conservative speech and obscenity laws in dozens of other countries.

This isn't new. If I fire a gun near the English/Scottish border and kill someone on the other side, I will be tried under the laws of the other side, as although I fired the gun in, say, England, the murder is considered to be a Scottish matter. (Of course, in this example, I'll have also committed a firearms offence in England, so could be tried for that under English law!)

This is because:

#The crime of murder is an offense in both countries.

#legal jurisdictions can be lawfully transfered. England can thus give legal jurisdictions of the case over to Scotland even if the shot was made inside English border.

#International law (pre-EU) puts some legal weight on which nationality the victim comes from when dealing with murders.

#EU law has similar international laws as above.

#A murder weight much heavier than copyright infringement, and allows for more legal actions on an international level.

So to sum up, the reason why a murder at the border of England/Scotland has no similarities to the case of Megaupload, can be seen through the years of legal history and jurisdictions law, common sense, and the fact that Australia and U.S. is not part of one large International body like EU.

So, can women in the US be charged by other countries for, say for example, not wearing a burka in public? Can they stone my ex-girlfriend for being a slut?

You can't even be asked to read the first bullet point you are replying to?

#The crime of murder is an offense in both countries.

Well that's the first time I've seen someone say "can't be asked". Is that a regional variant or a minor error or what?

Polite form of "can't be arsed" which I see more frequently ^_^

There really must be context for this. They can't be claiming that every country needs to follow every other country's laws, or even that that holds on the internet. At the same time, they can't be claiming that every country should respect their laws, right?

I don't understand how I should interpret this without context, but at the same time I can't imagine the context that wouldn't make it horrifying.

It's a basic principle of international law that a country can hold someone criminally liable for violating laws in that country, even if they did so from abroad, so long as the activity was specifically targeted at the country or had a major impact on that country. E.g. if you run a service that defrauds people from a country with lax fraud laws, but specifically advertise to people in the U.K., the U.K. is within its rights to hold you criminally liable under their fraud laws. This is most visible with financial crimes, which aren't uniform between countries.

He was arrested in New Zealand under NZ law by NZ police. Should we do something about their government and laws?

This is disingenuous. Just because other actors outside the US were involved, does not mean that US citizens shouldn't take action and hold their own government accountable for it's actions.

The US asked/pressured/coerced (depending on viewpoint) the NZ government into doing it. The action US citizens can take is to get our government to not do such things on the world stage - particularly w.r.t. enforcing US laws outside of US jurisdictions.

The thing that scares me, is that even if I were to operate a company completely legal outside of the United States, as a non-citizen, I would still be required to follow US law because they claim they can prosecute anyone.

World police?

The U.S. does not claim it can prosecute anyone. U.S. courts can and do dismiss suits for lack of personal jurisdiction over non-citizens. Like every country,[1] it reserves the right to prosecute people whose activities have effects in the U.S. A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans. If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

[1] It's a basic principle of international law that countries can prosecute activity by non-citizens that has effects domestically. Not every country has the power toe exercise this principle, however.

Maybe you're talking some sense here but remember they came at him with helicopters and automatic weapons. If you ask me, he's just some fat kid with a website who likes pretty girls and video games. I support copyrights as much as anyone and have criticized this "Mega" fool but the way he was treated was outrageous. If RIAA wants any sympathy they need to get with the program.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Megaupload prosecution was a waste of scarce federal resources. I don't even think copyright infringement should be a criminal issue (blame Microsoft and the BSA for turning it into one). I'm just commenting on the U.S.'s right to enforce its laws internationally to the extent the activity is targeted at or has major impact on the U.S.

Megaupload disk service had an major impact on the U.S.?

How exactly can a company that buy and rents out disk space do a major impact on the fourth-largest country in the world?

I could see how such company could be threatening for those currently funding election campaigns, and thus indirectly causing those ruling the U.S. to take notice, but is/should the reaction cause major impact to the U.S.? If it is, then what does that say about a nation ruled by the people for the people?

So the U.S. can only take action against entities who cause a discernable direct major impact against the U.S. now?

Yes. Is that really such a bad thing?

"I'm glad you wrote to your Representative, Ms. Concerned Voter, but I regret to inform you that because the amount of taxpayer fraud you witnessed was less than $5,000,000 that the Department of Justice would be powerless to bring charges even if I referred the case to them. $5,000,000 is a stupendously minor offense in the grand scheme of the budget, and minor offenses no longer warrant charges after the Major Crimes Prioritization Act of 2018."

Of course. That means the U.S. would have no way to protect its citizens against harms from abroad unless they amounted to national harms.

Understanding that HN isn't a hive-mind, I still find it deeply ironic that a website full of people saying that the U.S. is overreaching by prosecuting MegaUpload was in a different context calling for the aggressive prosecution of HSBC (a non-U.S. company who broke U.S. laws not on U.S. soil).

>I still find it deeply ironic that a website full of people saying that the U.S. is overreaching by prosecuting MegaUpload was in a different context calling for the aggressive prosecution of HSBC (a non-U.S. company who broke U.S. laws not on U.S. soil).

What on Earth are you talking about? Some other HSBC?

http://hsbclocations.com/united_states/

>HSBC Bank USA, National Association, an American subsidiary of UK-based HSBC Holdings plc, is a bank with its operational head office in New York City and its nominal head office in McLean, Virginia (as designated on its charter). HSBC Bank USA, N.A. is a national bank chartered under the National Bank Act, which means that it is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

HSBC Bank USA was not the entity that laundered the money. The target of the DOJ probe and the organization that paid the fine was HSBC Holdings, the U.K. entity.

If you want to argue that HSBC the larger entity had a presence in the U.S., even though the problems did not arise out of that U.S. presence, how do you deal with the fact that Megaupload had U.S. servers?

Oh come off it. For one, that's a patronizing insultingly idiotic argument, it's a farcical shell game of transactions through various subsidiaries the whole point of which was to avoid scrutiny of the US authorities. For two, HSBC Holdings the parent company does have offices in the US, as well as other subsidiaries (HSBC North America Holdings Inc.) which were involved. For three, you expect me to believe that you'd buy it if MU had used a US subsidiary and pretended that the business units were separate?

>If you want to argue that HSBC the larger entity had a presence in the U.S.

No, I don't need to (they do), the purpose of HSBC's US subsidiaries is so that the parent may operate in the US.

>how do you deal with the fact that Megaupload had U.S. servers?

I guess if MU wants to have servers in the US and serve US-based customers, then the federales ought to be able to go and confiscate the servers (so long as they follow due process) if they have cause to do so. But this seizing foreign-based property is right out. I wonder why the DOJ hasn't raided HSBC and siezed a lot of their office equipment.

@rayiner I can't reply to you directly for whatever reason. Maybe we're not getting the whole story. Reminds me of the McAfee story, some nut building what looks like a meth lab in the jungle, is he nuts or just trying to impress his girlfriend? Why does he have a safe room? Anyway, at least he lived to tell the story! Rad helicopter footage!

>remember they came at him with helicopters and automatic weapons

That was the New Zealand police, not the fucking FBI. Why is there no outrage at the government that actually arrested him? Was the minister held at gunpoint? If you read torrent freak you probably think so.

> Why is there no outrage at the government that actually arrested him?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/new_zealand_kim_dotc... and http://abovethelaw.com/2012/09/megameltdown-new-zealands-pri...

"If they had been more thorough in what they had done, they would have worked out that Mr. Dotcom had a residence class visa, and therefore was protected by the law,"

"Frankly, I’m pretty appalled by what I’ve seen because these are basic errors."

"This is really a matter of mistake and human error, not one of a great conspiracy,"

"the agency has let itself down very badly."

> That was the New Zealand police, not the fucking FBI

The attack against Kim Dotcom cascaded through many intermediaries. Although the NZ police were performing the raid, the FBI were observing and involved in the planning. Their involvement and NZ govt approval were commissioned (deniably, of course) by US politicians such as Joe Biden, ultimately sourcing back to big money in Hollywood.

I'm also the subject of that type of cascading attack, sourcing back to someone in Silicon Valley (http://groovy.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Blog04#8).

> "A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights"

Objection. Hearsay, your Honor.

Hearsay is when you repeat someone else's testimony that you (supposedly) heard. Instead that person should make their testimony directly, in their own words.

The assertion you replied to is a simple assertion, not hearsay. Just look at the income MegaUpload received from each file hosted and correlate to whether it is infringing or not and you can prove or disprove the assertion.

It would depend on how rayiner formed that opinion.

I would argue it depends more on your definition of "big part of". :)

He could be accidentally correct, after all, if you happen to agree with his definition.

Objection. Bullshit, your Honor.

Better?

I don't think it's too much to ask that if you go and use legal terms as if you're pitching a legal defense, that those terms are actually used correctly. Especially when the objection is about the form of a response and not the actual content.

You could certainly argue that rayiner hasn't provided justification with his comment, but unless you've been through MegaUpload's books you saying "BULLSHIT" has just as much (and as little) meaning as what rayiner said.

> A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans. If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

That is a poor argument.

North Korea could decide to assign patent rights to "online shopping" to one of its citizens. This citizen now has an intellectual property right that every ecommerce website is infringing. Every site owner is failing to pay legally required royalties, depriving this citizen of those funds, using millions of copies of his invention without authorization.

According to your rule of thumb, all these website operators should be required to follow NK law, so it'd be reasonable for them to land a helicopter in your yard and arrest you for violating it.

What actually exists is a web of extradition treaties whereby nations have agreed to voluntarily transfer someone to another nation for prosecution in certain situations. There's almost always an absolute requirement for dual criminality -- that is, that the act is illegal in both nations. That's the test, and the treaties signed by both governments are the source of power, not "domestic effects" and whatever you think makes the US special. The case this article is about is an extradition hearing.

To your reply: No, substituting NK for US in your own proposed system does not make a straw man.

Except in this case, the content is created in America by Americans, and the underlying property rights are widely recognized internationally. So yes, if none of those things were true your example might not be a strawman, but as it stands...

Except that Megaupload was not selling duplicated CDs of albums of US musicians or some other obviously infringing activity.

They provided a file hosting service, like Dropbox or Google Drive or Skydrive.

Judge Mooner, I'm pretty sure, doesn't own rights to Sinead O'Connor's music and yet DOJ is not currently suing YouTube because of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t77DexLMjOU

The rules for determining if a file sharing services like YouTube or DropBox or Megaupload violates copyright are not as clear as you seem to imply which is why e.g. Viacom lost it's case against YouTube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Yo...)

It's far from clear that Megaupload violated U.S. law, let alone New Zealand's.

MegaUpload did not sell copyrighted material, but they did PAY users for hosting obviously copyright infringing material so that other users would pay MegaUpload to get fast download speeds on those files.

I'm continuously amazed at how the Internet defends a certified scumbag who profited hundreds of millions of dollars off other people's work. Everyone does like free stuff I suppose.

So lets refine the arguments a bit. I could respond to the mudslinging, but that just get boring to read/write.

If I understand you right, then the issues is not with the service that MegaUpload offered, but with the way that they marketed their services and encouraged new users.

And marketing is important. Where I live (Sweden), we have quite strong laws regulating marketing activities. For one, marketing directed at kids (like games) are strictly unlawful, as it is deemed to have a negative impact on society. Same for advertisement regarding alcohol or tobacco. By the early 2000, they considered if they could enforce the same laws against international cable networks that sold and broadcasted inside Sweden, but decided that such enforcing of Swedish law could not be enforced outside the national border.

What he's saying (I think) is that MegaUpload wasn't simply a service provider.

They got their hands dirty and actively participated in paying to "seed" their own service with popular copyright-protected movies, TV shows, etc.

IIRC they also paid for data center services hosted within the U.S. to ensure Americans had quick access to those services (including the deliberately-seeded IP-regime media files).

You'll note that the Feds aren't going after Google Drive, Youtube, Dropbox, iCloud, whatever Microsoft's cloud offering is called, etc., and yet those services are just as capable of uploading media and hosting it publically.

My issue is that I find MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom actions fundamentally immoral. Whether it is or should be illegal is a separate matter.

I am continuously surprised by the number of internet users who are typically opposed to his type of behavior, but support his immorality because he helps them get free things.

>support his immorality because he helps them get free things.

What a terrible argument. I have to support government thuggery, or else I'm a freeloading terrorist? I've never had a MU account, and I definitely don't look to Kim Dotcom's actions for moral guidance; but, I reckon I support the notion that the DOJ ought to follow the law. If that means that Dotcom gets away with something, well then so be it. Fix the law, don't just ignore it or make it up as you go.

It's not "mudslinging". It's spelled out in black-and-white in the company's own emails.

I would assume the "mudslinging" was in regards to the second paragraph.

>obviously copyright infringing material

Are you talking about youtube here?

Are you suggesting YouTube turns a blind eye towards copyright infringement? My experience has been that they aggressively patrol the site for infringing content to the point where they remove many videos that are clearly not infringing.

They certainly seem to let people upload the same video over and over despite takedowns.

YouTube itself does no patrolling. It can't have actual knowledge of specific acts of infringement if it wants to be protected by the DMCA; it's by turning a blind eye to it that they gain legal immunity from the infringement. You can be aware it's happening somewhere (even a lot) as long as you're not aware of the specific instances.

The media companies themselves do the patrolling and their actions, through a special dashboard YouTube provides them, result in the widespread takedowns you see. They can do their own flagging and also review potential matches by a ContentID-type system that checks uploads against signatures of files the media companies upload to claim as theirs.

My channel has had stuff from CNBC, CNN, ABC, you name it - for 2 years.

They do what?

Youtube does not operate with knowledge of actual specific infringement on their site. The DMCA creates a two-pronged obligation on hosting providers: they must respond to takedowns, and they can't operate with knowledge of actual specific unaddressed infringement. Not only did MegaUpload do that, but they (a) paid their users to upload content they knew to be infringing, and (b) themselves used the service to upload and download content they knew to be infringing.

It might not be clear, but if you always needed violations to be perfectly clear to prosecute there would be no point in having trials.

except that the US of A has the military muscle to enforce laws (if its own creation of course). There isn't really any other argument required - might makes right, when speaking on a world stage.

So it's a Yes then, USA is the world police?

"If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law."

So I assume you also think youtube should follow pakistani law and anyone working at youtube should be held accountable if they ever find themself within their borders? How about pretty much anyone exercising free speech on HN from the US, should they face charges in Europe for hate speech or should YC itself?

Don't forget they claim the right without you stepping on US soil ever. So it's more like if Pakistan abducted someone working at Youtube from anywhere in the world, then took them to Pakistan to be tried against their local law. Ditto for Europe.

The word "effect" has more significance in this context than the weakest possible way you could interpret it. It means something more than simply making something accessible. See: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Effects_test

I'm not necessarily challenging what US law says, but what you think about it.

If it was that clear cut, the judge wouldn't have anything to worry about.

Let's preface our discussion with the assumption that the DOJ lawyers are 1) not totally incompetent, 2) not complete idiots. I think we can all agree on this, right?

Now, look at the legal limbo that the MU has been stuck in for absolutely ages now, where their lawyers continue to press for case dismissal and all kinds of other things.

Is not that the judge is just flipping them off is it?

You think, perhaps, the situation is a little bit more complicated than you give it credit for?

Or maybe the guys at the DOJ are actually just complete idiots? really?

Come on.

Have you noticed the cases they've been pursuing lately? The jury's out, I'd say.

>A big part of megaupload's business was infringing property rights granted under U.S. law to Americans.

No, perhaps that's what MU's users were up to, but not MU. What if this case were about banking? Would you also argue that Swiss banks should ignore Swiss banking laws and rat out Americans who lie about their assets to avoid taxes?

>If your actions are going to effect people in the U.S., obviously you should have to follow U.S. law.

No, it isn't obvious at all, and it implies that we should all behave in ways that do not affect people in other countries lest we be extradited for prosecution in some foreign jurisdiction if we break some foreign law.

The marionette's had it right, Team America, World Police --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPBX47zSktc

Ahem: the penultimate apostrophe denotes either a missing vowel, or ownership, in the singular, of the subsequent identified property. You're using "marionettes" as a plural. It doesn't require an apostrophe in that context.

Yeah, late night typing on the iphone. Not an excuse, but I cringed when I read that the next morning. But, I won't edit due to comment.

  > if I were to operate a company completely legal outside of the United States

...and if you were hosting on servers residing inside the United States?

and if not? I.e. I host in Canada.

The US government can take those away, they can go after the company I am purchasing services from, but they shouldn't be allowed to freeze my assets in other countries.

  > The US government can take those away, they can go after the company I am purchasing services from, but they shouldn't be allowed to freeze my assets in other countries.

If you break the law in a given country that you have a business presence in (and derive income from), and simply deposit your money into a bank in another country, you think there should be no redress at all then?

I imagine there are treaties and agreements regarding asset seizure between many countries (UN agreements?), as part of the various "the wars on drugs" and RICO/Racketeering laws. I know very little of international law though, so maybe there are no such agreements/treaties/UN-resolutions, etc.

note: I am not speaking of the case in question, I am speaking generally.

"Among other things the Government claimed that federal rules shouldn’t be interpreted so narrowly" - does that give the public the ability to 'interpret' laws as they feel they should be applied, rather than as they are written? Shocking moves from the US Govt, desperately hoping the case is dismissed.

And this gem "When a person located abroad violates the laws of the United States, that person may be held criminally liable despite the fact that the person has never set foot in the United States." - US != world police.

As a U.S. citizen I fear clicking the link ;-)

haha nice one

I share the fear, and is why I use tor for browsing political sensitive subjects. While its unknown if each individual data package sent over the wire is stored, logs about who visiting what website has clearly been marked in laws/bills as vital for signals intelligence services.

Curiosity killed the cat or something like that. I'm not into anything controversial but if I was, I'd probably leave the country before playing Cloak & Dagger with my computer. I'm currently reading Spook Country and there's a character who "never sleeps in the same grid square." I enjoy William Gibson's distillation of our crazy world. What I do think is interesting, your credit score can drop for shopping in the wrong neighborhood. William Gibson also has a book about a data analyst that is interesting, I think Pattern Recognition is the book but I'm not sure.

TorrentFreak has become a somewhat respected, if obviously biased (at least with them it actually is obvious), news source. They often have exclusive information and more often than not seem to have no problems getting soundbites from anti-p2p groups.

Filesharing is not (yet) against the law.

Here's an idea: If SOPA had passed maybe they would have just blocked MegaUpload at the border instead of going through with this lawsuit.

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