170 replies
6h20m
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.
99 replies
5h33m
A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective.
I’d argue Kim was too successful and too unlikeable at the end of the day, and that was probably his downfall. Toward the end, MEGA had transitioned to actually partnering with hip hop artists for distribution.
The US has a long history of IP rights holders criminalizing new business models / protecting current models in law, and then a fair amount shaking down and sorting out happening as new technology hits the scene, going back to radio. Each of these waves has led to push / pull between distributors, retailers, artists and song writers, and whether or not you like it, that’s the system we have today.
MEGA was too early and too tainted (and run by an aggressively weird / antagonistic dude) to become Spotify. But, it wasn’t the wrong model using tech of the time. It was too early, and too successful, without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.
29 replies
5h28m
> without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.
That's the killer, right there.
"existing rights holders" is a big deal, and one that has been ignored by tech bros for a long time.
As a [former] artist, and [former] musician, I can say that the tech industry has been cooking the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse).
If we take that away, guess what happens?
No one wants to do it, anymore.
This may be an issue, with AI-generated creative content. Unless the AI is truly better than human talent (and "better" is in the eye of the beholder), it has the very real prospect of turning the commercial creative industry into gray goo.
[EDITED TO ADD] Watching the karma count on this post, yo-yoing up and down, has been fascinating. This seems to be an issue that people have very strong feelings about.
10 replies
5h5m
Destroying commercial art culture really might not be a bad thing. The overwhelming majority of visual artists, writers and musicians don’t make money from their art, and would continue doing it even if the big corporate parasites went bankrupt.
4 replies
4h55m
I believe the implications are a bit different. It takes a lot of time to learn to make music. If you can’t make it as a famous artists (the odds of which are about as high as becoming a football star), you previously still had the option to use your music skills to make money with boring work: music for ads for example.
That’s going away. Now it’s becoming a lot more like professional sports: either you make it, or your hard earned skills are useless on the job market. It increases the risk significantly and will lead to less people pursuing a musician career.
I hope that my explanation is not perceived as judging in any way, but purely as an explanation.
1 replies
4h46m
"either you make it, or your hard earned skills are useless on the job market"
I think uncommon focus, discipline, physical and mental dexterity along with the ability to perform under pressure are being undervalued here.
0 replies
4h28m
I've been out of work for close to 6 months now, actively searching, interviewing every week, and finding that what the job market seems to value is that you have done the exact same thing as what they are hiring for.
I've discovered breakthrough algos and delivered solutions which personalize medical care, sometimes with life and death outcomes.
Yet somehow that doesn't count when the company wants someone who has done personalization for consumer products.
I have other examples from other common DS roles/tasks, where I have done the equivalent thing to that role in a different context. And somehow that never seems to count.
So no, I don't have strong evidence that the job market values generic skills. Perhaps your experience has been different?
I can also hear someone saying "with the attitude that the poster is taking, I'm not surprised"-- so let me point out how difficult it is to extract attitude from text, and that the context here (presenting evidence to refute a claim) is very different from an interview context.
0 replies
4h15m
It'd seem to me that a society that values art would find a way to keep artists secure economically while letting as many people as possible enjoy their work. I tend to think of piracy as a scapegoat for the draining of the working and middle class's purchasing power. Napster and Spotify came along as people were beginning to find it prohibitively expensive to drop $20 on an album. People would pay if they could (some do, if vinyl sales are anything to go by).
0 replies
3h12m
For. The. Love. Of. The. Game.
Your skills are cause you wanted to do it, not because you wanted to be famous. That's the by-product.
4 replies
4h39m
> The overwhelming majority of visual artists, writers and musicians don’t make money from their art
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
The overwhelming majority don't make big money, but many, many creatives make a living on their art, and a lot of them are OK with being fairly low-paid (I know quite a few). They do what they love, and get paid enough to keep doing it. As a musician friend of mine says "You know what's great? I get to play music for people, and then they pay me for it, when I'm done!". He is not a huge rock star, but does well enough to tour around the country.
People tend to sneer at creatives, thinking of them as "parasites," or "doing something that anyone can do, so why should they be paid?"
I can tell you that I appreciate having a trained professional designer, help me with my software design. They can do something like fart out a logo in five minutes, that can become one of the most significant assets a company has. That's a really valuable skill.
We'll have to see if AI can actually replace that. It probably will, for many contexts. It's gotta be better than some of the efforts I see, by engineers that think they are creative, but aren't.
1 replies
2h53m
There are way more people that draw, paint, sing, or play an instrument for their own and their friends enjoyment than any who make a living at it. Not sure how you could think that’s not true.
0 replies
2h39m
And software engineers that do it?
Actually, that's what I do, these days. Take a gander at my work. It's not exactly "Hobby grade" stuff, but I don't make a dime from it.
I'm grateful for the many years of being a professional, that helped make it possible for me to do it creatively, these days.
0 replies
3h47m
How would his career change if AI music become prevalent? He could still play for crowds and get paid. Does he ever play covers? He benefits from the work of others too. He might one day play covers of some hit AI tunes.
0 replies
3h54m
"You know what's great? I get to play music for people, and then they pay me for it, when I'm done!"
This transaction does not need IP protection at all.
6 replies
4h30m
The music industry isn’t a “goose that lays golden eggs” for the greater economy. It’s not as democratic or accessible as the tech industry either.
You’d have a stronger argument if it was at least fair to the artists that it purportedly represents. It’s not.
5 replies
4h9m
The music industry has been the one making the pots and pans.
But it is also the one that has been making it possible for creatives to become obscenely rich. It's actually only fairly recently, in history, that creatives could become independently successful, without having patrons. I don't know of anyone that has become rich, using Patreon (I could be wrong, though, as it has never really been something that I've paid attention to).
Not sure if the patronage model works for creatives.
It's fascinating to see folks in tech, who are obsessed with becoming rich robber barons, get upset at the prospect of other people getting rich, doing non-tech stuff.
3 replies
3h24m
This isn’t a good argument since extremely few creatives get obscenely rich and few creatives are even able to generate a decent income to do things like being able to buy a home.
At least in tech, the pot is more evenly distributed and for more types of people. It even contributes to the broader economy as a whole with genuine innovation as opposed to just collecting rent on IP.
2 replies
2h54m
Well, as a [former] creative, myself, I don't think that I'd consider what I did, "collecting rent on IP."
In fact, if you look at the behavior of many tech company legal teams, that seems more like what tech corporations do, than individual creatives.
This is the stuff I did in the 1980s, when I was considering making a living at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886
1 replies
1h36m
Because you’re not the one doing it. It’s the music labels that are doing it. You’d also be lucky to get fair compensation for your work. Even superstars get cheated.
The behavior of music labels is far worse and less valuable to society than the tech industry
0 replies
1h13m
> far worse and less valuable to society than the tech industry
The jury's still out on that.
The music industry can't hold a candle to some of the raw destruction that has been wrought by tech.
It's just balanced by a lot of good (and making tech billionaires isn't really what I consider "good").
0 replies
3h37m
A few people becoming obscenely rich is not a good in itself. That is to say, it's not a reason that justifies the music industry existing as it does today. That would be like arguing that it's good (just in general) that smoking is banned because I specifically don't like smoking. A good reason could be that it causes more music to be made, or better music, or it lets more people make music. I honestly have no idea if that's true. Certainly the last one isn't; what lets more people make music is access to technology, not the possibility of getting rich.
4 replies
4h24m
No we just realized people who pirate likely aren’t going to buy it anyway, you can’t claim lost profits for ~$0.
3 replies
4h20m
I wouldn't say that, myself.
In the case of software (a creative product that many, here, have a vested interest in), pirating can actually lead to future sales.
I think one of the most pirated programs out there, used to be Adobe Photoshop.
This resulted in a huge number of folks that became expert Photoshop users, and that drove sales of the app, in their careers.
The same probably cannot be said for games. I suspect a pirated game, is a lost sale.
2 replies
3h9m
Personal experience (sample size: 1), a lost sale when I was age 16 made a true believer out of me for some developers, so at 35 I buy their games no question day 1.
A lot can change in 19 years, but I've gone back and bought most every game I pirated on steam now that the income isn't as scarce.
0 replies
2h18m
Who are these developers making reliably good games over 20 years?
Lemmings was a great game, but that isn't informative as to Grand Theft Auto, which isn't.
0 replies
2h53m
For myself, I also pay for my creative consumer stuff (streaming and art).
It's a bit dispiriting, to be sneered at, for it.
3 replies
4h54m
The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse). If we take that away, guess what happens? No one wants to do it, anymore.
I don't know about financial success but I think losing ego building as artist incentives might not be a bad thing. Maybe it's an unhealthy focus and probably shouldn't be supported.
Intuitively, I think those kind of drives will not go away no matter what support you give it. However, I can't believe that feeding that beast is not having an effect.
1 replies
4h38m
The ego stuff can be sickening, but it is definitely a draw. Some of the best musicians and artists, ever, have been rather appalling personalities. I won't go into naming names.
0 replies
3h15m
If you get used to stepping on the shoulders of others, that cascades to other aspects of your life and sooner-or-later a paparazzi video comes out of you being a dick to wait staff or worse.
0 replies
3h16m
Being "the guy" is the moat in entertainment. The problem is if you remove that, then the throngs of folks can make content to where it becomes "if everyone's special, no one is." I get it, I just wish it wasn't the case.
0 replies
2h36m
You're mixing several valid criticisms of the tech industry with a really invalid critique of Free Culture[0]. If it were true that "taking away the opportunity for individual financial and ego success" meant nobody makes creative works anymore, then we wouldn't have Wikipedia, the SCP Foundation wiki, GNU, or Linux. I also want to point out that it was specifically the Free Software people who fired the first shot against generative AI, because a lot of our licenses are designed to resist enclosure of the commons.
Yes, the tech industry is an interloper in an industry that has had long-standing sweetheart deals with governments both liberal, neoliberal[1], and otherwise. However, that industry - the creative industry - was not at all pro-artist beyond making sure artists had something worth stealing. The tech industry started out not understanding the creative industry's norms and laws, but has long since graduated into facilitating new versions of some of its worst abuses. We're not the same tech industry that gave the world Napster anymore. The whole reason why, e.g., Apple gets to charge a blatantly supra-competitive 30% on every purchase on iPhone comes down to copyright ownership over iOS.
To wit: most of the biggest cheerleaders for generative AI are in the creative industry. You have CEOs ranting and raving about how once the plausible sentence generators are up to speed, they can fire entire classes of artists and workers. Videogame companies make voice actors audibly consent to voice cloning at the start of each recording session. The RIAA is not suing Udio to protect the role of musicians, they're suing so they can produce a "licensed" model that nicely cuts artists and bands out of their royalties.
Yes, the people in the GenAI space have a "fast and loose" interpretation of copyright, but that's less "information wants to be free" and more "we'll ask for forgiveness and take a license once all this AI fairy dust pays out". Licensed GenAI is not going to be any better than the current state of affairs because the threat of GenAI is not the copying of any one individual work. Copyright is an individualistic system, and ownership is for owners, not workers. And even if you decide you'll never license your specific work to AI, someone else will, and the system will still work the same.
As creative workers, the threat to you from GenAI is from collective obsolescence, a loss of social position and privilege, and decreases in your material standard of living due to the above. Copyright exists to perpetuate capitalism, and thus considers none of those consequences to be violations of the law. There is no copyright law that would, say, prohibit soundtracks in motion pictures so that live musicians could continue playing in theaters[2]. The law could require the specific artist who wrote and recorded that soundtrack to be paid, but that's only one person, getting a far larger windfall. Everyone else got screwed and the artistic landscape got just a bit more unequal.
[0] as in, people who want copyright-free / freely-licensed cultural works and do so legitimately through consent
[1] Fascism with extra steps
[2] To be clear, GenAI is not like having a soundtrack in a movie, the analogy just happens to be illustrative of my point.
0 replies
3h18m
I...I want to make ego-less music... ._.
16 replies
4h26m
One thing you learn over the years is that people make up everything. I can't recall the exact quote but the character Frank Underwood once said something to the effect of "the law is the law, but the law is people and I know people". Meaning he could control the situation regardless.
The opposite also happens and you can see cases like this or Shkreli, Dotcom and others where they think being edgy on top of minor crimes will not get them in hot water because other people do worse but keep on the low down, but time and again you see these guys being made an example of, probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.
So I guess like, don't behave like an asshole generally, but specially if you're also committing crimes. Kinda like not breaking traffic laws if you have a dead body in the trunk.
5 replies
4h12m
> probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.
More likely because those people remain naïve about the real world. In a past career I had some interaction with IP enforcement lawyers. They were stuck in the past then and have not really evolved. Their understanding of "the internet" extends only to those things discoverable via google search. Megaupload was knocked down because it was so visible. Piracy is more alive now than ever, but as it is no longer visible via Google, the likes of the MPAA and IRAA cannot see it.
3 replies
4h2m
Piracy is more alive now than ever, but as it is no longer visible via Google, the likes of the MPAA and IRAA cannot see it.
How so? Google is a major distributor of most pirated material through YouTube and their search engine still makes finding stuff easy. I'd argue that p2p is nearly irrelevant nowadays and server-oriented distribution is the main model.
0 replies
3h46m
There's way more. I'd risk saying google drive has more pirated content today than MegaUpload and Rapidshare combined ever did, just based on the size of the user base and basic knowledge of long tail distribution. Other than that today you have so much piracy on discord, telegram, p2p communities stay strong, and of course the first rule of usenet is you don't mention it.
0 replies
3h52m
Probably the largest source of piracy is the widespread normalization of VPNs. Once upon a time VPNs did not advertise so as to not attract IP enforcement attention. They constantly shifted host locations to stay ahead of blocklists. Now VPNs openly advertise on youtube, touting the ability to "access contend not available in your country". That's piracy 101 stuff, at least it used to be. I just watched a youtube by LLT on how to bypass encryption to rip your own Blu-ray disks and upload the resulting files to your plex server. Even talking about such tech was considered criminal only a few years ago. The laws haven't changed. We just now have a generation of adult decision makers who have grown up with piracy as a norm.
0 replies
3h56m
P2P is still where you go if you don't want potato quality video.
0 replies
3h44m
A decade ago, I had a successful book business online, which included used college textbooks. I had IP lawyers (the same that represented the music and movie industries) send me threatening cease and desist letters on at least 2 occasions accusing me of selling counterfeit books.
At that point, I had gotten really good at spotting counterfeits, so I really doubt we were selling any counterfeits, especially when they couldn't come up with a single instance. The publishing companies continue to do this because used books cut into their profits.
I just sent my lawyer after them and they never came back.
Amazon and the publishers eventually came to an agreement that there were certain textbooks they just won't allow to be sold as used on their platform.
2 replies
3h8m
Matt Levine is great at writing about the difference between laws as written and how they work in practice. He's pretty fascinated by some of the cases where the two diverge sharply.
1 replies
3h6m
Do you happen to have a link?
0 replies
2h39m
He's at Bloomberg right now[1]. His main output is his 4-times-a-week column Money Stuff, but he also has a podcast and writes in other venues. I love his writing!
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levi...
2 replies
3h13m
I've heard it articulated as "There are no rules, only consequences." which I take to refer to the Legal Realism idea that the rules are just what we bind each other to. The written rules only matter if some "powerful" entity (like the government, or a mob, or civil court) is committed to holding you to them.
1 replies
3h0m
There are no rules, only consequences
I understand this as "if you're willing to suffer the consequences, then there is no rule."
E.g. a millionaire might be fine getting a speeding ticket, so that particular rule might as well not exist (except in Finland? where they scale speeding tickets to income)
0 replies
2h25m
Even then it still hurts the millionaire less than the ordinary person.
1 replies
2h15m
Sometimes this translates even down to the individual level. I've watched a lot of police bodycam videos and it's surprising how many people make their situation worse by being loud obnoxious tightwads when calmly answering questions and handing over your license would have you on your way in 5 minutes.
0 replies
1h32m
people make their situation worse
I'd still be more likely to say the officer is making their situation worse. Take away the false dichotomy of loud and obnoxious vs calm and compliant and consider someone who doesn't answer irrelevant questions and is waiting for the officer to do their job (calm and not compliant). That person might have their situation worsened by the officer who thinks the person they're talking to is obligated to answer to the officer's whims.
(Based on what I've seen of police body camera footage.)
Anyway, I'm not really familiar with Kim Dotcom's case. It sounds like he's been more on the "loud and obnoxious" side and the authorities involved are not city response officers; it's hard to draw a parallel. Just pointing out that "you're just making it worse for yourself" is something a schoolyard bully would say to the kid who's too small to defend themself but refuses to comply.
0 replies
2h30m
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"
0 replies
3h21m
Aah yes, the KRS-ONE principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvJ7uMyIGJU
15 replies
5h11m
Pedantically: MEGA runs today as a Dropbox-alike, and has very little to do with Kim Dotcom beyond his being involved at the very beginning and then departing quickly.
You're referring to Megaupload, which is entirely different despite the name similarity.
12 replies
4h50m
I might be misremembering things here but AFAICR, it went something like this:
MegaUpload existed as a file hosting service. It was widely used by pirates, and MegaUpload earned a lot of money off of hosting pirated files because users would buy subscriptions to MegaUpload specifically because of the pirated content that they could download, without the limitations that are placed on the users of the free tier.
With a paid subscription you got:
- Multiple parallel downloads
- Much faster speed
- No waiting time between downloads
A similar service was RapidShare, also popular with pirates.
Pirate sites would typically split downloads into multiple parts due to restrictions on upload size on MegaUpload, RapidShare and other file hosts like that. They would then upload these parts to MegaUpload and RapidShare and one or two other file hosts so that:
- If files were taken down from one host they might remain available for a bit more time from one of the other hosts
- Free users could speed up download times by simultaneously downloading the different part files from different hosts. So you’d start a download for part 1 from MegaUpload, part 2 from RapidShare and part 3 from some other host. Then you’d occasionally check on the slow progress and the countdowns from each sites before they allowed you to download another part, and continuing downloading parts from each as soon as they allowed you to again after you finished downloading a previous part from them.
The connection to Mega is that after MegaUpload was shut down, they started Mega and they made it so that all uploaded files were encrypted client side during upload and the URL contains a fragment with the encryption key so that it’s decrypted client side and the key is not shared with the server (unless of course the JS served by the server is modified to explicitly send the key to them either during upload or download).
This solved a problem for the pirates and it solved a problem for Mega.
Previously when a file was taken down, the host would usually make note of the hash of the file that was taken down and not allow that file to be uploaded and shared again.
Now, with encryption users could reupload the exact same parts without having to do anything on their end. And the users downloading did not have to do any extra steps either on their end either.
This benefits the pirates greatly. When you’ve spent 3 days downloading a bunch of part files and suddenly the remaining parts are all taken down and their hashes banned it sucked to be a pirate. But with this automatic encryption the same parts could be reuploaded and new links could be posted to pirate forums and the users could pick right up again where they were in the progress of downloading all the parts.
Less work for users uploading. Less work for users downloading. Happier users. More paying customers.
And in addition to more money, Mega also have less work to do as now when someone argues that they should police the uploads better they can point to the files all being encrypted and then not having the keys to decrypt the files there is no way that they actually can inspect the files they are storing for their users. (Again unless they modify the JS they serve to their users so that they intentionally send the key to the server.)
Of course, encryption benefits everyone. Not just pirates.
But at least to me it appeared strongly that the main motivation for building Mega and having it use this client side automatic encryption and decryption was very specifically because of the experience they had with takedown requests for intellectual property hosted on MegaUpload. It’s a neat way to cater to the pirates and encourages them to become paying customers of Mega.
7 replies
4h7m
Thanks, I had no idea that's how it worked. Embedding the key in a part of the URL that's not sent to the server is a stroke of genius.
I still find it surprising that so many people use Mega (at least enough that it can stay in business) when BitTorrent can easily saturate a downlink and is free.
4 replies
3h30m
I dunno if this is unreasonable, but I fear dling Torrents with high number of seeders in case one of them is malicious. With Mega you only had to trust one server.
3 replies
3h12m
Torrent files have hash check sums of the fragments. If someone sends you a bad fragment it will be discarded.
Magnet links are also hashes, so when you retrieve torrent metadata from your peers from a magnet link that data will also be verified for integrity.
However, if the original torrent itself was made from malicious data then it’s still gonna result in malicious code on your system.
Interestingly though, it is probably far more likely that a torrent with a very low number of seeders is malicious, than that a popular torrent contains malicious data in the files you download.
I suppose it could still be possible that the malicious code sent by a peer was targeting a weakness in your torrent client itself though. And that they could get remote code execution on your computer that way.
The main thing I would worry about with torrents is that your IP could be seen in the swarm by one of the companies that monitor torrent peers on behalf of rights holders and send you a nasty demand for money and threats of legal action.
2 replies
2h42m
Malice in this context could mean that they are concerned about someone tracking the activity.
If you are connected to a server, the server is the only connection(and only one with a log) but with a torrent, there are multiple connections so multiple parties could be keeping logs.
Depending on how a file is split in the torrent, it could be possible to add malice data with a collision: https://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/
1 replies
2h34m
BitTorrent uses SHA-1, not MD5. It's not ideal, but hardly vulnerable.
0 replies
2h6m
SHA-1 has been broken since 2017. It is considerably more expensive to produce a SHA-1 collision than an MD5 collision, but certainly not impossible. However, BitTorrent v2 also came out in 2017 and uses SHA-256, for which no known collisions exist even today.
0 replies
3h27m
Legally they can decrypt the content though, they have access to the key, they just need to change a piece of JavaScript so it sends back to the key to their server the next time a page visitor comes.
It's up to the courts and to them to decide. Perhaps they are doing it already, but just keeping it low-profile, so the "real" dangerous people get attracted to the service and caught.
Like VPNs.
0 replies
3h54m
Hosting pirated content is a liability, and putting it on MEGA helps clear it. Many countries have issues with torrenting such data too, as it's an easy way to get a notice at home from your ISP if you're not on a VPN. I assume many kids in dorms and whatnot may have bittorrent traffic blocked as well.
0 replies
4h10m
Adding to this there were stories that came out that even beyond knowingly profiting from pirated content people working on the MegaUpload backend would search it directly for warez to share amongst each other.
0 replies
3h34m
Meanwhile Mega is actually a really good Dropbox alternative. Stable, fast transfers, desktop sync works very well, lots of sharing options, decent pricing. I've been a happy customer for years instead of Dropbox and iCloud.
0 replies
3h14m
when a file was taken down, the host would usually make note of the hash of the file that was taken down and not allow that file to be uploaded and shared again
One of the complaints the US case had was that MegaUpload specifically did not do this. They de-duplicated uploads by hash internally, but when one download URL was DMCA'd, they only disabled that one URL and left other URLs with the same hash accessible.
0 replies
3h25m
I FORGOT that movies used to be split into 2+ ~700mb downloads way back when.
0 replies
5h6m
Thanks, you’re right — MEGA was the relaunch.
0 replies
4h19m
Megaupload Song anybody? https://youtu.be/o0Wvn-9BXVc
11 replies
5h5m
You do know that they pushed it left and right as 'dropbox' share everything platform targeting pirate groups with referral money right?
He was not early or anything he was literally pushing pirated movies and TV shows
10 replies
4h51m
Wait until you hear how Crunchyroll got to where they did! Plex is on much the same trajectory. Heck, even Google Play Music used the strategy by letting people upload their pirated music libraries to get users. It's a tried and true strategy.
2 replies
4h26m
Kim just didn’t grease the right palm plus he was a singular face and name. Feds are relentless at getting those who the oligopolists have marked for retribution, just like Assange and Snowden
1 replies
3h20m
Except when you read the basis for indictment section of megaupload’s Wikipedia page, I think it’s quite clear that the service wasn’t just another YouTube or Crunchyroll that was hosting copyrighted content and not doing a great job at taking it down. They were doing a lot more than that, they were running a file storage service that actively encouraged privacy and wasn’t actually useful for storing personal files.
They even paid people to upload high demand popular copyrighted files. They crossed a number of lines that other companies of the era didn’t dare cross.
As far as equating Kim Dotcom to Assange and Snowden, if it isn’t clear by now that Assange and especially Snowden are Russian assets by now idk how to convince you. Like, Snowden tried to travel to Ecuador via Moscow and Hong Kong? Coincidentally just stopping by at the number one and number two intelligence agency adversaries of the United States? He could have just flown from Miami to Ecuador directly. Why didn’t his original plan involve flying to South America? It’s so obviously suspect in retrospect.
But Kim Dotcom isn’t a political retribution target on that same level anyway, he’s just an egotistical idiot who thought he could play with law enforcement and get away with running a for-profit piracy website.
The one thing Kim has in common with Assange and Snowden is that he could have avoided a decade of self-imposed house arrest and/or exile by facing justice in court and taking the L. But Kim is attached to his ideals so much that it he’s wasted a good chunk of his life with this issue hanging over him, all because he doesn’t want to give in to the pragmatic reality that he brought upon himself.
0 replies
3h11m
I'm not sure that one can distinguish between a russian asset and a russian prisoner so easily.
1 replies
3h21m
YouTube got big because back in the day you could watch full movies uploaded to it. (pre-Google era)
0 replies
2h4m
But was Google actively paying pirates to upload those full movies? That's the allegation against Kim.
0 replies
4h32m
Plex and GPM never distributed pirated content, they just allowed users to host or upload their own content.
Every social media allows image uploads and no one thinks about that but images online are constantly breaking copyright law.
0 replies
4h24m
didn't itunes let people convert their pirated music collections into legit paid ones?
except they did a bad job by replacing tracks that sounded similar and then deleting the original.
0 replies
3h56m
Google Play Music let you upload your own music library to your own account. They didn't check or assert where you got your mp3s. Nobody else had access to your collection.
From the beginning, Kim's company put itself front and center in the piracy world. It was advertised as an alternative to BitTorrent and you were meant to share links with others.
When licensors and eventually authorities asked him to stop, he laughed at them and doubled down.
He's played the pirate the whole time, and he's hated authority and venture capital and IP every step of the way.
There's a reason he would up where he is versus the other IP grey area companies and products that became wildly successful. He deliberately chose this path.
0 replies
3h28m
There are big differences in the details there. I suggest you go to the Megaupload Wikipedia article and go to the “basis of indictment” section.
Megaupload wasn’t even hiding behind a legitimate use case. It couldn’t be used as a personal file storage service because infrequently downloaded files would be deleted. The company paid people to upload popular files. The service had a comprehensive CSAM takedown process but no such process for copyright infringement.
Basically, the US government was saying that Megaupload’s intent was extremely obvious.
Sites like Crunchyroll and YouTube which started off being a haven for piracy had DCMA compliance as their shield. They complied with requests to take down content and weren’t building the entire business around infringement.
Plex doesn’t enable you to distribute content beyond your household, and it’s also facilitating legal personal backups of commercial content.
Google Play Music (and iTunes for that matter) were the same thing: making backups of your music is completely legal. Google Play wasn’t telling you to jump on LimeWire to illegally download your music.
0 replies
4h8m
Or even YouTube.
7 replies
4h32m
A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective.
I'd say it would be a a reasonable perspective if his case was being tried where the offences actually took place and/or where he was a citizen of and not a country who refuses to give the same rights to non-citizens being tried there compared to citizens[1] and wasn't even where the offense took place. This is absolutely chilling for anyone who isn't an US citizen honestly.
4 replies
4h2m
It's a mockery of jurisdiction. It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.
3 replies
3h21m
NZ is a member of 5 eyes IIRC, and so likely have various relations/cooperative agreements in place that make it easy(-ier) for justifying the handing of citizens over to another state.
2 replies
3h0m
I wonder if the same would have happened if the roles had been reversed. Somehow I doubt it.
1 replies
1h44m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn Pretty much.
0 replies
1h30m
It's not analogous. The person was being charged of a crime that happened in the UK and fled to the US, then was extradited back to the UK to be tried. In other words how extraditions usually work.
An applicable case would be someone being extradited from the US to the UK to be tried for a crime that happened while they were in a different country.
1 replies
3h17m
> tried where the offences actually took place
The general rule is that a crime takes place where the victim stands. Where the perpetrator stand is a potential secondary location. The alleged victims here were "standing" in the US and so the US is proceeding with the case.
Trials in a third location are extraordinarily rare. Only things like the ICC or some admiralty proceedings involve trials in a third location.
0 replies
7m
So if someone robs your house while you're out of the country, the crime would have taken place in whatever country you happened to be in at that time, right? That's how that would play out. Because if that's not the case it would imply that the house itself would be the victim.
I also think it's odd to talk about this being the "general rule" when there's plenty of crimes/infractions with no victim.
1 replies
3h10m
Megaupload was not deleting content. They only deleted links to the content. So, if you had 10 links to the same video, and a copyright holder contacted them to delete their content under link #1, they would only remove that link but leave the rest (links and content) intact.
0 replies
2h10m
Is this proven? Is it possible someone else uploaded the content after it was deleted?
1 replies
4h46m
MEGA was too early and too tainted (and run by an aggressively weird / antagonistic dude) to become Spotify.
Megaupload was founded in 2005 and Spotify was founded in 2006, so it's unlikely that being too early was a factor.
0 replies
3h48m
Spotify didn't launch in the US market until 2011.
https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/spotify-finally-launche...
1 replies
5h1m
As for the reason, Mr. Dotcom has claimed to have been a supporter lf WikiLeaks and this was probably not of signifigance, but I would overall bet 10% that his less public involvement with WikiLeaks & WikiLeaks-type activity was part of the analysis that led to him getting targeted.
May be worth to compare the usual tactics of IP owning companies to what happened to Kim. I have a feeling that it could be shown that the kind of treatment he got was not very probable for a normal piracy case, even after accounting for his eccentric behabiour.
ALSO politically he was a failure but not so much that it was not worth paying attention to him as challenger of establishment. Even those normally ignorant of related topics but active in politics may have seen him as an agent eating their votes.
0 replies
1h1m
Why was he a failure politically?
0 replies
4h36m
Yeah it's totally fine. No uncomfortable thoughts bubbling below the surface here.
0 replies
3h20m
Politicians steal, make horrible decisions, and worst things and nothing happens. But you share movies and go to prison!
0 replies
4h26m
this likable/unlikable narrative gives me chills. it’s just like with assange—(il)legal imperialism at play - basically a rogue country playing the world police for the capitalist class, yet we’re fixated on personalities. it's like mistaking the finger for the moon.
0 replies
4h29m
Pagers created a new business model for drug dealers. It didn't change the criminality of drug dealing.
0 replies
4h47m
The government enforcing IP laws is certainly not a public good, in my book.
I also don't think you can be held responsible for what your users do with your service, especially if you are complying with DMCA requests.
They're shooting the postal service just because it bothered some powerful people.
This is happening because Media is a powerful lobby in the USA and Mega is a nobody.
Just another example of government corruption, move along.
0 replies
4h9m
He was not early at all.
0 replies
3h43m
My favorite part of this was SOPA was being discussed on the same exact day they arrested Kim Dotcom, and they argued they needed SOPA to do what they did to Kim Dotcom. Kind of a useless bill.
0 replies
3h31m
It was too early, and too successful, without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.
In a way that makes it much easier to argue against the idea that IP protects creators and not their pimps.
0 replies
3h32m
I’m not sure I understand the comparison. Megaupload was a file sharing platform that we used to download mostly pirated material and although they had a music platform at some point, that wasn’t the primary method that most people interacted with Megaupload. The illegal equivalent to Spotify was Grooveshark, not Megaupload. The majority of Kim Dotcoms products outside of file sharing came long after Megaupload was attracting scrutiny. He was not a trailblazer, even Megaupload itself was a clone of Rapidshare. I’m sure we all remember the terrible album he used to launch his music platform which came after he was arrested.
0 replies
3h36m
Do you think UK will sign an extradition order for JK Rowling to go to France over a olympic harrassment lawsuit? Or USA will sign an extradition order for Elon Musk if France asks in that same lawsuit, or if UK demands he be extradited for participating in incitement from abroad?
Something tells me the extradition orders only work one way — if the US Government wants it.
Who knows. To be fair it took years and seems to have been given due process. But how much of it is “leaning on” the countries? Recently on his X interview with Musk, Trump bragged about “how quickly” he was able to use US leverage to extradite people they wanted, from LATAM countries! And everyone was like “right on!”
73 replies
6h2m
I appreciate Kim Dotcom for running MegaUpload and later Mega, in a time when the internet was younger and wilder. Also for his pirate spirit and "stick it to the man" attitude. But everything has a limit, specifically his resistance against the law, even if he hid it behind virtues. I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise? But people are superficial and tend to develop an "i'm the main character" personality, pushing them into recklessness, like persisting doing certain things or publicly talking shit. Hope he and his family will be ok.
27 replies
5h21m
not really, his website was based on hong kong, this is a fight against america playing world police, which i'm on board with
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
8 replies
4h36m
He was predominantly stealing US intellectual property, films, TV shows and music and the like. And unlike say normal use of bittorrent, making a lot of money off it. And being the largest player doing that. I'm not sure about the morals but you can certainly understand financially why they've gone after him.
3 replies
2h6m
is US intellectual property a national security issue? I don't understand why they went to such extent pursuing a man for simply running a piracy site
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.
1 replies
1h55m
One of the reasons the US is viewed as such a good place to start a business is that the country will go to bat for their (favored) businesses internationally.
National security is very far from the only scenario where the government will intervene in geopolitics, for better or worse.
0 replies
1h32m
is that why TSMC and Samsung are now backing out from CHIPS Act ? Also doesn't seem like Intel is keen on hiring Americans either.
hopefully things will change after the elections.
0 replies
1h32m
Genuinely curious about this opinion from outside my bubble - not trying to start a flame war.
If you say the US is losing influence, then who is taking their place in your view? Is China / the EU actually gaining influence?
1 replies
52m
He was predominantly stealing US intellectual property, films, TV shows and music and the like.
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.
0 replies
35m
Well they've been arguing over that in various court for over ten years. They didn't just charge him with copyright infringement which itself would probably not be extraditable:
..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.
1 replies
1h29m
Minor nitpick, but he was not stealing, he was infringing copyrights.
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.
0 replies
21m
This. The phrase "intellectual property" is an attempted to confuse a tradition that's millennia old for a censorship strategy that's a few hundred years old. They're very different, whatever words you use for them.
8 replies
2h43m
> this is a fight against america playing world police
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.
6 replies
2h35m
I don't think your point stands.
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.
1 replies
2h4m
Countries extradite criminals all the time for crimes done here or there or anywhere, its just that US stands above literally everybody else, or at least wants to, so its not an equal situation and never was.
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.
0 replies
1h50m
the fact that US prisons are have many citizens of other states, but there are very few US citizens detained elsewhere
Americans commit exceedingly little crime internationally. Even in ultra-low crime countries, US citizens rank below native citizens per capita. That is probably why.
0 replies
2h16m
It can be that while US is playing world police, characterising Dotcom's MegaUpload and Mega as a fight against it not a fitting description of them.
International crime can be a tough problem to solve. Who gets to decide what is a crime, how it should be judged and punished?
0 replies
2h8m
How would US citizens would feel if another country, say China, wanted to extradite a US citizen
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.
0 replies
1h47m
The US usually seem to decline stuff, while the UK will extradite people rapidly to the US.
Relatively recent, though involved diplomatic immunity too: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/23/politics/us-declines-uk-extra...
0 replies
1h1m
Depends. Are there actual reasonable grounds to suspect that the US citizen violated copyright law in China? Can China be held to granting them a fair trial with a reasonable punishment (read: not executing them in the courtyard and billing their family for the bullet) being prescribed if the US citizen is found guilty?
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.
0 replies
1h56m
Agreed. I don’t at all see Mega in the same light as SciHub for example.
5 replies
1h51m
If not the US, then who do you suggest could plausibly lead (I would even say prop up) the free world and the global economy?
4 replies
1h44m
Catering to trillion dollar media companies is not exactly my idea of freedom.
1 replies
59m
Most people, not just trillion-dollar media companies, have at least some interest in seeing intellectual property protections enforced.
You can argue that there's too much protection, or that it doesn't afford equal protection under the law for smaller parties.
0 replies
18m
Do they? I know for sure nobody in my circle of friends cares in the slightest if people pirate media from huge companies.
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.
0 replies
1h35m
Freedom is in the eye of the beholder, apparently.
0 replies
1h25m
Does their size make the moral situation any different?
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.
0 replies
2h15m
Mega stored files in the US, Carpathia and Cogent were the providers specifically.
0 replies
1h20m
New Zealand is for all practical purposes a USA protectorate. If you want to break USA law don't do it in a country that is dependent on the USA.
0 replies
1h36m
Copyright is protected by international treaty.
18 replies
5h44m
I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved.
I'm far more concerned with the stuff that governments get away with, including infringement of the freedom to share information.
17 replies
5h38m
Totally fair point, but what can you do? This is how the world works. Fighting such beasts is pointless. You might tame them with lobby money, but no billionaire is interested. And we're now talking about the human spirit that cannot be chained, as also seen in Pirate Bay or Snowden. Sure, people do need heroes and hope from time to time. But I have become less romantic over the years, and more careful.
5 replies
4h42m
Educate the next generations.
Maybe we'll have a generation of people with a backbone again who will be able to free us from government oppression.
The trend is going the other way, so I think we're heading to socialism-ville for a repetition of last century's lessons.
3 replies
2h29m
A lot of the best things we have in the modern world are "socialism". Libraries and parks are socialist. Socialism isn't a dirty word, nor is it an argument or a criticism.
1 replies
2h22m
Socialism isn't a dirty word,
It is, for people like me, who have actually experienced living under a socialist regime.
0 replies
1h21m
Was it the socialism or the autocracy, behind thr veil, which made it so unpleasant?
0 replies
2h13m
This is why definition of terms is so important in discussions of this type. The word socialism/socialist has been bastardized and propagandized beyond comprehension now. Socialism covers a broad range of potential policies and structures, but in modern discourse the average person seems to slot it in almost exclusively to mean government tyranny and communism. Meanwhile communism now seems to mean evil beyond any consideration.
0 replies
2h20m
Do you mean back to FDR-era policies, or are you using socialism as a stand in for the tyrannical communist governments of USSR et al?
5 replies
5h27m
[flagged]
4 replies
5h8m
[flagged]
1 replies
4h50m
Only if you loose.
0 replies
4h40m
Right, of course
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.1 replies
5h4m
It wasn't a crime against the crown last time?
0 replies
4h48m
I think they were being sarcastic.
2 replies
5h4m
You can adapt and fit in to the establishment, and I wouldn't suggest any moral problem with it. We definitely need stability - the raising of children requires it, trappings like clubs and societies and clean streets are great, but I think the spirit of mavericks like Kim is much more 'right' about something that institutions will always miss.
I can't celebrate this at all, and I am never sympathising with legal thuggery. It is just naked power exerting itself and it will always be ugly.
0 replies
2h17m
While it's true the copyright lobby tried to make an example out of kim, it is completely useless in stopping piracy nor any form of copyright infringement that will inevitably continue to happen.
It is just naked power exerting itself
and it's a relatively minor showing of it. Compare it to direct assasination of foreign nationals (of which both the US as well as russia has done). The chinese stationing covert forces to try to police their migrant nationals overseas (spy stuff basically), or if what snowden leaked is as widespread is it is alleged, the amount of hoovering of information and surveillance that exists!
0 replies
1h4m
The maverick spirit is definitely more right that wrong, especially in the long run.
0 replies
2h45m
Fight in the shade
0 replies
1h38m
Fighting such beasts is pointless.
You realize that if everyone thought that, the world would be a worse place?
13 replies
1h44m
If everyone just sat back and allowed the powers to do what they please, we'd have absolutely nothing in this world. Countless have spilled blood or have been killed over the fight for freedom in the past giving us the humanist open society we have now. The fight is never over.
12 replies
1h34m
This isn't a clear-cut case of humanism vs something else.
Humanist values include right to property ownership, and the right to get the benefits of your work. Artists deserve that, and can sell their rights to big studios if they want.
Just because it's easy to copy something, or just because studio execs were idiots who wouldn't get on board with streaming, or whatever else, doesn't mean it's morally right to copy someone's work for free.
8 replies
1h29m
Humanism arose during the Renaissance, when scholars and artists gleefully cribbed from each other's work without attribution and copyright didn't even exist.
It's perfectly fine to copy someone else's work. The immorality comes in when you start using physical force to punish people thinking thoughts you feel entitled to.
2 replies
1h21m
I'm 1000% in favor of free ideas and free speech.
Copying scientific ideas (with attribution!) is completely OK and good.
Having heterodox ideas is vital for society.
Forcing people to think certain thoughts (or trying to) is the worst evil.
But making a movie is a commercial enterprise that involves risking a bunch of capital. It rarely pans out to make a profit. Copying it without payment is a very minor form of theft, but it's still theft.
1 replies
1h17m
Depriving someone of their liberty over interference with a revenue model based on copyright protections is not 1000% in favor of free ideas and free speech.
0 replies
1h12m
Yes it is.
If the content is a movie created in the last 100 years, it was almost certainly created to slot into that revenue model.
The artists have a right to sell their property on their terms. And if they decide to do so by selling their rights to a studio, then that's how it is. And if you don't like corporations, contracts, or the revenue model, then that's completely irrelevant to the parties involved.
1 replies
44m
when scholars and artists gleefully cribbed from each other's work without attribution and copyright didn't even exist
This was also a time before mass copying and distribution on a massive scale.
0 replies
18m
This was also a time of wealthy patrons
1 replies
1h13m
Creative work costs money to make. People who make it should have the right to make a living off it. It's not hard. Most of the people on this site make their money creating intellectual property. How many piracy activists here would be willing to leak the source code their company relies on?
0 replies
1h6m
And how many expect that there would be no repercussions if they did, even if they believed it would be a moral thing to do?
0 replies
1h20m
The immorality comes in when you start using physical force to punish people
for sharing or facilitating the thinking of thoughts you feel entitled to.*
2 replies
1h19m
That is 100% the antithesis of the hacker spirit and I shudder at your callousness.
1. All information wants to be free.
2. The second something is digitized it becomes "free".
3. Artificially depriving someone of something that is free for personal profit is immoral.
0 replies
1h5m
I have to be a communist to have "hacker spirit"? Hardly.
1. All information wants to be free.
Information on the order of complexity of a movie cannot want anything.
2. The second something is digitized it becomes "free".
Nearly free to copy, doesn't mean you're free to take it.
3. Artificially depriving someone of something that is free for personal profit is immoral.
I get the sentiment here but I don't think it follows in the context of an artist creating something specifically to make money from it when it gets distributed.
0 replies
1h4m
1. Information doesn't want anything. Yes, digital information is easy to copy and hard to copy protect.
2. No. It becomes easily copyable.
3. Irrelevant, given the problems with 1 and 2.
5 replies
1h28m
It's not always black and white; let's be honest, yes, Kim Dotcom was probably more about piracy than freedom of whatever simply because that's where his money was. But:
Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?
Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?
2 replies
1h22m
> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?
Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
1 replies
1h8m
I agree, and in fact I did not compare them. I asked an entirely different question.
You can re-read the first line of my comment if you think I'm putting those two things on the same level, and you will see that I agree with:
He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
0 replies
28m
What is the point of asking that question if you strictly intended no comparison between the subject of the post you’re replying to and the people you mentioned?
It is like posting “You have interesting thoughts about Kim Dotcom. What is better, paragliding or parasailing?”
1 replies
1h24m
Whistleblowing is not the same as hosting pirated material.
0 replies
1h7m
Yes, that’s the point the poster is making. They are not the same despite being united by the fact that in both cases the government got involved and said “stop that, it’s wrong”. They explicitly stated their point that there’s a moral spectrum of positions which means it’s not always right to just roll over and find something else to do when the authorities get involved.
3 replies
2h5m
There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates. Moving heaven and earth to extract a citizen from another country using the power of the state, and drag him before their feet is tyrannical.
1 replies
1h39m
Here's your evidence: I would have bought House on DVD 15 years ago if there hadn't been the option to stream it illegally.
You might object this evidence by telling me that you bought all seasons of House only because you had been streaming it illegally before, and that you wouldn't have done so without previously streaming it – but in most jurisdictions, this kind of "business procurement" does not cancel out the harm done in the first case.
Anyways, the burden to disprove the harm done through me not buying it is on you.
0 replies
1h23m
I think what they are saying is there is no way to compare a good when it's free to when there is even a nominal cost.
My "counter evidence" to your example could be something like: I bought House on DVD 10 years ago because my friend who had pirated it told me it was a good show to checkout.
0 replies
1h0m
There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates.
I think there is business "harm" to piracy, but it's (mostly) vastly overstated. If I illegally download a song/movie I wouldn't have otherwise bought, did anybody lose out? There was a reason Napster was popular in colleges, because many of those people were cash poor. Music industry revenue peaked in 2000 at $21B and went down to ~$7B in 2015 before steadily growing again. Also, the entertainment industry are not multi-trillion dollar conglomerates. Not even close. Disney is worth $160B and Netflix is $260B.
That being said, if it were up to the music industry we'd still be paying the inflation adjusted equivalent of $20 for an album we only like one song on and we wouldn't be able to create out own playlists. You can only fight the consumer for so long (and they fought long and hard). That's to say nothing about the morality of repeatedly increasing copyright from 14 years to life plus 70 (which is BS). The Beatles' great great grandchildren (or whoever owns the rights later on) shouldn't still be benefiting from intellectual property.
Moving heaven and earth to extract a citizen from another country using the power of the state, and drag him before their feet is tyrannical.
This is what rule of law is. KDC knew he was breaking the law and not only didn't do anything about it, but invested in an encouraged it to benefit himself financially. Even after being charged and having megaupload shut down, he then tried again. Do you really feel sorry for him?
0 replies
11m
But people are superficial and tend to develop an "i'm the main character" personality
How on earth are you labeling the people persistent to a fault "superficial"???
0 replies
2m
Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself off of content that people were already sharing? There's a lot of retcon-ing those like him, Ross Ulbricht, etc as freedom fighters, when the truth is they were simply capitalists.
41 replies
6h3m
As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.
With some 'diplomacy', Julian Assange was brought home after near 15 years fighting for BS extradition charges.
The news and politicians in Australia follow almost lock step with whatever our US overlords allow us to say.
It's been more of a thing lately with them trying to secure the pacific away from China's sphere of influence and the biggest 'dumb' thing from our government is that silly submarine deal (under something called AUKUS) which is about as good as our F-35 jets purchased (totally useless IMO).
There's probably some bootlickers in NZ trying to gain political favour / power by brown-nosing with the US of A.
28 replies
5h59m
In your opinion why is the submarine deal/F-35 program "totally useless" for Australia? Are you saying it's the wrong equipment? Too expensive? Not needed?
13 replies
5h35m
One of our former prime ministers, Paul Keating, came out strongly against the submarine deal. IIRC two important dimensions are that Australia has shallow waters which are not a good fit for the chosen submarine technology and that tactically it makes limited sense for Australia to focus on weapons to be used on our largest trading partner.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/15/paul-...
I am not an expert on any of the above.
11 replies
5h30m
They might make sense if in the long term we build out a nuclear deterrent? We'd need a handful of deep water submarines with big missiles on them. Although I expect that it'll turn out they're designed wrong for that or something.
Other than that I can't see what situation they'd be useful in practice though. If we get into a war with Indonesia, China or the like that is the end. There will be no winners and we'll either lose or be ruined. One of the lessons in the modern era is if a country can't defend itself with diplomacy then it is in a lot of trouble.
I assume we're buying this gear as some sort of realpolitik tribute-style thing for the US military industrial complex. If the point isn't to give them money I doubt we're achieving our goals.
9 replies
5h26m
> if a country can't defend itself with diplomacy then it is in a lot of trouble.
You are absolutely correct.
I wish more folks understood this.
8 replies
5h18m
Diplomacy works _because_ you have the means to defend yourself. If they can fight and you can’t, why will they bother talking to you?
3 replies
5h15m
Run me through Australia's strategic outlook if the US decides to invade us. Or if they decide Australia needs to go and starts supporting one of our neighbors in fighting us.
2 replies
5h6m
Why are you talking about Australia fighting the US? Aren't the subs against China?
1 replies
4h56m
1) The subs are certainly not for fighting China. By the time they're delivered, assuming all else equal, China will be in a position to ignore them. People are talking about deliveries in the 2050s vs a country that can basically build an entire economy in a few decades; it'll never work out in our favour. And we can't afford to be in a war with an Asian power under any circumstances anyway, we'd probably be better off surrendering immediately rather than fighting back against China if the US's deterrence fails. Ironically we'd probably end up with better infrastructure.
Fighting China with those submarines is a similar idea to fighting the US with those same subs. The plan is not to do that. It won't work out well for us.
2) Keep going with your thought, you haven't gone far enough. If diplomacy works because you have the means to defend yourself, why aren't we fighting the US? We can't possibly defend ourselves from them, and realistically we'd probably struggle to annoy them if they attacked us via a proxy war. And yet there is no realistic scenario where they fight us. Why is that, hm?
0 replies
4h25m
Here’s my view of why countries don’t attack each other: The downside for the attacker has to be larger than the upside, that’s when diplomacy becomes interesting. The downside doesn’t just have to be the defense of the attacked country but also the relation with other countries. The US won’t invade Australia because they wouldn’t gain much, compared to the loss of trust by other countries. Defense from china is more important than from the US for Australia, because the “public stage” deterrent is smaller for china than the US. That’s why you need to increase the deterrent by increasing your defense capabilities. You can correct me if you disagree though.
3 replies
5h4m
I think diplomacy itself can help gear a country to defend itself by creating powerful allies who will come in a time of need.
At the same time, I do not think there is any justification for war or harming others non-defensively.
The amount of money and human power we piss away with wars and conflict is so sad. Humans are the most advanced and capable complex adaptive systems in the world. Why waste such a precious resource?
2 replies
4h2m
Stupidly flippant but likely somewhat accurate answer: x-thousand years of tribal evolution.
With all our intelligence we're still programmed to behave in particular ways, and it takes a lot of effort to even try to break out of it, and that's only possible if you're aware of it - which most people aren't.
1 replies
1h32m
Hmm, I think you are correct, and from my perspective, speaking to the idea of human heuristics and biases.
Ironically, I think societies and cultures need long periods of peace (not in an extreme sense, but rather enough peace to allow for safer conflict) to have the time and ability to introspect on their heuristics and biases, as well as integrate other people's perspectives.
0 replies
1h10m
Having something to lose, makes it a lot more likely to bring you to reason.
It takes seconds to destroy what it took decades to build.
If someone is pointing a mortar at your house, you want to get rid of the mortar, but you also want to keep your house, so it's likely that you will look for ways to remove the mortar, that don't include it being fired.
0 replies
4h47m
if a country can't defend itself with diplomacy then it is in a lot of trouble
If you have a strong neighbor that wants to take something you have by force, how do you get them to instead practice diplomacy with you?
The only way I'm aware of is by projecting enough of your own strength that they think it might not be worth it to try and take by force.
Military might is an arm of diplomacy.
0 replies
2h6m
I'm no "submarine warfare expert" but I believe the purpose/value of nuclear submarines is not defense of close coastal waters, but rather as a deterrence that can come "from anywhere". I don't believe shallow waters would hamper the operation of a submarine launching ICBMs or similar. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
I also know nothing of Australian politics but Paul Keating seems to have some curious views regarding China:
Keating brushed aside human rights concerns about China by arguing there are “disputes about what the nature of the Chinese affront to the Uyghurs”
Keating is a noted dove towards China. He has previously labelled Taiwan “not a vital Australian interest” but rather a “civil matter” for China.
On Wednesday Keating said China “is not the Soviet Union” because it is involved in international institutions and would “fall over themselves to have a proper relationship” with Australia, except that Australia has “manufactured a problem” through its increasing alignment with US.
Keating said the “great sin” China had committed in the eyes of the west was developing its economy to equal the size of the US
Yikes.
5 replies
5h53m
Not needed. It's tax payer money down the toilet.
But hey I'm a pacifist and will be told that I'm a weak man who will lead to the downfall of civilisation so oh well.
2 replies
5h45m
Well, ya know - it could be. Not needed until they are... risk management. Most should hope that their weapons are never "needed."
0 replies
5h15m
They’re still redundant though
If we’re heading to regional war, US nuclear subs will be here regardless
Even Darwin is a massive permanent US base
0 replies
5h39m
We already had an order in for convential working subs from the French .. now we're on the hook for more money and less of a guarantee they'll ever arrive.
1 replies
5h38m
I'm a pacifist at heart, but I'm not blind to the fact that a single digit percentage of humans (in every country) are just plain evil (in lots of ways). These people can do harm without any feelings of remorse. And a double digit percentage of humanity can easily be manipulated into being / doing evil.
Our current, imperfect, civilisation exists because we largely succeed in keeping the whims of these minorities under control. It's a depressing thought, but if I don't accept it, I'll be disappointed in humanity on a daily basis.
0 replies
5h9m
They are so evil in so many nonspecific ways! These evil minorities cannot be named (so just substitute your Nazi du jour depending on what side of the political circus you are on). And you know they are bad because hey - they are a minority.
2 replies
5h48m
The submarines are almost certainly useless. We won't get them for decades. We're not even allowed to service the nuclear reactors when we do get them. And the technology is already an old one and will likely already be superceded by the new much quieter air-independent fuel cell and lithium battery technologies which other countries are adopting.
0 replies
5h45m
The whole point of the AUKUS submarine deal is to never get them. It’s a political manoeuvre, an emollient for national security hardliners.
0 replies
5h3m
Air-independent fuel cell and battery powered submarines are not at all a replacement for nuclear submarines, nor even really competing with them. No matter how good the tech becomes, diesel-electric subs running fuel cell AIPs will always have shorter range, less submerged time, and lower speeds than nuclear-powered submarines. Each time they surface, even to periscope level, the chances of detection go up massively.
That's why diesel-electric submarines are best suited for coastal defence, especially of small countries, whereas larger countries with huge areas of territory to protect benefit from having nuclear submarines.
Whether it's the right decision for Australia to get these subs under AUKUS is a fair debate, but it's not at all accurate to claim that they're using 'old' technology that is being superseded by AIP.
0 replies
5h6m
The submarines are useless to our (Australia’s) national interest. If we ever get them (and even then there’s serious questions about whether Australia would actually have command authority over them), they aren’t really geared to be super useful for defending our shores (taking advantage of our distance from potential enemies) - we’d need more, smaller subs for that. But they do have the extreme range and endurance that would be useful for, say, projecting force into the South China Sea, following the US into a conflict - and that is something the vast majority of Australians are dead against, but what our politicians (at least on the opposition side) have basically already pledged to do…
0 replies
5h18m
Not OP but another Aussie
I’d sat it’s too good
Effectively trading the last of our sovereignty for overkill submarines
The threat of China exists yes but I think the French subs we had lined up would have been adequate
Especially as the US will likely send their nuclear subs our way when/if Sino-American tensions escalate again
I mean we’re effectively already an American outpost with many permanent US bases/facilities
0 replies
5h45m
The F35s we have are pretty sweet but we are paying a shit tonne for like 5 submarines that we are going to receive in the 2040s. China already had 10x that many attack submarines. The subs deal stinks.
0 replies
5h41m
All those reasons and more. Strategically bad move, we did okay in the middle.
You don’t have to be a Sinophile to know Keating’s right about AUKUS
alt-headline: Paul Keating is right, AUKUS will turn Australia into US protectorate
The ex-PM is the only person offering a convincing explanation of AUKUS. And it's a damning one.
subscription: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/08/13/paul-keating-aukus-aust...
On the economics | robustness of the deal:
This deal is getting worse all the time.
Courtesy of the latest details of the AUKUS agreement tabled yesterday in Parliament, we now know that the moment it becomes inconvenient for the Americans or the Brits, there’ll be no submarines for Australia:
Cooperation under the agreement is to be carried out in such a manner as to not adversely affect the ability of the United States and the United Kingdom to meet their respective military requirements and to not degrade their respective naval nuclear propulsion programs.
Those programs, as even ardent defenders of the program admit, are already pretty degraded. The Americans have shifted from building two Virginia-class boats a year to one this year, and delayed the construction of the next generation of nuclear submarines by five years to 2040. The new generation Dreadnought-class boats under construction in the UK have suffered serious delays and astonishing cost blowouts.
Somehow, with around $10 billion of Australian cash, both programs will come good, to the point they can build boats for the US and UK, and for Australia, and help Australia build its own. It’s normal for defence policy to double as heavy manufacturing policy, and Australia has a rich history of wasting billions making things here that we could have bought far cheaper from other countries. Where AUKUS is unusual is that Australia will be using its defence policy as heavy manufacturing policy for the US and UK as well0 replies
5h53m
All of the above!
6 replies
5h37m
As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.
Not an expert, but my guess is that there is (probably valid) concern about China. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that.
3 replies
5h4m
China is a concern for Australia whether the US is in the picture or not. Australia's interests are highly aligned with those of the US. The increased engagement from the US is being welcomed by most Australians, but the issue is really around the implementation.
AUKUS is one of these huge deals with the results coming many years after huge investments creating great uncertainty. That makes it easy to attack politically.
EDIT: What's missed by the original commenter is that Australia was already investing in submarines from France. If delivered, there would be similar outcomes. The project had just as much uncertainty around it and was off-track when AUKUS was announced.
2 replies
5h3m
The political class, yes, welcome the engagement. But not most Australians!
1 replies
4h42m
A claim that is categorically untrue and easily disproven. It takes less than ten seconds to google up multiple surveys that show the opinions of the Australian public. The most recent broad survey was conducted less than a month ago, but before Biden dropped out when it appeared Trump was likely to win the upcoming presidential election (relevant fact because the question was asked and answered regarding whether another Trump presidency would diminish support for the US.) Several key take-aways from this survey show:
- 80%+ said close ties with the US was important to AU security
- 70%+ named China as a security threat to AU
- 55%+ stated confidence in the US acting responsibly in the world
0 replies
4h7m
You're correct, of course.
But that's the majority of dumb Australians, much like the majority of dumb Americans. Our two sets of dumbs have a lot of similarity.
Australia's identity has been lost in the last thirty years up it's own anus of mineral riches and the feeling of lifestyle entitlement that came with it. The USs 51st state. Yeehaaw...
1 replies
3h45m
China is Australia's biggest trading partner. Only US tries to paint China as a threat to Australia so they can get more influence in there.
0 replies
36m
The US and Australia are part of the five eyes. They have a very strong connection and a similar culture. It is China who is trying to assert more influence around the world, including the US (e.g. Midjourney doesn't allow criticism of Xi Jinping).
0 replies
5h26m
There would be less external influence in the latter case if the US wasn’t your main form of military and arms supplier.
0 replies
3h40m
Don't forget the Aussie influence on the US. Murdoch is Australian.
0 replies
5h32m
As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.
Australia and New Zealand have extradition treaties with dozens of countries, it's not just a US thing.
0 replies
2h12m
As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.
Fox News is an Australian product built to flood the US with far-right, pro-business outrage. We'll get out of your lane once you get out of ours.
All kidding aside, describing these sorts of things in terms of national influence is extremely unproductive. New Zealand wouldn't be turning itself into a pro-commercial-pirate haven or anticopyright haven but for the influence of the US[1]. The question regarding extradition is not "should we consider what Kim Dotcom did to be a crime[0]" but "do we abduct him to another jurisdiction to face trial." It's bikeshedding over the color of the wood on the electric chair.
[0] In general, extradition treaties only apply for acts that are crimes in both jurisdictions.
[1] Even China's pro-copyright, they just don't want to pay America for any of it. If they were anti-copyright they'd be freely sharing all the "IP" they keep stealing.
0 replies
3h53m
As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.
You got our attention by filling all our streaming channels with your shows.
As is common in the international film and television sector, a key driver of Australia’s ongoing production upswing came from an enhancement to its incentive schemes.
In July, the country’s national government increased the location offset program in its annual budget from 16.5 percent to 30 percent. Thanks to those changes, films spending at least A$20 million dollars (about $13 million U.S. dollars) in the country can claim back 30 percent of all expenditures on goods and services upon completion of the project.
Previously, it often was [already] possible for especially savvy producers to add to the guaranteed 16.5 percent offset and bring total support to 30 percent by cobbling together prior grant schemes — but the increases introduced last year provided global producers with a much-needed sense of ease and surety.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/planet-o...
30 replies
5h18m
Kim DC is not a likeable or admirable person, but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.
It appears very similar to the treatment of Ross Ulbricht, Assange, maybe even Snowden?
These are the equivalent of white collar crimes (typical massive frauds from the finance sector, etc) but they are getting a blue collar punishment of decades in jail that a successful and persistent street drug dealer could receive, NOT the few years in comfort camp prison that white collar frauds usually get.
8 replies
4h42m
White collar crimes should be punished with the same vigor as blue collar ones. White collar crimes mostly steal money, at scale. Insufficient money is a huge cause of suffering—people don’t get to retire at early, they and their kids don’t get the opportunities they would have had otherwise.
You can be a drug dealer that doesn’t hurt anybody.
5 replies
4h37m
No. Drug dealers always hurt people - we have the word Pharmacist for good drug dispensers.
2 replies
4h20m
There is a huge difference between a regulated and controlled system and your neighborhood methhead mixing up something in his kitchen to sell to the kids a couple of blocks over
0 replies
3h32m
your name is extremely ironic next to your post
0 replies
4h2m
Regulated and controlled systems sold a ton of opioids.
0 replies
3h7m
Disagree. Someone who is well and truly addicted to drugs does, in fact, need it like the air they breathe. Drug dealers provide a necessary service to those folks where a lot (most?) of the "above the belt" services aimed at rehabilitation either fail completely or make matters actively worse.
0 replies
4h8m
Do you actually believe that or is this some sort of rhetorical point? This stretches my suspension of disbelief to be honest.
People can buy very addictive drugs from pharmacists (legal drugs are a huge contributor to the opioid epidemic), and there were doctors in some areas that were known for being extremely lax about that sort of thing.
Lots of the illegal drug dealers do sell really harmful stuff. But before it was legalized they sold weed…
We should not pretend our laws are perfect, they are always undergoing refinement.
0 replies
4h22m
Many of them should be treated to non-violent home theft, adjusted for the value of the fraud.
Defrauded people out of 10M? That's about as much or more than 1000 home thefts, which would probably land you in prison for life.
0 replies
3h50m
OK, but if you want to judge white collar crime and blue collar crime with the same yardstick, you have to put a price on human suffering. How much money do I have to embezzle so it's equivalent to a punch in the face? How much so it's equivalent to a murder? By a scale of suffering caused, I would argue that embezzling a very large sum can be much worse than an assault. On the other hand, not every murder causes the same amount of suffering.
5 replies
4h58m
One of these things is not like the other. Ross Ulbricht was part of a murder for hire scheme, and was not a whistle blower or anything close to a reporter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...
2 replies
4h38m
You realize that the moderators in question were Secret Service and DEA agents creating fictional scenarios to line their own pockets
Their involvement and indictment was withheld during the Ross trial and they went to prison for that
Ross was not charged for these scenes, the other district court is saving face by calling it redundant and dropping it but it’s really a shaky case
It shouldn’t have been brought up in sentencing, but there is no accountability in a judge doing so
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/cyber-vault/2019-12-13/silk-r...
1 replies
3h16m
You're right that he wasn't charged, but: "For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in fact commission the murders, believing that they would be carried out." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#cite_note-46
Just because something doesn't rise to the level of provability of getting charged and sentenced for it doesn't mean that you can't say with a high level of confidence it happened.
0 replies
3h13m
I didnt say it didnt happen
Corrupt, convicted ex government agents staged the murders, there is video evidence of some of them that they made for Ross to pay them. Which got them convicted.
Ross was not charged with that, wasnt charged with conspiracy to do that, wasnt put in front of a jury for that. Because the government would lose that case because of their corrupt agents and agencies (Baltimore FBI which hosted the skit) messing up the case.
This doesnt warrant a double life sentence for the crimes he was convicted of.
1 presidential candidate will commute (basically saying ~9 years is enough, ending this debate), 1 presidential candidate will pardon completely, 1 will likely do neither until the FreeRoss campaign learns how to do campaign contributions. Its only a matter of time as crypto savants gain position
0 replies
4h37m
So we're led to believe. But Ulbricht was identified via domestic NSA wiretaps; they used parallel construction to prosecute (oh yeh, the FBI just happened to stumble onto a Stackoverflow question of his years ago and used proper warrants against that!).
Why would I swallow any childish stories that the US attorney made up?
0 replies
4h47m
I understand what you are saying, but I wonder if that is the right type of defense here. Each of those individuals could be separated from otherwise sympathetic audience by diving the audience( 'he is x$ and therefore bad' approach ).
Same here. Murder for hire is bad, but his prosecution was about just as bad[1] and one could argue that (edit) by using warrantless spying without any probable cause undermined US constitutional rights. In a grand scheme of things, it is better to have one criminal get away than trample on everyone's rights.
What they do have in common, however, is an inordinate amount of resources expended to punish them by the state..
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...
4 replies
4h56m
Bernie Madoff got real prison time for his white collar crimes.
1 replies
4h9m
Bernie Madoff is notable because someone of his stature being pursued so vigorously is rare. If officials went after every financial industry criminal with the same energy, the financial industry would cease to exist. Likewise, executives who sign off on decisions that actually kill people (Boeing) rarely see jail time.
0 replies
3h36m
They only went after Madoff because he stole from the rich.
0 replies
4h34m
Likely due to the high profile nature of his crime. He still only served time in a tame white collar prison too.
0 replies
4h18m
I assume they’re talking about hiding being the corporate veil and just getting a slap on the wrist. Embezzlers are caught and sentenced all the time but people on the board of directors get away with a fine and finger waggle for similar activities
2 replies
4h58m
I remain unconvinced that the relative punishments of the two categories is either pragmatic or fair, mind you.
0 replies
4h39m
I'd go along with unfair, but it does seem pragmatic to keep criminals who would harm anyone in striking distance away from the public, while only keeping criminals who would harm corporate and investor interests away from executive positions and boardrooms.
0 replies
4h51m
One of the things worse than a bad law is an inconsistently applied bad law, as that allows for it to be tolerated for longer and effectively enshrines the basis for the inconsistency as the true law of the land.
1 replies
4h49m
He's not one of "them" (bankers, politicians, lobbyists).
Street dealers as well: not belong to "them".
See how Epstein was punished in 2008:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Legal_proceedi...
"On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and [...] allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week."
That's for a horrible crime. Not for allowing people to copy some audio and video files for entertainment purpose.
He was one of "them".
0 replies
3h38m
Why is the parent comment being downvoted? Is it stating something incorrect or is the conclusion incorrect?
0 replies
4h50m
Are the actions of these individuals really the equivalent of financial fraud?
Assange and Snowden especially, who revealed to the public crimes perpetrated by agents of the US federal govt.
0 replies
3h3m
Don't forget Aaron Swartz.
0 replies
2h29m
but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.
Seems to be pretty much how the US government operates on these high profile tech cases. They are going to turn you into a martyr.
Ross is a great example of this. He received a double life sentence + 40 years + no chance of parole. By comparison, El Chapo, a dude who most certainly ordered the deaths of many and imported billions of dollars of drugs, only got a SINGLE life sentence + no chance of parole.
That is not justice, its a message.
0 replies
4h42m
US Gov's revenge-deployment machine was first put in motion at the request copyright industry (which funds elections).
Through the 2000s and 2010s, legislators (and by extension LEO agencies) were extremely responsive to whims of copyright lobbyists. ex: ICE agents patrolling events for locals selling knock-off goods.
It was so pervasive, news orgs noticed it - and even covered some non-sensational incidents. Though I don't recall journalists ever following the money.
0 replies
4h46m
but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.
It's been profitable for the US agencies that stole millions for KDC
https://www.techdirt.com/2015/03/27/how-us-government-legall...
28 replies
4h38m
Didn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.
9 replies
3h4m
For the first 5 years videos were limited to 10 minutes. Clips of things were popular and there were things split between many videos, but that's not what I remember the people around me using youtube for.
4 replies
2h27m
In my social groups at the time(late highschool, early college) it was exclusively used for watching TV shows. The 10min limit was only a minor annoyance, and more than made up for the fact that it was free fast video hosting at time when that was extremely rare.
It was not just a nerd thing either, I remember someone I was dating in the mid 2000s bemoaning that YouTube had cracked down on TV content.
2 replies
2h6m
As a former megavideo user… i watched many American tv shows I wouldn’t have watched otherwise. And i wouldn’t have paid anyway because at the time as a teenager i had no money of my own to spend.
Nowadays even when paying for content, it really feels like extortion, it’s unfair anyway (prices constantly increasing, and you still get ads even if you’re paying… might as well go back to pirating stuff)
1 replies
1h49m
you're moving the goalposts from "I didn't have money" to "I have money but it's not worth it".
0 replies
1h1m
Yes, because i did not have money when i was a teenager and have money now that i’m in my 30ies.
0 replies
1h23m
Also 10 minutes is right about where the commercial breaks would be anyway.
3 replies
2h51m
It was filled with music uploads.
2 replies
2h39m
It still is.
1 replies
2h33m
They have license and royalty agreements with labels now and takedown methods for rights holders who object to things as well as quite capable detection machinery.
0 replies
2h29m
I work in this space and there is still a ton of illegal content on YT. As stated earlier, the main difference is that YT complies when infringements are eventually found.
2 replies
4h28m
I think youtube cooperated with taking pirated content down while Kim was a bit like screw you, I'm offshore, you can't get me.
0 replies
1h54m
More than that. They gave the media basically a tool to identify music that they owned, then either remove it or take all the money from it.
I don't think Kim ever paid content creators. Youtube is pushing probably $5 - $10 billion a year to them in cash plus serves as a promo / branding / ad vehicle (all the sponsored content or product placement stuff in music videos).
0 replies
3h50m
More than taking it down, YouTube pretty much gave the media companies a new revenue source, already built-out.
2 replies
2h18m
Spotify too (allegedly) had bunch of pirated content to bootstrap the service. I guess the difference is that they (and YouTube) tried to pivot away from it, compared to Megaupload which seemed to have leaned into it instead.
1 replies
2h9m
Sure you're not thinking of Grooveshark which was the original Spotify?
0 replies
1h31m
Nope, I'm sure I'm thinking of Spotify. Grooveshark, AFAIK, didn't try to pivot and instead later got shutdown, compared to Spotify which seemed to have been able to navigate the pivot.
Edit: found at least one source now when I went looking: https://torrentfreak.com/how-the-pirate-bay-helped-spotify-b...
When Spotify first launched several people noticed that some tracks still had tags from pirate groups such as FairLight in the title. Those are not the files you expect the labels to offer, but files that were on The Pirate Bay.
Also, Spotify mysteriously offered music from a band that decided to share their music on The Pirate Bay, instead of the usual outlets. There’s only one place that could have originated from.
2 replies
2h25m
I am sure if youtube execs had emails showing that they were actively encouraging and participating in the posting of copyrighted material on the site they would have been prosecuted as well. Thats the evidence against Kim Dotcom, emails.
1 replies
1h42m
Funny you should say that, because there are literally such emails all the way up to Google's C-suite. They leaked a few years ago when Viacom sued them for mass copyright infringement on Youtube. In that case Google even tried to argue that it was ok because it's the content creator's and not the service's fault. When are they getting prosecuted?
Revealing e-mails and other internal communications unsealed Thursday as part of a $1 billion lawsuit brought by Viacom show that many top Googlers — all the way up to co-founder Sergey Brin — were concerned about YouTube’s copyright piracy problems and how they could reflect badly on Google’s ethics.
[...]
Google executives — who previously had referred to YouTube as a “rogue enabler of content theft” whose “business model is completely sustained by pirated content” — nevertheless agreed to pay $1.65 billion to buy YouTube in 2006.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/03/18/google-executives-cal...
0 replies
19m
Thank goodness that Google execs are too high-profile to be prosecuted!
2 replies
2h48m
What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload?
Kim dotcom didn't go to Stanford and have layers of contacts within the DoJ
0 replies
1h46m
Salty hot-take but not grounded in reality if you remember or look back on the facts. He actively encouraged piracy, of whioch there is ample proof, then doubled-down on this, then tried to frame his own take on "following the rules" - all while continuing to poke the bear. We can debate what the laws and punishements should be, but he's about to feel justice in many different forms.
0 replies
2h6m
One of the cool things that lawyers do is that they advise you on how you can comply with the law and avoid such pesky things as “imprisonment” and “extradition”.
0 replies
2h0m
One big (alleged) difference that many folks skip over when mentioning YouTube is that Kim actively and not very secretly recruited pirates to upload known pirated stuff. YouTube may have done a crap job at preventing privacy but they weren't actively soliciting pirates and paying them.
0 replies
2h8m
DMCA safe harbor says you don’t have to actively police your content but you have to take it down if a copyright holder complains. YouTube had robust tooling to take down content when they received a complaint. They got sued anyway, they won because the evidence showed they always took the content down (and that Viacom the party who sued was active in putting the content up there in the first place)
0 replies
2h15m
Probably mostly Dotcom's attitude tbh
0 replies
1h29m
Kim was a maverick, and his political connections were weak and easy to break. If you don't have the connections, you shouldn't be playing such a dangerous game.
0 replies
7m
It did. YouTube has paid the piper here and continues to do so. It pays a lot of money to record labels right now. TV networks choose to run their own streaming, and YouTube enforces what networks ask for.
Consider what things look like when you can't pirate. Many services now, like Claude, do not let you create password accounts, to make it less practicable to share a subscription. Apple News and Apple Arcade is totally impracticable to pirate.
Enforcing copyright violations is as much about how you feel about IP as it is about, whom do we permit to make money? It's a big part of why Apple is so fucking rich. Should only Apple be permitted to make real money? I don't think so.
0 replies
2h3m
Ehh... I'd say Youtube initially wasn't a super popular pirating option. The 10 minute limits meant you had to put everything up in chunks and at the time there weren't many super user friendly options to download them as a batch. You'd often enough have things where one part would eventually be missing and that'd ruin the whole thing. For tv shows it could be okay but for films once you're dealing with 10+ parts, often without knowledge of playlists, it'd get grating fast.
Youtube first broke through for me as the main form of sharing embedded music videos on forums and myspace so I always assume that's how most encountered it. A lot of these were probably pirated content too but pirated promotional content so a bit blurrier imo than Megaupload/megavideo
27 replies
1h47m
Much like Napster, his only real crime was success. If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble.
He paved the way for streaming and digital distribution of media. Megavideo in particular had the highest encoding rates possible at the time, even superior to YouTube.
13 replies
1h40m
YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.
3 replies
1h17m
As someone who used to run an illegal video index, this is not true at all.
YouTube had virtually zero enforcement. You could upload whole shows and movies and they were never taken down.
Other sites like Google Video or Vimeo did go above and beyond to comply and they lost badly.
YouTube started getting heat at some point and that’s only when they started enforcing, but by then, they already won.
2 replies
1h15m
They didn't, but then they did, to the satisfaction of the Viacom case. Napster and Megaupload never built the tools to comply to the degree that YouTube did. Maybe if they had, they would still exist.
1 replies
1h9m
Moral of the story- ignore the law for as long as you can and comply hard enough when you have to. It helps to have zirp levels of investment too.
0 replies
1h7m
I think the other issue is that, if Megaupload and Napster actually complied hard, they wouldn't have many content or users left. YouTube may have had pirated content, but it also had enough original content to stand on its own.
3 replies
1h30m
With the right third party search engines, you can find almost any full movie on YouTube.
They don't have to stop pirates, just keep them in the shadows.
1 replies
1h26m
Which search engines are these? I ask for a friend who is doing research in this area.
0 replies
47m
Google with search operators wield more results than one expects. Theoritically speaking, of course.
0 replies
1h16m
The DMCA doesn't give anyone a score based on how many movies they have, or don't have. What is relevant is that YouTube provides tools that comply with the DMCA.
2 replies
1h10m
YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law
History just gets rewritten daily.
They took probably 10 years to attempt compliance at all. What's more, Google Video never had any organic participation (i.e. normal people uploading videos of themselves), and was almost exclusively pirated content. Its main differentiation (long forgotten in the age of youtube-dl) was actually how easy it was to download that content compared to Youtube, who made it annoying. Eventually Google realized that they still weren't going to attract the pirates/copyright violators that section 230 allowed them to use as a proxy (piracy still preferred Youtube because people were on youtube), so they bought it.
Youtube was absolutely loaded with copyrighted material, and the source of lots of pirated files still being traded is directly from youtube. Eventually they started aggressively scanning things for copyrighted music (because they wanted to make deals with the music industry), and then started preemptively responding to any DMCA claim by suspending the video so as not to look like hypocrites while they were going after music; section 230 implies a lot of helplessness for platforms in the face of users that removing audio tracks from videos where people were singing copyrighted songs doesn't bear.
They started getting rid of pirated (and amateur content in general) once they had the monopoly on video, not before. Now they wanted to push exclusive, expensively-produced content, and since producers didn't have any other online outlet, they were going to monopolize that, too. They didn't need the pirated content anymore.
0 replies
1h2m
History just gets rewritten daily.
They took probably 10 years to attempt compliance at all.
ContentID has existed for all but 2 years of YouTube's entire existence. It was initially released less than a year after Google's purchase.
Youtube was absolutely loaded with copyrighted material
And if they comply with Safe Harbor, it doesn't actually matter.
By comparison, what did Napster and Megaupload do?
Napster did nothing. Their argument was that they didn't need to comply at all.
Megaupload publicly pretended to comply, but intentionally nerfed their tooling to support non-compliance, and internally documented that they weren't complying.
0 replies
1h4m
They started getting rid of pirated (and amateur content in general) once they had the monopoly on video, not before
That's a rewriting of history.
Google/YouTube started cracking down after Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc was reopened after appeals court ruled in Viacom's favor to listen to it's appeal in 2012 [1].
Google did develop ContentID as part of Google's damage control [0] when the case was in district court (2007-09) but half assed enforcement until the ruling in 2012 re-opened litigation, which forced Google's settlement with Viacom in 2014 [2].
People seem to forget that the Viacom litigation was an existential crisis for Google/YouTube, as the appeals court ruling could open the floodgates to litigation, and competitors ranging from Microsoft to CBS to the MPAA all supported Viacom [3]
[0] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118161295626932114
[1] - https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-idU...
[3] - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/via...
0 replies
22m
Did it? If I go to youtube right now, I will get tons of ads selling illegal stuff which Youtube profit from. This is against the law but it seems that they don't get bothered by the law enforcers.
0 replies
56m
Went above and beyond for Hollywood, not for compliance. The tools are only available to the studios. Everyone else can sod off.
7 replies
1h42m
Except, he paid people for, and promoted the upload of copywrited works. He knowingly participated and basically tailored his products to pirating. Some people love him, but he will see his day in court apparently, but no one wants to even deal with him because he's gone crazy.
3 replies
1h12m
Sure, pirating means comandeering of a ship, not distribtion of copyrighted works.
He probably has a plan in a nearby Pacific jurisdiction like Vanuatu. Best of luck!
2 replies
34m
The language we humans use in casual conversation is a lot more fluid than that, you need to be able to deal with it.
1 replies
23m
Not when the language is used to accuse someone of a crime. He is no pirate, obviously.
He knowingly participated and basically tailored his products to pirating
0 replies
20m
Nor is piracy, in the literal sense, the crime he is accused of. So I'm not sure what you're up in arms about.
1 replies
1h25m
We had a friend who threw amazing parties because he had this sort of transgressive sense of humor. He got rich, retired young, and I fully believe that the professional peer pressure was the main thing keeping his screws tight because he just fell apart over three years. At one point he was telling my spouse he was trying to make himself crazy. Congratulations bud, you already are. Sane people don’t do that.
Predatory people took advantage of his behavior and generosity, and by thirty he was involuntarily committed, his mother given power of attorney. My spouse was the person feeding his mom the information she needed to see to intervene. All he had left was the equity in his condo and $50k.
I’m not sure I believed the deranged millionaire trope until I met this guy. And I watch my younger friends and acquaintances for signs of mania that masquerade as out of box or transgressive thinking.
0 replies
37m
How did your friend get rich, and how did people take advantage of him?
0 replies
36m
Source for "he's gone crazy"? Curious about the degree of crazy, since he seemed pretty out there from the start.
1 replies
1h22m
his only real crime was success.
Success even when obtained with some illegality is fine so long as it plays well with the interests of elites. Kim didn't just break the law, he also painted himself a target by upsetting people with power.
For all of his flaws, I think where I'd give someone like SBF a significant amount of credit is that he understood very well that if he wanted to do dodgy things he had to remain on the right side of those in power.
Kim hasn't played the game right. Had he tried to win friends from the start he may not be in the situation he's in now.
0 replies
53m
Which of course simply confirms that current elites are just sanctioned criminals that no one dares to challenge.
0 replies
1h21m
> “If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble”
And if Captain Kidd hadn’t managed to raid any ships, he would have avoided the whole unfortunate hanging business. It goes without saying that unsuccessful criminals mostly don’t get caught.
0 replies
1h33m
his only real crime was success
Nonsense. He has a criminal history going back to the early nineties.
0 replies
1h26m
If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble.
In a world where opportunity costs exist, as they do for law enforcement, this makes sense?
19 replies
1h18m
I wonder if people have forgotten the legal grounds on which the US claimed jurisdiction. I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it.
I guess one lesson from this is that running out of .COM domain names is not a bad thing, because it reduces the grip the American empire has on the internet.
8 replies
56m
His mistake was to host content in the US.
"Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said." - Jun 25, 2012
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/internet-file-sharing-giant-...
7 replies
53m
Wouldn't his mistake have been hosting pirated content?
4 replies
52m
Legally speaking, depends on the country.
3 replies
32m
Actually curious, in which country is what he did fully legal?
1 replies
26m
As of December 2019, Eritrea, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, San Marino, and WTO Observer countries Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan are not a party to any copyright convention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation...
0 replies
18m
Good luck finding a stable datacenter to host servers in those countries...
0 replies
19m
Probably nowhere, as many countries are fine with piracy/copyright violations until you start profiting from it: https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/b6rpzx/here_are_som...
1 replies
25m
> hosting pirated content?
If you run a service that allows people to upload data, you are hosting pirated content. The DMCA was specifically designed to address this, to create a system whereby those who host data are not on the hook for every violation. The issue is not that you host pirated content but whether you are following all the rules necessary to enjoy safe harbor protection.
0 replies
7m
If you look into the case, this wasn't a situation in which they accidentally hosted pirated content as a byproduct to hosting legitimate content. There are records of internal communication of the business discussing how to encourage piracy on the platform. This wasn't early Youtube turning a blind eye to piracy with plausible deniability. This was a business consciously and intentionally using piracy as a growth strategy.
4 replies
12m
It doesn't really matter because, as the dominant world power and arbiter of the world's currency, the US can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone.
The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country. The US treasury will withhold the ability to transact in US Dollars from any country that does not report the holdings of US-adjacent persons every single year.
If you think you're out of reach of a country that treats their own citizens as criminals by default the minute they leave the country, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
1 replies
4m
USA can't tax non-citizens. Revoke citizenship if you really don't want to pay. That comes with a lot of downsides though (no more US passport, no getting rescued by the US if you wander into North Korea, etc), which implies the taxes aren't for nothing just because you live out-of-country.
0 replies
1m
Pretty far fetched benefits
0 replies
8m
enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave.
That's not quite true. If you _return_ your green card ("abandon it"), you no longer have to pay taxes. This makes sense as a parallel to being a US citizen, who would pay taxes even if they lived abroad.
I'm not saying it's right, but we need to be accurate.
0 replies
5m
The US government is so powerful [...] can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone
Sounds like what a totalitarian king would do.
"In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude." - Edmund Burke, 1756.
2 replies
39m
I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it.
You are definitely misremembering and spreading FUD backed by your biases.
He was hosting illegal material on servers geolocated inside the US. I'm sure if someone were producing and distributing illegal material (let's use the extreme example: child pornography, for instance) on NZ servers and networks, NZers would want to see them extradited.
It has nothing to do with "imperialism".
1 replies
13m
Was he hosting illegal material, or simply creating a platform where such material could be held? If you post child porn on Facebook, I assume you would get sent to jail, not Mark Zuckerberg. It seems that Kim Dotcom is in a similar position.
0 replies
7m
Facebook wasn't created with the primary intention of hosting illicit material (Kim Dotcom actively made statements along those lines) and doesn't facilitate + protect the hosting of such materials. You can be damn sure that if Facebook refused removal requests for copyrighted videos, that they (and Zuckerberg) would be in hot water.
You can try to pettyfog the case and move goalposts all you like, each time one of your points/misunderstandings is debunked, however it's pretty clear what he was doing. And, more importantly to the original point, the laws/extradition would apply similarly to any nations with the same IP laws; "empire" or not.
1 replies
1h12m
That tracks with the fact that they use a .nz now.
0 replies
56m
As long as he’s calling himself Dotcom, he is explicitly property of Verisign.
16 replies
5h13m
What exactly has Mega done that Dropbox hasn't? In my eyes they're basically the same product, the only difference being Mega's edgier tone.
6 replies
5h7m
This is about Megaupload, completely different business.
5 replies
4h56m
Not completely different, actually, they're pretty much the same.
The only difference is the "we encrypt everything so we don't know what users upload" trick, which seems to have worked so far (and branding and stuff).
4 replies
4h27m
No, it was not "pretty much the same" as Dropbox.
Megaupload took steps to specifically support piracy. When a movie studio would report a pirated copy of one of their movies, Megaupload would tell the studio they removed it but in reality they would only make it so the specific link the studio new about would stop working. They would not delete the underlying file and any other links would continue to work.
This failure to remove the underlying file was not a technical limitation. When child porn was reported they were able to kill the reported link and the underlying file, thus breaking all links to it.
2 replies
3h26m
I was talking about Megaupload vs. MEGA.
This failure to remove the underlying file was not a technical limitation.
This, and the rest of your comment makes sense in 2024, but not around 2010.
Back then:
* All file sharing platforms had this exact problem. This was the problem at the time. You were even able to find full length movies on YouTube quite easily. They were eventually removed, but it was a long, manual and tedious process. Even today, this is still not completely solved.
* Most of these companies (including the "good ones"™ like YouTube) thrived under this (unlawful) sharing of copyrighted content. Measures against it were being actively developed and tested and there was a big backslash from the platform's users as they were being introduced, i.e. it wasn't an armchair software engineer's "easy problem". When these platforms incorrectly labeled and removed content due to copyright infringement, it was a bit of a scandal, with many of these events reaching the news and people boycotting platforms and threatening lawsuits.
* Piracy was huge compared to today, torrents were almost the norm. Not trying to justify it, just trying to put in context what internet users used the internet for. If we are fair, Kim was not the one uploading the restricted content to Megaupload, neither encouraging it. The "market" was there, with or without Megaupload. I would even go as far as to suggest a wild point of view where Megaupload was actually a victim of piracy as well.
* A lot of legislation around this was not in place and/or mature enough. Some landmark cases around Section 230 were just starting to take shape. It was not black or white clear whether a platform should be responsible for its content or not and what are the legal requirements for them to address this liability.
* The overall sentiment of tech people (even in communities like this one) was that internet services should behave like utilities, in spirit; I still believe this to be the right approach. It follows from that that whatever misuse of them made by end users should hold them liable and not the utility provider.
1 replies
2h23m
All file sharing platforms had this exact problem. This was the problem back then. You could even find full length movies on YouTube quite easily. They were eventually removed, but it was a long, manual and tedious process. Even today, this is still not completely solved.
At Megaupload they were not eventually removed. At Megaupload the same physical file could be accessed by different URLs. When a rights holder reported the content Megaupload only made it so the specific URL no longer worked.
If we are fair, Kim was not the one uploading the restricted content to Megaupload, neither encouraging it.
He was encouraging it. Top management of Megaupload had discussions specifically about encouraging more piracy and making it harder for rights holders to get infringing material removed.
They published list of the top downloads, but first checked them for pirated content and removed those items from the list. What purposed does that have other than trying to hide the infringement?
0 replies
2h14m
At Megaupload they were not eventually removed.
This is not true. All DMCIA requests were properly addressed and the content removed.
They even had a dedicated page to submit these requests, years before YouTube and others did so.
Top management of Megaupload had discussions specifically about encouraging more piracy and making it harder for rights holders to get infringing material removed.
I would like to see a source for this.
0 replies
3h6m
Is that alleged or proven? Because the law does no require you to take down a file and the make sure that file is not uploaded by someone else. In fact all it requires is you to take it down if you're hosting it, so if someone else uploads a file they would have to notify you of that file as well for the simple fact that it may actually now be the rightsholder uploading it.
2 replies
5h7m
Wasn't the allegation that Mega uploaded copywritten content to themselves to kick things off with something people wanted?
0 replies
4h58m
So (allegedly) like early Spotify
0 replies
5h0m
You confusing it with MegaUpload that was shutdown 12 years ago.
When MEGA launched Kim was well known enough where his new service got tracktion on it's own.
1 replies
4h45m
It's about MegaUpload, not Mega. True, they both offer(ed) cloud-storage and public sharing, but MegaUpload was much more on the shady side. They were stalling and ignoring requests for removing illegal content. Furthermore, they were even actively supporting uploads of popular content. I vaguely remember they were even paying some people. Over all, it was a platform strongly focused on distribution of illegal content. And this is just about commercial content. I wouldn't be surprised if it also was popular for porn and abuse-content.
0 replies
2h52m
IIRC you had to pay for "premium" on MegaUpload, but if you uploaded a file that got downloaded many times, you'd be granted X months of premium (or lifetime premium, can't remember)
0 replies
2h42m
I've found mega to be consistently faster and it's a little cheaper.
0 replies
1h14m
It feels like a decade ago, but I remember the issue being with how they dealt with abuse reports. To save storage space, they matched similar files. So if two people ripped a DVD and compressed it, they would just keep one source file, and generate 2 different metadata files, to avoid wasting space. So they'd have different filenames and creation dates, but only take up half the space. Then, when one got an abuse report, they would delete that metadata, but as long as one still existed, the source data never got deleted. Law enforcement called it a conspiracy to commit crime, megaupload called it smart database deduping. It was usually much more than 2 copies, so content owners were playing endless whack—a-mole while megaupload was barely shuffling a few kilobytes around.
0 replies
1h37m
You can just read the charging docs.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-edva/legacy...
On or about February 13, 2007, ORTMANN sent an e-mail to VAN DER KOLK entitled “my concerns about the thumbnails table.” In the e-mail, ORTMANN asked VAN DER KOLK to create “a dummy lifetime premium user,” stating that “[t]his is very important to prevent the loss of source files due to expiration or abuse reports.”
The company was literally reposting copyrighted material under puppet accounts.
0 replies
35m
Dropbox scans shared files and checks hashes against known-pirated material. It's not just and "edgier tone", one actually makes an effort to take down infringing material and the other tacitly (and at time explicitly) condones it.
15 replies
3h29m
YouTube has a thousand to a million times more copyrighted content than Megaupload ever had. And no, not all of it is via partnerships with the copyright holders. Kim's problem apparently was that he didn't bribe Congress.
7 replies
3h9m
YouTube didn't bribe congress. They built significant tooling that gave the rights holders what they wanted, even beyond what the law required them to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.
4 replies
2h54m
Google has had a massive lobbying effort for a long time, and donating to Congress is a part of it. If not for it, how is it that a takedown process wasn't sufficient for Mega, but it is sufficient for Google? How is it that the rights-holders didn't engage Mega into having such tooling?
2 replies
2h15m
Quite simple really. Merely having a takedown process isn't enough to comply with the law. It must actually be complied with. YouTube went above and beyond in this, not only complying with DMCA requests, but not even requiring them. Megaupload's takedown process was a sham. Yes, they had a page where DMCA requests could be submitted, but actual compliance was poor, and intentionally so.
Compliance is a critical part of the DMCA. Once a site knows about infringing content, they lose safe harbor provisions.
Also, how do you think lobbying Congress would even hypothetically help YouTube in court? The DMCA doesn't have any different provisions for YouTube than it does for Megaupload.
1 replies
1h58m
how do you think lobbying Congress would even hypothetically help YouTube in court
With regard to Megaupload, this much is simple. The Justice Department can freeze an investigation under pressure from Congress. Whether an investigation comes to its conclusion or not is strongly under the influence of Congress.
0 replies
1h47m
YouTube was found to be in compliance with DMCA in federal court due to Viacom's case years before the DOJ bought a case against Megaupload. I don't know why YouTube would be worried about DOJ investigating something they had case law to support them on.
0 replies
2h47m
I suggest you read the indictment for Megaupload (Wikipedia summarizes it, but they cite the actual document you can view): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of...
The indictment explicitly answers your questions about why Megaupload was different from other file sharing services.
1 replies
2h15m
This quote from Kim, in the op, indicates the same:
“[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload, unsolicited, and what copyright holders were able to remove with direct delete access instantly and without question.”
0 replies
1h56m
Yes, like many criminal defendants, he always claimed to be compliant with the law.
They did have an "Abuse Tool" available. The problem was, it was intentionally flawed. It was a sham, intended to make it appear like they were compliant, when they were not. It didn't remove infringing content. It just removed the link. Also, Kim intentionally limited content holders in the number of requests they could send. So, pirates using the system just created more links to the same infringing content.
3 replies
2h39m
Kim's problem apparently was that he didn't bribe Congress.
Can you elaborate? Is there concrete evidence of this or just a general feeling that it must have happened?
2 replies
2h24m
I'd hope we could be nuanced enough to differentiate lobbying and bribing. "Bribing" is what you do in Russia or Tunisia when a cop pulls you over and you slip him $100 to get him off your tail. Lobbying, while potentially nefarious, has completely non-nefarious uses. Private corporations have a right to be involved in the legislative process.
If Congress was considering a federal ban on all electric cars in the United States, I'd want Tesla's government relations figures on Capitol Hill talking about it.
0 replies
2h8m
If Congress was considering a federal ban on all electric cars in the United States, I'd want Tesla's government relations figures on Capitol Hill talking about it.
The problem with that is the lobbyist has a voice proportional to the money spent by the lobbyist's client. If, for example, I wanted to ban electric cars, I wouldn't even be able to get an appointment anywhere near Capitol Hill. Or if I did, nobody would listen. Just a pat on the head and perhaps some gallery passes to watch the legislature. If 1,000,000 of us across the US wanted that, we wouldn't get on Capitol Hill either. But if a car company or $special_interest_lobby wants a meeting -- they get it because those people are contributing millions to campaigns and PACs. Lobbyists even write many bills for congressmen.
If there was consideration on a federal ban for electric cars (or whatever,) then Tesla and the other car companies can write a letter to their congressman and have it ignored like the rest of us. And if they don't like it, then they can vote like the rest of us. They can even run advertisements trying to convince people to agree with them.
Money and lobbyists should not be able to amplify the importance of a particular viewpoint.
Paid lobbying should be illegal. It's one half step away from outright bribery. The other side of that coin is the administrative state official who makes rules favorable to a particular company, then "retire" from public service to take a highly paid, "consultant" role at the very company they helped. Or in Pharma especially, the so-called "Iron Triangle" -- https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3519281-is-there-an-i...
https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_return_of_the_...
0 replies
2h19m
Lobbying and donations are just legalized bribery. As of 2024, the Supreme Court even strongly legalized financial gifts to government officials. Any distinction is morally tenuous.
0 replies
3h22m
you could argue that YouTube is "trying" to not have illegal content. i don't think Mega was "trying" very hard.
0 replies
2h25m
This is a place where “intention” matters to the courts. A lot of these laws require the platform to make a “best effort” at preventing illegal uploads. YT is making an effort and claiming it’s their best.
0 replies
3h9m
Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
7 replies
6h4m
Anyone know why this is prioritised? Wasn't this copyright stuff from like 2 decades ago? Just genuinely curious.
2 replies
6h2m
He fought it all the way and ran out of options, we have a more right leaning government now who want to suck up to the US
0 replies
1h50m
ran out of options
He'd have one more option to fight tyranny, if your government didn't disarm the populace.
Imagine being yanked out of your home country by a foreign power and their corporate overlords with the prospect of living the rest of your life in third-world prison conditions, for the crime of allegedly reducing their balance sheets from $550B per year to $545B per year.
0 replies
5h1m
What did the government have to do with this? Sounds like he ran out of appeals through the court system, which is independent of the government of the day.
1 replies
6h1m
If the media industry is successful in using DMCA against foreign residents to put them in US jail, it'll be a huge deterrent against any other similar people hosting similar platforms in countries with US extradition treaties.
0 replies
3h55m
They aren't using the DMCA against him. Where DMCA comes into the picture is that for hosting sites DMCA compliance can be used as a defense against a charge of copyright infringement in the US.
The underlying problem for Megaupload is that what they were doing is illegal in over 180 countries (basically any country that is a party to a major international copyright treaty or convention).
A good general rule of thumb is that if you want to host something that is illegal in country X hosting it in country Y without an extradition treaty is not sufficient. You should pick a Y where it is not illegal there. Otherwise even if Y does not care enough to go after you, if Y has good trade or other relations with X the may respond positively to encouragement from X to go after you.
0 replies
1h50m
He's a popular voice of dissent on Twitter and someone must be cracking down right now. Scott Ritter is another--he had his passport seized recently and his house raided by the FBI a week ago.
0 replies
5h58m
The indictment was a bit under 12 years ago. As the article covers, Dotcom initiated extensive legal proceedings, with one argument going to the (NZ) Supreme Court in 2020, about whether he could legally be extradited. Presumably we’ve reached the end of those proceedings.
6 replies
4h35m
The US seems to have this knack of sliding itself into this narrow gap between individuals they're idealistically pursuing and something worse. "If I could just slip in there, ooh, that's tight, yes, thank you, aah comfy, this feels like where I belong".
In their desperate attempt to not lose a fight that's been going on for, what, 10 years? 15 years? They're increasingly looking like a child that cannot move on from a primary school sleight.
The US look like an ass because the law they're seemingly-autistically pursuing, is an ass.
Pragmatism has no place here, it would seem.
Also, downloading from Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement.
2 replies
2h58m
Source for the final claim? Is this still the case? Shit Man I distributed a dataset via megaupload for a paper awhile ago. Am I now a target of the glowies?
1 replies
2h44m
See reply to antai below. MEGA, not Megaupload.
Re: source. Hopefully I'm consistent, you can go back through my comment history. I was raided by the police a bit over two years ago. When I got my stuff back (8 months later, no charges) the lead detective said that there was evidence I'd downloaded things from Mega, and that this was "suspicious", amongst a couple of other things.
I got the feeling she thought I was still guilty and had somehow managed to get away with the distribution of which I was suspected (or it was some kind of retro justification for gross violation of my rights and she was taking a front foot stance to minimise the chances I'd see what legal avenues are available in such situations - turns out very few to none).
She specifically mentioned as suspicious:
- history of downloading from MEGA
- using virtual machines
- having "tor" installed.
Interesting combination of cluelessness (wait until they're introduced to containers!). MEGA somewhat stands out in that bunch, in that there are lots of similar services as far as I know. Makes me wonder if it's a honeypot (but maybe not, because then they'd know the only thing I downloaded from MEGA was android ROMs).
Other than being outspoken on certain topics online, my browsing history is as boring as the next guy's. So I really think they put some weight behind MEGA activity.
0 replies
39m
As someone working in comint I can assure you that there's nothing special about MEGA compared to others in terms of flagging.
1 replies
3h46m
Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement.
I think this would flag my entire generation, at least back in the 2000s.
0 replies
3h43m
Mega (sorry: MEGA), not Megaupload, in this specific case.
(the opposite to the case this article is about)
0 replies
5m
You're looking at this through too narrow a lens, I think.
The Government has a duty to protect domestic industry from foreign threats, and throughout history, that isn't reserved to state actors.
Megaupload was a severe threat(*) to major American industries, and Kim Dotcom flagrantly ignored pressure from America to stop what it was doing. When that happens the Government gets to pick which of its heavy hammers to drop, and KDC is lucky it was just lawyers.
You have to look at this through the eyes of the government and how it conducts foreign policy, often over long spans of time, with the goals of expanding and defending American interests - which includes protecting industries.
(* was it? we'll never really know)
4 replies
1h50m
Meanwhile nothing for mega corporation pirating data to train AI.
3 replies
1h47m
It’s not pirating. It’s transformative and fair use. Derivative even in some cases. Each piece of content is but a grain of sand on an island.
It’s called the open internet.
2 replies
1h16m
Training is not pirating, but generating copyrighted data is.
1 replies
42m
If generating copyrighted data pirating, then so is being served literal images that are shared across the internet.
Should a corporation be able to sue you for simply sharing an image of Micky?
0 replies
4m
There's a difference between a fair-use reproduction of Mickey and reproducing an image of Mickey that you claim is your own original creation (or there was until the copyright ran out recently).
3 replies
3h0m
It is rumoured (by locals) that Kim Dotcom has been allowed to reside in New Zealand (being a German/Finish) on the basis that he spent his money in New Zealand. I don't think they are in a rush to extradite him to the US, and the US will not come after NZ for the money spent.
1 replies
2h51m
NZ is not a random atoll island in the Pacific. Kim Dotcom is wealthy, but still way far, way far from having enough money to bribe the whole country like that.
Orders of magnitude are a thing.
0 replies
2h11m
NZ also has no shortage of rich people with apocalypse houses there
0 replies
2h49m
How is that a rumour? That's literally how the Investment 1 and 2 resident visa worked before 2022 when they finally scrapped the program. You invest at least NZD $750,000 in growth investments. Given that that's 450k USD, and kim dotcom's net value was quite a few million, that was barely an inconvenience. Then he just needed to spend the majority of his time in NZ to qualify for citizenship.
2 replies
1h57m
Sam Altman knowingly bought a ton of hacked private data from a Chinese hacker group. The Chinese told the Biden admin and the NSA confirmed it. But I guess because he's a Zionist he's protected.
https://unherd.com/2023/11/is-sam-altman-compromising-us-sec...
1 replies
1h41m
Citation?
0 replies
1h20m
2 replies
4h24m
Are any of the people who were arrested for RIAA/MPAA violations still imprisoned? That was such a weird time to be a kid. Scared if I downloaded a Greenday mp3 my parents would get arrested for piracy and I'd never be able to work in computers.
0 replies
4h13m
Make sure your own kids' curiosity isn't stifled by such fears.
0 replies
2h22m
Oh yeah once they started cracking down I stopped watching any mainstream movies, music, etc., especially not anything less than 10 years old. You miss out on a banger here and there, but it's a lot safer.
2 replies
6h0m
Sad news. I don't really know if there's more than the file sharing thing behind this, but the US is cracking down too hard on this guy. Seems unfair, tbh.
The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO.
I do not think he's a criminal. A big (massive, maybe) fine should have been more than enough.
1 replies
5h38m
I disagree, he has engaged in a deliberate media/public personality building campaign over the last 12 years to make the public sympathetic to him and his plight.
>I do not think he's a criminal "He was arrested in 1994 for trafficking in stolen phone calling card numbers. He was convicted on eleven charges of computer fraud, ten charges of data espionage and various other charges in 1998 that he served a two-year suspended sentence for.[7] In 2003, he was deported to Germany where he pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and after five months in jail awaiting trial he received another 20 months suspended sentence" (From Wiki)
>The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO. Yeah it was over the top, but he had firearms on the property and bodygaurds....
I'm with you that he should have just been fined, but he made a tremendous amount of money very deliberately (despite his protestations) trafficking illeagaly in Warez, I geniunely think the US is right to go after and nail him.
As a New Zealander, our government should be far more judicous about who it grants visa's to - he should have prima facae been refused his original visa on the basis of his prior convictions (I am sure there is a good story about why this was (incorrectly) overlooked by NZ officials). This ultimately is not a problem of New Zealands government/judicial system making, they have very fairly given Kim every chance to appeal and hear his side of the story - whilst he engages in games of attempted political manipulation for his own aim. The chickens must come home to roost at some point.
IMO I dont think Kim deserves the publics sympathy, the shield of New Zealand residency or that he is a good faith operator.
0 replies
4h58m
I do not think he's a criminal.
I should have added "in the context of this lawsuit". An edit now would be disingenuous.
2 replies
5h13m
You know how it is. You search someone's home, you set aside the evidence, and you promptly forget about it for 12 years. I dislike Kim Dotcom as much as the next gal or guy, maybe even more, but this is weird.
0 replies
4h27m
Thats just how much time money buys you in appeals, challenges and what not.
0 replies
4h25m
Don't forget they helicopter-dropped a heavily-armed swat team onto his property to execute the search of his home.
Illegally, extra-judicially. Although it was mainly NZ authorities who overstepped their bounds by allowing it.
1 replies
1h13m
The craziest thing about Kim is that he held the FIRST PLACE in competitive Call of Duty at some point while running the company.
0 replies
39m
I always thought that was impressive, and he was a good player but I remember him admitting st some point that he was paying people to play on his account which is what kept it at no. 1.
1 replies
4h53m
Ever watched that show Monk with that villain Dale the Whale who had to go to prison? That's pretty much how I see Kim Schmitz rotting in jail: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMb6zUTVwAAQwPn.jpg
0 replies
1h41m
Haha wow, this brings back memories.
1 replies
4h45m
It is unconscionable that governments in both countries are spending time on this or chasing Assange or Snowden instead of the criminality of things like government warrantless surveillance, megacorp anti competitive actions, civil forfeiture, etc. Or the cartel of organizations behind this extradition that abuse copyright laws to keep things out of public domain. Or companies all exchanging our private information with each other, which inevitably gets released in a hack, which is far worse than a storage platform being used by some people to share songs or whatever.
Are any candidates actually against this farce? Or are they all simply working for the companies behind this?
0 replies
35m
It's complicated. Most career politicians like all those things you hate because it lets them outsource the state's dirty work. The state made constitutional commitments it can't quite keep and has worked around them. On the other hand, those workarounds are themselves becoming threats to the state in ways that have made some politicians willing to rebalance power. On the other hand, I do not want to name specific names of people to vote for, because few Congresspeople are actually hacking at the root of power. Remember when Obama was a Marxist and then turned out to just be another neoliberal?
To explain why, we must keep in mind that all states are in a perpetual crisis of legibility. They have more force than anyone knows what to do with, while having no idea of what happens in their territory or whom to use that force on. To make matters worse, most democratic states - and nearly all states in the Anglosphere - have been constitutionally handcuffed to restrict their investigatory powers. This is an existential threat to the state, and so the state will take any chance it can get to impose legibility upon the people by force, lest the state be replaced with something worse.
I've worded the above like some kind of conspiracy theory, so let's remember exactly who we're talking about: the "I'm-just-doing-my-job" types. If your job is to investigate crime, then the 4th Amendment is an annoying hurdle you have to think about constantly. But it's not a high hurdle to jump over because most criminals are profoundly stupid. Drug kingpins are more of a problem, however. Organized crime is the criminal equivalent of an MLM, so you can pick off a bunch of idiots at the exterior, but not people running the organization. This is where law enforcement gets creative, weaponizing things like tax law and - yes, civil forfeiture - to cut at the root.
The pattern of how democratic states deal with limitations on their power that prove inconvenient is simple: they cheat. Or at least, they cheat the spirit of the law, if not the letter. For example, if your job is to investigate foreign threats to the country, you're not fighting criminals. You're fighting the Borg[0] - an existential threat that learns from and adapts to everything you do, even the successes. For the CIA/NSA, having to get a warrant is like running a marathon while having both hands tied around your back and wearing a pair of cement shoes.
Data brokers are the perfect workaround. They built the perfect panopticon and used social engineering to get people to consent to it. The CIA and NSA buys shittons of their data and mines it to find threats to the state because it's significantly easier and less complicated than getting specific warrants to collect specific data.
Those abusive copyright laws that keep shit out of the public domain? Those were payments made to Hollywood in exchange for positive propaganda. Here, we're working around the 1st Amendment, not the 4th. The US government can't legally compel Hollywood to make propaganda, nor can they prohibit Hollywood from making movies that denigrate US actions. But they can still pay Hollywood to make propaganda[1], they'll downplay the critical movies to save face, and even if they don't, it'll make America look like they're aware of and fixing problems they have no interest in fixing. So when the US government treats a storage platform for stolen songs as an existential threat, it is specifically because they are fulfilling their end of a deal with Hollywood.
But there's a catch. Those constitutional restrictions were put in there for a reason. If the CIA can buy data from data brokers, than so can China's MSS. American lawmakers are so irrationally afraid of TikTok because China figured out how to use the CIA's own weapons against it. The government's defense of the TikTok ban is page after page of redactions. They can't publicly say they know TikTok is a Chinese intelligence asset without telling the judge enough information to blow the cover of every CIA agent in China, but the black highlighter[2] itself is an admission.
Same with the anticompetitive actions. The late 90s saw the US government bring the hammer down hard on the tech industry[3], and then suddenly stop. Why? Simple - the tech oligopoly became useful to American interests and so was given a pass, to the chagrin of America's other sweetheart, Hollywood. Politicians only realized how much power had been actually ceded to big tech by accident. Social media made the mistake of ceding power to Donald Trump, who used it to run for president legitimately, lost a re-election campaign, and then attempted a feeble self-coup. Twitter and every other tech company rightfully shut him down, but this exposed how much power they really had been given in the political process. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter in a vain attempt to restore Donald Trump's influence[4], ensuring that the concern over Big Tech would be bipartisan.
I still can't point you to a politician to vote for, but I can at least point you to an ideology and a person who talks about it: the New Brandeis movement[5] and Cory Doctorow specifically. Louis Rossmann is also a good option if Cory is too left-wing for your taste. Lina Khan is a huge figure in neo-Brandeis and she runs the FTC now, which is why the FTC has been trying to do its job again[6]. I single out antitrust here as it is the enabler of all the other abuses I've detailed above. You need economic centralization in order to get perfectly funded propaganda machines or privatized spying and censorship.
[0] I hope Star Trek is still culturally relevant enough for this reference to land correctly.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y
[2] https://www.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-h...
[3] Examples include the antitrust actions against Microsoft, the copyright actions against Napster and Grokster, and various legislative attempts to either force computer manufacturers to include copy protection hardware or force online services to have upload filters for copyright.
[4] This is an after-the-fact justification; at the time Musk was high off Tesla's stock price and bought Twitter basically in the same way one buys a bunch of shit they don't need off Amazon at 3 in the morning.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brandeis_movement
[6] And let us hope to $DEITY that she succeeds, lest we find ourselves living in South Korea.
1 replies
6h8m
This Kim dude. Neverending story.
Amiga (never heard of him during my scene time), then his alleged mobile ISDN service, MEGA.
He seemed like the shady poster child for every trend who got stopped before jumping once more publicly on Crypto.
0 replies
2h11m
He has done some shady stuff in Germany with stocks
then used those proceeds to launch his other businesses
I really enjoyed Megaupload & rapidshare those were almost as good as the WaReZ days if not better: direct links to any digital content without waiting for seeders
It's a shame. Arresting Dotcom won't do anything to curb piracy in fact it would raise the stakes even higher and more untraceable leading to more uncensored content that would be deemed "harmful"
Dotcom should've chosen Russia or China instead of NZ but obviously the quality of life isn't quite up to par with NZ. Russia dacha outside moscow would've been great for him without worries of US extradition.
0 replies
4h59m
I'm mostly curious about the timing. Wasn't the raid on his house in 2012? 12 years ago?
0 replies
6m
Kim says "Oops Don’t worry I have a plan" https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1823993237931221340
0 replies
4h27m
Fuck the MPAA/RIAA
0 replies
5h43m
The context is more nuanced that how presented by K.D.:
the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided
to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload"
0 replies
1h58m
Friendly reminder to all of us that copying is not stealing (neither in the dictionary sense nor in the legal sense) and that loaded language like that hinders objective discussion.
0 replies
3h46m
I am not particularly sympathetic to Kim Dotcom personally; but: Intellectual Property is illegitimate, anti-social, immoral. We should oppose its enforcement, both within states and in international contexts.
I am reminded of Eban Moglen's "dot-communist manifesto" of 2003, worth a read:
https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html
There's also the matter of the USA being able to enforce its legal norms on people living in other countries, via instruments like extradition but also sanctions for less-friendly world states.
0 replies
1h38m
It's been 12 years.
I wish the 6th amendment meant more.
0 replies
4h33m
Didn't like the guy when he was in the news, but this is too long ago, give it a rest. Why does NZ even play ball on this, just tell the US to f off.
0 replies
4h50m
... cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million ...
This bit is standard, trope-style make-believe.
However:
... paying users [...], which generated more than $175 million in revenue for the [Kim Dotcom's Megaupload] website.
.. if they can prove that bit, it's a much more damning case.
Not the usual hand-wavey 'We were banking on several thousand dollars of revenue from each of the 12yo's we're going after' claims, but actual, demonstrable, revenue that was misdirected.
0 replies
1h32m
Instant death penalty for anyone who chooses a name as fucking stupid as his
0 replies
6h1m
I know little about this case but remember the wild show Kim put on before his arrest. The way I saw it then was his colleagues pleaded guilty and where never extradited so my assumption was new Zealand would bend to his favour but I guess interpretation of rule of law is above precedence... I wish I could say I know what Im talking about.
0 replies
5h47m
New Zealand source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253465
0 replies
2h33m
It only took twelve years, but the heroes working at the FBI are finally on the cusp of ending online piracy!
0 replies
9m
He is probably going to blame this on Ukraine
What other options does he have? I really wish people wouldn't cheer when smallfolk like us get crushed by the state. Not saying he's perfect, but what him and others have to suffer seems vastly out of proportion to what they did
I do not categorize him as “small folk like us”
Agree.
"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.
If that logic sounds sketch when the police take $10K from a man going to buy a car, it should also be sketch when you add zeros somewhere else.
In general "That's really unusual behavior" shouldn't be enough to forfeit a fortune.
A man's labor and intelligence can eventually earn him $10k to buy a car. Over a long career, one might eventually amass a fortune on the order of $1M. Kim might (hypothetically) have an IQ of 150 and be willing to work punishingly long hours where our analogous car buyer went home to be with his family. But it's completely farcical to state that he's 10,000 times smarter or harder-working than a baseline human, that's absurd - 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. And that's ignoring that it was $175M in cash, as if it was pocket change to him; there's no good explanation for him to have that much in investments much less in physical money lying around.
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.
Sounds like you rediscovered Marxism?
Your accusative tone implies that's a bad thing, is that the case?
According to the last 107 years of history, yes.
No. I don’t mean to imply it’s bad or any accusations. Just trying to point out some fact.
That's non-sensical.
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.
I have no sympathy for Kim Dotcom, but he is not proven to be some drug cartel boss or criminal overlord. Reason he had so much cash is obvious - because back in 2012 crypto wasn't yet so successful. And the guy was US government target for a long time before arrest so he had good reason not to keep money in banks where it's easy to arrest them.
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.
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.
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.
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).
That's not how it works. The majority of their wealth is in the stock of their companies. They don't earn anything until they sell their shares, and then the money comes from whoever wants to own the shares.
I don’t think the money in question was forfeited in the sense that the US uses, only seized pending an investigation. The lack of a corrupting incentive alone makes the seizure less suspicious in my eyes.
I don't know about you, but where I come from this looks like punishment through process. Not even trying to defend this Kim dude, just pointing out just because the process is "fair" doesn't mean its fair. Yes that is not a very well articulated point, but this is something which many people should have a feeling for in their bones.
I agree that process can be used as punishment. But I don't see any evidence that Dotcom has been uniquely or unfaithfully subjected to processes, or that his treatment is unusual given the charges he's facing.
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.
He hasn't been sentenced, let alone seen court yet. You don't have a right to flee a warrant for your arrest?
how old are you? did you live through the megaupload era? for a few years it was ubiquitous and def a cashcow machine
Yes, but converting that cashcow to a hundred million dollars in actual bills, is something special.
Wait til you hear about this new startup called Google. They are going to launch yet another search engine. I doubt there's much money in it, though. They'll be lucky to make a few million.
Are you missing the point on purpose? The suspicious thing isn’t that he has money, it’s that he’s storing the money physically as cash in his home. You think Google has a safe at the HQ filled with dollar notes?
Sounds pretty logical in a world where banking secrecy doesn't exist and most banks are compliant with a single jurisdiction which doesn't respects other ones.
Don't see what's wrong to preserve your property outside of the modern banking system if you are against the US.
I’m not even necessarily agreeing that it’s suspicious (ok, it is a bit suspicious but not so weird that I would immediately proclaim that he’s guilty), I just don’t think it’s productive to post sarcastic comments rebutting strawman arguments. If the commenter wanted to say that having a lot of cash isn’t suspicious, they should have just said that instead of making a point about google making a lot of money, too.
How much physical cash (actual notes/bills) do you think Google founders have in their home? Close to $175 million?
Not that that justifies anything, people should be free to keep as much physical cash as they want.
If someone's a weirdo and wants to stuff their millions into a mattress, that by itself should not be sufficient to presume them guilty of any illegal activity, or justify seizing their money.
He's an example to be made of by rights-holders. People smarter than him decided to quit the business or go into becoming IP owners themselves: see Manwin -> MindGeek -> Aylo. It was a calculated risk.
it was. he chose freedom and trusting people. if you go to jail for that you can be sure that it already created a precedent that put into jail a lot of innocent people
Since when is file hosting a cash cow?
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.
Please. It fits his personality perfectly to do something like keep all his money in cash.
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:
Why is it so odd that an anti authoritarian individual would keep large sums of money in cash and distribute whatever cash he does keep in as many bank accounts as possible?
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’m not interested in arguing for or against him because I don’t care about him or this case.
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.
I’m just saying that this guy distrusts authority so it’s not surprising that he was caught with a lot of cash or that he has a web of accounts. My larger point is about the fact that these insinuations should be dismissed because it’s reasonable to assume that if there was major wrong doing in his finances (eg drug lord) they would have included the evidence in the extradition request.
Feels like we are being a bit pedantic.
I guess we can wait and see what the outcome of the eventual trial is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TXAaqmj0E
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")....
I feel like I'm watching satire of what a 2000s mega rich nerd would be like but it's really him. He even has a basket/hanger on the wall for all of his ... canes. Didn't see the fedoras nearby, though.
"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 think it's purposely meant to be camp.
Absolutely.
The guy has a lot of money, so therefore he is more guilty than normal men?
I think they were just backing up the "he's not small folk like us" statement.
The thing about that word "smallfolk", is that there is a very heavy connotation that someone remains smallfolk no matter how positively fortune smiles upon them. No matter how wealthy they might become, not even if they can ride a dragon, do they suddenly become nobles.
The people using the word to say that Kimmy D isn't smallfolk don't even understand the vocabulary they favor.
The guy has a lot of money, so therefore it’s very tedious when people characterize him as a smol bean who just wanted to help people share their data. It’s a smokescreen for the real position (which I recognize some people do legitimately hold) that copying and selling movies without compensating the people who made them is a legitimate business model and it’s OK to make lots of money doing it.
Large TVs?
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?
At least with local departments, yes police will seize kitchen appliances if they are high dollar. Then it all goes up for auction. Maybe a cop likes the look of it, picks it up for pennies on the dollar at the auction. Maybe no one bids and it all gets junked. While the primary purpose of civil forfeiture is to seize valuables, there are sometimes secondary concerns... the cops like to fuck with certain people, and if they can just make them paupers by taking their belongings then that alone can be enough motivation. Paperwork's pretty light because jewelry or cash never has lawyers to defend itself.
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.
$175M quickly becomes meaningless in this context, believe me. It's already much more than you need.
Assuming $100 bills, that's nearly two tons of cash. (3800 pounds.)
Definitely not "small folk like us".
It's still a human. He just shared songs on the the internet. He's treated like a war criminal.
Maybe I don't know the full story, but as far as I understand, it seems like they (Megaupload) were ignoring DMCA takedown requests for a long time, was aware there was a ton of piracy on the site and didn't give any indication whatsoever that they were even trying to react to it by banning accounts that were uploading infringing content.
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".
Getting in the way of powerful people getting more power is always punished more harshly than anything else, including murder.
In this case, he annoyed powerful IP owners, and those people in our current society are as powerful as they get.
Your comment appears to have been downvoted for being inconvenient, despite its truth.
I downvoted it because it's untrue. As the article says, his coconspirators got 30 and 31 months respectively, which is much lower than New Zealand's mandatory minimum of 120 months for murder. (I would have responded directly, but in my experience commenters who start talking about things like "powerful people getting more power" aren't generally interested in a discussion about whether the claims they make are true.)
Yeah but he got a _decade_ of _world-wide_ man chase and legal arm wrestling.
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.
He shared a lot of them. Still absolutely not something that should lead to this multiple-state sanctioned response.
Agree, disproportionate response for sure. Still, flagrantly ignoring the law will get you in trouble.
As far as I remember, not only aware, but activly uploading warez themself (not officially).
So? If that's a crime under NZ law he can be prosecuted there. If it isn't then too bad for the US.
"Long time" is subjective.
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.
Did he get hundreds of millions in cash and dozens of luxury cars by pirating songs on the Internet?
Nah, he built a file sharing service and people paid for that.
MegaUpload was primarily funded by ads displayed on download pages, not the small number of people paying for storage.
Can you provide some source for the claim about the volume of sales MU had?
The original indictment put it at $25mm from ads and $150mm from subs, so my original statement is wrong.
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?
Megaupload had lots of grey/dark patterns, namely people could upload whatever but downloading anything big, each Downloader had to buy credits.
Actually to that end he got millions in cash facilitating piracy of movies/tv/software
Why does it matter?
Yes, the belief is that the source of his wealth was from MegaUpload and Mega.
He didn't "share songs on the internet".
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?
he did not and at least there is no written evidence that he did. something that OP could look up tho is the stats of the giant reduction of child trafficking/child abuse content posted on X since Musk took it under his wing. Why wasnt it adressed before? this could be a much bigger story but one OP will never address
I'm not in a position to disclose anything, but there is plenty of information out there about who was storing data in what repositories and what those people were using other, less-protected, repositories for.
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
"needing to be saved from" is a far cry from the 'used as an excuse for disclosure' that I accused them of. But I do appreciate the irony in conspiracists accusing others of racketeering (or otherwise unduly influencing markets).
This is the clear-headed take. As a point of clarification, I don't believe Dotcom has anything to do with Mega anymore, and the service Mega has gone legit and provides quite a nice a service similar to Tresorit -- end-to-end encrypted cloud storage.
He kept breaking laws with large penalties (or provided others a platform to do so, depending on your point of view) knowingly and repeatedly on a massive scale for many years.
Whether you think the particular laws are ethical or not, if you publicly break them, they will catch up with you.
I am not saying that's wrong. What's wrong is the way it's done. Especially the part where another country raids his residence, and has him shipped to said another country he's not even a citizen of, to be judged based on their law.
I wish people wouldn't cheer when criminals evade accountability.
File sharing is not a crime.
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 :)
Depending on the content, it is.
Robin Hood didn't enrich himself with the stolen goods.
What was stolen if the copyright owner still has their copy?
Profit.
There is no evidence anyone who used their services would of paid. The "theft" is propaganda. In fact from the article itself it even says Mega had a notice and takedown system available to the rights holders. So once again what is it that was stolen?
Do you mean "would be paid"? But why would anyone pay the users? The uploaders were paid.
No, it's juridical fact.
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.
Please site source where it says theft, since apparently it's a judicial fact. Since last I checked, it says a right was infringed, not theft.[0]. Specifically
"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?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
Nitpicking on words? I guess you must be fun at parties.
Well last I checked words have meanings. And you needing to resort to ad hominen when facts state otherwise is telling, especially since I am the Great Gatsby of parties.
Sharing CSAM definitely is a crime. Nuances exist.
He's run or partnered on multiple pump-and-dumps for the better part of 30 years, some of which capitalized on his fanbase.
One of the arguments the government used against Kim and Mega was that they implemented tech to identify and remove CSAM therefore they could have (but chose not to) do the same for material that violated copyright.
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.
Sure, so is commiting murder.
We're talking about software and (well, mostly) media piracy, movies and music here.
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.
Ah, the classic tale of modern Robin Hood, living in a mansion with 18 cars and 175M in cash.
First we have to agree on whats a criminal.
Sure. I propose...a trial.
Is that going to be a trial by the laws of the land he resides in and not to a foreign country that the defendant is not a citizen nor a resident nor operates out of and that refuses to guarantee the same protections under the law to a non-citizen compared to a citizen[1]?
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
He moved to New Zealand after much of the alleged criminal conduct, in a deal where he was pretty explicitly buying residency to the point that immigration authorities tried to keep it a secret. (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6547471/Secrecy-over-...)
He didn't move to new zealand from the US so I struggle to see how that is relevant, it's not HK or Germany looking to extradite him.
Kangaroo court it is. We say you're a movie pirate, so you are one. Life in prison for you.
...that is a summary of Kim's trial. Movie companies own the government.
Genereally such a trial would take place in the jurisdiction of the accused unless the crime was physically committed somewhere else.
Some criminals deserved to be cheered on, such as Alexandra Elbakyan.
Because the real criminals are the publishers who keep publicly funded science behind a paywall. None of the people who actually conduct the science see any of the money. In fact, they typically have to pay a lot of money to get their findings published.
BTW she is as bad as Kim Dotcom in terms of being Putin shill and other crazy stuff. So people who dislike Dotcom for this would be surprised to learn that Elbakyan is as bad.
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.
The fair thing to do would be to bring proceedings against him the New Zealand. Extraditing him to the U.S. isn't accountability: it's a flex.
Dotcom declined that option. His co-defendants plead guilty to NZ charges instead of being extraditioned.
Well then I guess you won't have a thing for political parties
"the state" is made up by normal people. And in this case the state is just protecting normal people from criminals like Dotcom.
How exactly are they protecting me?
While I don't disagree with the idea behind the post, Kim is not exactly small fry. He is not as big as he once was, but he seems to be doing well money-wise.
Ah yes, the classic. Everybody who opposes american foreign policy is labeled. Tweet about opposing the genocide in gaza? Oh dont listen to him -- he is pro khamas. Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians? Oh pay no attention to him -- he is on the communist payroll.
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?
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.
How is it in the interest of the Ukrainians to trigger this invasion? Russia has always made it clear that Ukraine was a red line for what it sees as NATO encroachment on its borders.
Also wrt to Finland -- if anything the story of Finland ascension into NATO supports the arguments that NATO is intentionally -- and aggressively -- pushing Russia to war. Finland has had close relations with NATO for years and during the same period Ukraine was more or less under the influence of Russia. So why havent the Russians cooked up some story about the Finns abusing ethnic Russians and invaded Finland a while back? Could it be that the Russians are sincere in their concerns that Ukraine hosting NATO troops is a matter of national security for them?
The world is being pushed towards nuclear war. And for what exactly? A Ukrainian government that has refused to engage with its neighbor on topics that its neighbor claims are matters critical to its national security while enthusiastically engaging with war mongering nations abroad on weapon deals that bring little value to the people of Ukraine. What would have been better for Ukraine? To find a way to make peace with Russia or to fight it for a decade? And please dont say this is for "democracy", "freedom", and "liberty". Who believes that the US and Europe is pumping tens of billions of dollars of military hardware to Ukraine monthly out of altruism?
I think people dont realize that the Russians are a super power. At some point they will lose self control and it will be a loss for mankind.
This is completely false. "NATO encroachment" is a VERY recent talking point which is part of the neo-fascist narrative that Russia developed attempting to excuse its own inadequacies. You should google Foundations of Geopolitics which is basically a Russian version of Mein Kampf. This book is required reading for majority of Russian politicians, diplomats and high ranking military officials. Before Russia decided that it wanted to pursue a fascist state, NATO was not on its agenda at all.
Russia the fascist state? Russian citizens have greater free speech and expression rights than any E.U country, U.K, Australia, Canada or New Zealand.
In the U.K people are currently being jailed for years for mild social media posts. Hopefully the Axis of resistance will liberate the West. This American certainly hopes so.
Greater free speech huh? Let's see shall we:
72-year-old Russian woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for anti-war posts on social media [1] https://therecord.media/russian-woman-sentenced-to-prison-ov...
A Russian American Is Sentenced in Russia Over Social Media Posts [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/world/europe/russian-amer...
US-Russian dual national jailed for 12 years on treason charges for $52 donation to Ukraine [3] https://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/international/ap-us-russ...
Russian man whose daughter made anti-war painting sentenced to two years in prison [4] https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/28/europe/russian-man-sentenced-...
Press X for doubt on this one :)
Russia is not a superpower if it can't even have air superiority on its own land and struggles to push beyond 150km from its own border, it's just a very nuclear armed nation thanks to the Soviet days.
As for the NATO enlargement narrative I don't know why people still try to push this when it's clear as water that Russia wants to annex more and more territory, even their conditions for ceasefire are mostly about Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
I see you've never seen Estonia or Latvia on a map. Nor realize NATO is already there. Why have they not been invaded while since 2008, Georgia and Ukraine have? Total mystery.
It's incredible the convoluted things people tell themselves to explain away the simple and obvious reality:
The only reason Finland and Sweden joined NATO was because Russia invaded Ukraine and started a genocide, while threatening Finland and Sweden with the same (and nukes).
The option is to let Russia freely commit genocide with rape, murder, and terrorism.
Only to then steer their target to the next country and do exactly the same.
Those 10's of billions are billions that will never be used for fighting global warming, so the whole planet looses on wars.
A decade ? That's optimistic.
What good could come out of saying "Oh, you are playing the nuke card. Well, take whatever you want then, I'm so sorry." ?
What's to say Russia won't wave the nuke card again, and again, if it worked the first time?
Also, do you ascribe any agency to the people of Ukraine? If they want to resist Russia, let them, I say.
And of course it's not out of altruism. (Well, some of the icing on the cake may be.)
It's because Russia is changing the status quo. That's a threat to the US. (And many other countries!)
Super power that cannot defend it's own borders during the hot war. I guess their superpower army too busy conquering Moon and Mars or far away galaxy.
And you know what's not happened when Ukraine started to capture Russia territory? Putin and his gang said nothing at all about nuclear weapons during last 10 days. Not even single hint even though he like to talk about them every time when his ass not in danger.
This is because they are criminals and bullies and these kind of people only understand force.
Good that Vietnamese did not realize US is a super power and will just nuclear bomb them when they get frustrated they are losing conventional war.
If the "matters critical to its national security" involve unprovoked invading of other country, then it's good they don't care, even assuming your biased rhetoric has anything close to reality.
Why do people who oppose the war in Ukraine feel it's Ukraine's responsibility to roll over and die, instead of Russia's responsibility to turn around and go home?
Is that truly what people who oppose the war believe? Or is that an easy strawman for you to dismiss the anti-war crowd in the eyes of those who dont know the history of this conflict?
What do people like you mean by "anti-war", exactly? Do you expect Ukraine to stop trying to liberate its people from a genocidal fascist invader who is holding them hostage? Do you want Ukraine to give up? Because, like, I suppose surrendering and being marched to the basement for your 9 grams of lead (that is, unless you accept being ethnically cleansed off your land and becoming a refugee) - well that also ends the war.
This is usual tactics of Putins' shills. They all very much against war, but it's certainly must be stopped as is on the current frontline. So Ukraine not controlling part of it's territories and can't get into NATO, so Putin can prepare better for next invasion.
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.
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 agree that Kim Dotcom is not likely to be on Russia's payroll, but, as you said, he's simply small minded, spiteful, and more or less accept whatever narrative that empire feeds them.
Most likely he just hate US for a good reason and gonna support anything anti-US. In his particular case he probably just needs a country that not gonna extradite him to US no matter how bad the country is.
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.
tribalism. Probably on the democrat side and probably because Kim has been active on X. propaganda and its effects are literally that dumb and predictable (thus the NPC label).
Eh. I'm far-left and also think that the way he's been treated has been out-of-proportion to his actual crimes, and mostly predicated on his having pissed off powerful donors and not being Chinese. And I'd argue that there are plenty of people on the right who support him primarily because of his edgelord-iness, and not so much out of concern for an ever-expanding carceral state that deals out "justice" capriciously and disproportionately to whoever the oligarchs point at.
Huh. Really. It's leftists who are demonizing him? Not the right, which has traditionally been the far far more corporate-friendly political wing?
And "because he tweeted on X"?
I think you're going to need something a bit more substantive than that.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-am...
The concept itself ("being on the payroll") is archetypical head-in-the-sand American. All countries have intelligence assets on the payroll, and that absolutely includes the US, probably on the #1 spot.
Its like Americans complaining about how Chinese or Indian hit movies are covertly pro-Chinese or pro-Indian propaganda pieces. Ever heard of Hollywood?
- "What motivates you?"
Intelligence operative or peasant. Pick one.
sad to see that kind of comments in HN. I feel that 10 years ago there was more room for accepting that a political opponent should be free to speak up. now our educated masses are pushing for prison and extradition because they don't belong to the axis of good.... you def cannot be for opensource and its values and say things like that
I don't understand your line of thought. The question with Kim was not about open-source, was about copyright and intellectual property all along.
As other comments noted, the man literally made millions distributing copyrighted material, while completely aware of what he was doing.
no. he gave people a way to send stuff and they sent what they wanted.
Have you read the indictment? It makes a pretty strong case that he knew copyright infringement was the cash cow of his business model, structuring the business and lying to copyright holders in order to make the infringement more effective. Deleting links without removing the infringing content from the server is the big smoking gun to me - there’s really no legitimate reason to do that.
So what? are you a record executive? why do you feel so strongly about this? what is motivating you to simp for the empire so hard?
I don’t think this is an honest question and I’m not going to engage with it.
That's the mother of cop outs. It's an absolutely honest question.
Perhaps we're using terminology differently. When I say "honest question", I mean a question that someone wants a straightforward answer to, perhaps as a starting point for further discussion.
"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.
You're arguing legality trumps morality. We're in the opposite camp.
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!
disagree
people used to be embarrassed in forums like this about being so pro-government. Tech has been completely captured by normies
yup, what a bummer
chatgpt is doing just that and they re being praised for it. hell they even break deal with gov agencies
But it's run by Altman and Microsoft. They bring money to US so allowed to do it.
On the other hand, the straming/video 'services', are literally stealing stuff you bought from them. How is that better? If there's a "buy"/"purchase" button, the movie is yours... it's not a "rent" button, where they can take it away whenever they want.
Kim is a modern day robin hood. Illegal, criminal, yada yada? Sure. Is he "bad" for the people? Well... that's very debatable.
Kim is not a political opponent, he is a convicted criminal who now very deep in fake news, conspiracy myths and other lies. This is not someone who has just a different opinion on some things, but one with a long history of seriously harmful behavior.
how is it different than what youtube, chatgpt, fb or even google drive did? the only difference is his political stance
Those are services, not people. And what illegal stuff are they actually doing? Yes, people abuse them for illegal content, but it's not their normal modus operandi. The companies are removing content on proper request and do not actively aid in spreading it.
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.
they did the same original thing he was blamed for. having a platform where people can upload stuff. but like you said he should be jailed for his beliefs because he shouldnt be free to spread his conspiracy theories. how about religious people shoudl we jail them too?
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..
also to your point about services removing illegal stuff here the NYT : “ During the first full month of the new ownership, the company suspended nearly 300,000 accounts for violating “child sexual exploitation” policies, 57 percent more than usual, the company said. The effort accelerated in January, Twitter said, when it suspended 404,000 accounts”
how come musk did it with 80% people fired why wasnt it adressed before? would you send the previous twitter ceo to jail?
It isn't 'a difference of opinion'. Dotcom has relayed Russian disinformation to an impressionable mass audience and heartily cheerled an invasion. It's not surprising that people who disagree with him politically find themselves amused or glad at the prospect of due process being served in this individual's case - where they might otherwise have been indifferent or grudgingly sympathetic.
what makes you so sure you're not the impressionable audience being fed misinformation?
The comment you're responding to just speculates that he will escape to Russia based on his (very consistent) views and activism, there's no suggestion that he should go to prison because of them.
The comment he's responding to speculates that he is being paid by russia to post on twitter, as if people couldn't come to their own conclusions based on their own views and their own biases, which are very very strong against the US if you're Kim Dotcom with good reason.
Just like trump eh?
Is everyone you don't like a Russian spy?
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. The degree to which the propaganda works is alarming. They'll turn a blind eye to Ross Ulbricht, Snowden, the Patriot Act, etc. while wasting their time foaming at the mouth at made up stories about Russia. Unreal to see in this day and age, honestly - I mean you'd think the internet + a little critical thinking would have given these people a clue.
I have a hard time just convincing people in my company to buy a license for some software we arguably need. I literally can not convince them using any logic or facts, it's downright infuriating and I feel like I'm in a crazy world. You can't bring people to the watering hole, they have to get there on their own. And by that point, I've given up and have moved on. And even then, no amount of "I told you so" will have them listening to you next time around, they always just double-up on their own ideas and cope with the existence of any facts that contradict them. Oh and sometimes they forgot you even told them in the first place, and they make it seem like they thought of it first.
I weep for this world.
I know what you mean and I work with some smart people that also cannot be convinced with arguments unless they come from someone with a high social status. They have to fail to learn anything if they don't have someone around with a high social status to guide them.
Nitpicking, but I think the saying goes "You can bring a horse to the watering hole, but you can't force it to drink". :-)
Which stories about Russia do you find made up, exactly? When my relative had to watch his neighbour being taken to a Russian torture chamber in Kherson, not to be seen for months, and then hearing his stories about daily beatings, electrocution, pulled fingernails and the like - was that made up? Are you one of those people who consider the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Ukrainians in Bucha "made up"?
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.
Two bad (and sad) things can be true at the same time.
Let's not read past the words written on the screen now. No reason to bring Trump into the conversation at all.
I too have 100% faith in the united states justice system. They're the goodest of good guys!
I'm not a fan but do you have real proof of this conspiracy theory? It's very popular to accuse people of being on Russia's payroll now. Rather unfortunately it dumbs down the movement to hold Russia responsible for invading Ukraine.