US Department of Justice details Kim Dotcom evidence The US Department of Justice has released the evidence it hopes will prove that Kim Dotcom is indeed a nefarious pirate. In a 191-page PDF court filing, the Department labels Dotcom the head of “ a worldwide criminal enterprise, which operates and administers several Internet websites that reproduce and distribute infringing …
That conspiracy, the filing says, knowingly permitted copyrighted material to be accessed on various websites and reaped more than $US150m [sic] for the conspirators.
If they're making money, couldn't the copyright owners just take a cut and let MegaUpload and the like become a new kind of distribution channel?
No, wont fly because this is not about monetizing todays content it is about future control of all content. By seeing pirates everywhere you can get stupid, stupid, stupid public servants and our dim witted representatives to pass legislation offering draconian penalties for trivial infractions of work that was done up to ~120 years ago. Armed with this the RIAA, MPAA and other bastions of godly virtue will shake down any new content producer or distributor. There is bound to be something in new work that is derivative from something created over the last 120 years - just let us scan your stuff against our archive, shouldn't take a minute. Even if there isn't there is no penalty for claiming there is and getting it taken down. This is why you can never settle with these parasites, never propose a sensible alternative, never reach consensus. It is not about protecting the world from Adam Sandler and Lady Gaga. It is about protecting established monopolies from Joe down the road who comes up with the next South Park and wants to sell it himself over the internet.
In my opinion you're closer to the truth than many may think.
When it comes to distribution of copyrighted material, MegaUpload is no worst than, say, DropBox. But DropBox anchored in the US under US juridiction and so acronym agencies have direct access to everything that happens there.
Now where's a good tinfoil hat when you need one?
For sure, if Mega was outside the scope of both National Security Letters and DMCA takedown notices, it would piss off both the spooks and the Mickey Mouse industry. But in that case, how can Mega also be inside the scope of US jurisdiction when it comes to this vengeful extradition attempt?
And note the tendentious language they use. By repeating the words "criminal" and "conspiracy" often enough, they hope they reader will believe they are true, rather then simply being allegations, which Mr Dotcom denies.
Also note how legal fictions can change to suit whatever you're trying to prove. Sometimes a URL that points to an infringing copy is itself an infringement. This time, deleting such a URL doesn't count as deleting an infringement.
Let's hope the Kiwi courts keep their eyes on the ball.
> But in that case, how can Mega also be inside the scope of US jurisdiction when it comes to this vengeful extradition attempt?
Some of the servers Mega used were physically located in the US. It's on the wrong side of tenuous but that's what they used. If it hadn't been the case they would probably have used something like "some of the traffic went through US tubes", or "some US citizens were exposed to it" (as was used to seize domain used by foreign gambling sites).
“the Mega Conspiracy measured the throughput, or bandwidth, that files on the Mega Sites were consuming. Files that demanded higher throughput, which meant that more users were accessing those files simultaneously, were stored on faster servers located in Washington, D.C. The preliminary analysis of the databases shows that the vast majority of files on these computers are infringing copies of copyrighted works, and the Mega Conspiracy has purposefully made their rapid and repeated distribution a primary focus of their infrastructure.”
Looks like anybody that serves a large amount of content over the internet needs to watch out. Looks like managing your resources effectively is criminal nowadays......
"Files that demanded higher throughput, which meant that more users were accessing those files simultaneously, were stored on faster servers ... [..snip...]...has purposefully made their rapid and repeated distribution a primary focus of their infrastructure"
yep.. looks like akamai.com's modus operandi ... shut them down too! (/sarcasm)
oh wait.. can't do that...
http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html
even NASA or the Australian Government or Autodesk uses Akamai services.... or a whole TON of US Government Agencies... shut them down too! :p
Produce proof that Akamai is *knowingly* distributing pirated copyright material and that may well happen.
Kim Dotcom has his faults, but he seems an intelligent man. Even before the emails released by the authorities, I was thinking that he couldn't possibly be under the impression all those people were paying a subscription just to distribute a lot of personal date, Linux distributions or gigabytes of their own personal compositions? I dare say some where using Megaupload to distribute their own personal compositions, but the amount that would have been doing that would not have made him much profit, and probably would not have covered their own costs.
I'm fairly certain he realised that as well.
> Produce proof that Akamai is *knowingly* distributing pirated copyright material and that may well happen.[...] he seems an intelligent man [...] he couldn't possibly be under the impression all those people were paying a subscription just to distribute a lot of personal date, Linux distributions or gigabytes of their own personal compositions?
Dat. Argument.
I'm afraid I don't really share your admiration for Kim Dotcom, he does not seem like an intelligent man to me, but that's not the point. A lot of people were using MegaUppload for legitimate content, as a lot of people are using DropBox for legitimate content, too. Be it images of Linux distros, GB of their personnal compositions, "personnal date" (?) or copyrighted works (which you have every right to store wherever you want, including DropBox or Megaupload, should you so desire).
"Looks like anybody that serves a large amount of content over the internet needs to watch out. Looks like managing your resources effectively is criminal nowadays......"
C'mon: Are you really and with a straight face trying to tell me that they didn't know that the content was mostly other people's, but they were happy to stick their fingers in their ears and reap in the profits of piracy?
I would maybe be a bit more included to swallow it if Kim had the balls to say "Yeah, we're doing it because we think that the information wants to be free and copyright is horse-shit", but he's not making a point: He's just a fat guy who made a lot of money out of it and is now doing his best Manuel "I know noooothing" routine while gloating over how many X-Box Ones he owns.
Just a thought - the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau committed an illegal act by intercepting Kim Dotcom's communications. The New Zealand Police Dept committed an illegal act - or let's call a spade a spade: a criminal act - by relying on overly broad warrants for their raid on Dotcom's home. Both the New Zealand Police Dept and the FBI committed illegal acts in confiscating the computers, since the warrants were overly broad. And that's not including the very many private individuals whose private property was illegally confiscated and not returned since the NZ Police Dept and the FBI made use of overly broad warrants.
Add to that that anything written becomes covered with copyright automatically, and the NZ Police Dept and the FBI are guilty of this "crime" of Internet Piracy they believe themselves to be fighting, and the criminal charges apply with doubled strength to law enforcement found guilty of corruption.
"Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints ..." Sympathy for the Devil, anyone?
Your correspondent has just re-watched Donnie Brasco and so cannot help but think sitting behind a keyboard and logging on to a web site rather lowers the bar for “undercover” work.
Quite so. But these are the times of remote-control operators being "traumatized" behind their screens while they blow up wedding parties in Yemen. Pass out the purple cyber hearts!
I'm no legal beagle here in the UK but surely the DOJ have shot themselves in the foot by releasing any so-called "evidence" prior to any form of trial? To my mind, this would bias any court or jurors. Is this allowed? Surely "evidence" should be produced in the proper place, namely a court of law, not bandied around the streets or the media beforehand. This sounds like an extreme form of damage limitation to divert attention away from all the alleged illegal skull-duggery that happened in New Zealand, which, if true, would preclude any legal action by the DOJ, or anyone else, come to that, if correct procedures have not been followed, as does seem the case.
Nope, jury selection will dictate they find a few (12) rednecks from the swamps of Louisiana, the hills of Kentucky or Tennessee who can't read, love NASCAR, never listen to the radio and use TVs for target practice and possibly suffer from inbreeding and the urge to eat human flesh and get great enjoyment from those that take a wrong turn.
The selection will however make sure that they are true patriots and love their country. A totally unbiased jury US style.
LarsG,
Funny thing about those twelve people, most of those "rednecks" will actually have morals and principles, unlike you simpering, sanctimoneous eurotrash. I could add a few extra comments about your kinds obvious predelictions for unsavory sexual practices with unwilling sheep but you already know.
At this time of the year it might be nice if racist douchebags would just STFU but you think you're better than we are so you have to offer your maladjusted hate speech.
Really, it's obviously biggoted dicks like you that make the internet a real cesspool. Glad to see that ignorant scumbags inhabit both sides of the pond proof that equal opportunity applies to assholes.
> "LarsG,
Funny thing about those twelve people, most of those "rednecks" will actually have morals and principles, unlike you simpering, sanctimoneous eurotrash. I could add a few extra comments about your kinds obvious predelictions for unsavory sexual practices with unwilling sheep but you already know.
At this time of the year it might be nice if racist douchebags would just STFU but you think you're better than we are so you have to offer your maladjusted hate speech.
Really, it's obviously biggoted dicks like you that make the internet a real cesspool. Glad to see that ignorant scumbags inhabit both sides of the pond proof that equal opportunity applies to assholes."
The thing is they just make it so damn easy. It's almost not worth the effort.
I have to hand it to him though. The spelling and grammar is pretty good.
The jury trial always starts with the bickering over selection. Someone I know was selected for jury duty (US, I believe). Not any mega-crime, just a routine case of a dog attack - the defendant was accused of failing to control a dangerous animal, or whatever the state crime is called. Straight away, the prosecution got her and half the jury replaced because they owned dogs, and the prosecution successfully argued this could bias them in favor of the defendant.
I wonder how many of you actually understand how sick and mad this use of a jury actually is and in how few countries it is used. Fine perhaps some hundreds of years ago and I admit "twelve brave men" was a fine movie. But today it is part of a system that is madder than mad. You have a dubious patent case, just have it in Texas and you will have a 50/50 chance to win among a jury who is carefully appointed to understand nothing about the topic. Representing the mob you will have all the old and tried opportunities to change the score easily. Remember the big basketball player who probably killed his wife or lately the guy who shot a black teenager because he felt he had to. Remember how SCO in its last desperate move wanted to have a jury to its rescue against IBM. The jury system is a huge cancer in the Anglo/American legal system, a completely outdated and stupid and utterly undemocratic system. I do not expect the British to change the system ever, although they may change their shoos once in a century.
I spat in that beer.
What principled or coherent argument have you against agencies operating to protect industries and often on behalf of copyright holders including artists?
If a song is worth listening to chances are it's one of the greatest things that person who wrote it will ever accomplish. If you insist they not be allowed to do that full-time but instead have to take a dayjob, you deprofessionalise music, you steal people's work, you steal often that which they properly gave up their life to produce, and all for pleasure and not need, whereas those who work in a field need market mechanisms to operate such that they be paid.
Shall we force you to go without pay? Shall we P2P your work? How about we redistribute your possessions against your will?
Don't use a strawman, the argument is not against the valid and proper use of copyright but against destroying a file sharing system that amongst legitimate usage held copyright infringing material.
And in this case peoples personal files were taken away and destroyed without their consent so personal possesion did get removed from peoples hands.
How about we redistribute your possessions against your will?
Sure!
As long as they're only copies you're taking, likewise is P2P. Unless you happen to be from the "Home taping is killing music" incorrigible bigot brigade in which case you're not worth anyone's time for a response.
There are more than these two alternatives; the MPAA/RIAA lockdown, or complete piratical free-for-all. It would be possible (even easy), to devise several intermediate alternatives, each of which would be better than the status quo.
It says a great deal about the industry propagandists that they managed to make 'sharing' a dirty word.
"It says a great deal about the industry propagandists that they managed to make 'sharing' a dirty word."
Is this from the same people who say
"Last week, at the Fordham IP conference, which is a yearly gathering of mostly IP-maximalists, it seems that this attitude was on display in full force. Rebecca Tushnet's recap of some of the sessions is really quite stunning -- including a comment from a Fordham professor who apparently claimed that democracy was a bad thing because the public went against strict IP rights. As Tushnet noted:"
"Hugh Hansen suggesting that democracy was a really bad thing because citizens think short term and elites give us rights, and that’s why IP can only be protected without democracy, or as he put it, with "filters." (If by “us” you mean white men holding property. I do not believe I am exaggerating: he pointed to revolutionary Virginia as the great model for providing rights and the rest of American history as decline as things were turned over to the greedy proles. I obviously beg to differ, and this November the Commonwealth will indeed let me vote. I understand that Hansen likes to provoke, but the ugliness of his claims should not go unremarked.)"
Democracy is bad because the rich cannot get much richer all due to pirates eating into their lifetime "copyright " welfare system? Cry me a river.
"agencies operating to protect industries and often on behalf of copyright holders including artists." I was with you until the last two words. With the pittance many artists receive from their corporate partners and copyright extending 70 years beyond the artist's life that's a bit much to ask someone to believe.
Downvoted.
Tapeador:
I argue that content creators should be paid similar to everyone else. Their efforts remunerated based on the amount of labour they put in, not on "ownership" of an intangible property. Just as I cannot shovel your sidewalk once and then charge you rent forever more, a copyright owner should not be able to record a single song and then dine on it for eternity.
Creative works need to be remunerated, but they are not property, no more so than the labour I put in to systems administration or journalism. Creators - like anyone else - are only as good as the last erg of effort they've cranked into the system. They should be paid for their time, but emphatically not allowed to rent seek on intangibles.
If you stay in my house, you ultimately degrade the infrastructure. You prevent my using the space you occupy for other things. You use up tangible consumables that are commodities of varying scarcities. In this circumstance, rent makes sense. I have to pay to maintain my property, I have to replace those consumables and I might have otherwise used that space as a home gym or shrine to Cthulhu.
Digital copies of creative works have no scarcity. They are intangible and cannot be consumed. My enjoyment of it does not deprive you of the ability to enjoy a copy of it simultaneously, nor to share it with others, also simultaneously. By any rational, moral or ethical argument it is not property.
This doesn't change the fact that a content creator should be paid for their work. If they put in 5 hours writing an article, they should be compensated at a reasonable rate. We should even factor in that work for freelance content creators - like consultants - is not steady, so they should be able to charge a higher per-hour rate, as they get fewer hours. Like a consultant, they should hopefully be spending their non-project hours refining their skills and honing their abilities in their niche, so as to justify the cost.
The truly exceptional among them should be able to command top dollar. Equivalent, say, to a VCDX...and for the same reasons. The skills are rare.
The mundane should be offered no more than your run-of-the-mill bench tech, again, for the same reasons. The skills involved are pedestrian.
Let's posit a scenario:
As a help desk operator I take your call one day. I walk you through changing the ream of paper in your printer. I call this knowledge I have imparted to you "intellectual property" and demand that you pay me $5 every time you change a ream of paper. If you teach someone else to change a ream of paper without my consent then you are committing theft of my intellectual property. If someone else discovered how to change the ream of paper independently, it doesn't matter, because I taught someone in your company how to make that change first, and thus I get to exact rent for 120 years.
Sounds ridiculous? So does 120 years worth of tithe for Steamboat Willie.
The difference between rent seeking on the transmission of knowledge and rent seeking on the transmission of intangible, infinitely reproducible elements of culture exists only in the minds of those desperate to the be rent seekers.
Now, If you hit "submit" on a comment ever again, know that I thought of it first and you owe me $19.99 every time. Attempting to get someone else to hit submit on your behalf is a violation of my intellectual property and you will be fined $100,000 for each infraction as well as go to jail for 7 years.
That seems perfectly fair to me. Submit.
RE: "How about we redistribute your possessions against your will?"
If you can make unlimited copies of my possessions, still leaving me with the originals, and redistribute them to everyone who cares to have them, please do! I would love it if I could give my house to every homeless person on the planet, but still own it, that would be awesome.
So to present a one sided view of someones guilt to the public before a deportation has even gone though sounds a rather one sided Justice.As does has previously mentioned allowing bulk publication of evidence whose method of extraction has still to be verified as legal in the eyes of the law........
I think the repeated reference to Megaupload' as the 'Megaupload conspiracy' was what the poster was talking about, not the actual conspiracy charge.
For example if you were accused of murder you would feel aggrieved and worry about a fair trail if the press releases repeatedly referred to you as 'the murder John Smith'
Fuck you. Either you subscribe to principles governing property which privilege all owners of property, or you advocate the abolition of your own. Do you advocate us taking what you own and working for free? If so then I suggest you demonstrate it by giving it all up now. Otherwise your argument is a chauvinist argument, that is to say it's based on "might makes right", and/or a solely egoistic maxim. "I" doesn't make right, nor does being stronger than a weak party.
When Karl Marx advocated out of pity for the starving proletariat of the 1840s, the abolition of private property, he didn't see that markets with state help and support for those working in them would become the most miraculous and incredible source of incentivising investment and work and growth and distributing material benefits. Markets do this. Music and film are special kinds of goods, they're not public goods generally, they're not free, they usually require paying for. Markets must be supported.
Yes so such a principle privileging property should be subject to qualification for special kinds of of scarce or strategically sensitive property e.g. land, but songs and movies are as far from falling into such a category as is imaginable.
>To those who approve of Kim Dotcom
Disapproving of the prosecution methods does not mean approval of the fat moron; same as reticences to carpet-bomb Iraq's civilian populations did not mean approval of Hussein's regime.
>Do you advocate us taking what you own and working for free?
Do you advocate foreign special forces illegally busting your door at the little hours and stealing your customers' property without reason or warning and without providing a way for them to get their stuff back?
>chauvinist argument
"Chauvinist" does not mean what you think it does.
> When Karl Marx advocated out of pity for the starving proletariat of the 1840s, the abolition of private property
Karl Marx did not advocate the abolition of private property, nor did he do anything out of pity for the starving proletariat of the 1840s. It was "private property of the means of production" and there was nothing about pity; Marx was a philosopher and an economist, not a charity.
The rest of your post seems to be some kind of headless rambling, it's hard to see you point, you should probably rephrase. Focus on one idea per sentence, it usually helps.
Again with the strawman, how this case has unfolded is what has annoyed people, you can tie it down the wilful disregard trhe US Govt has for the rights of citizens in other countries and their right to hold theire data securely and safely.
The behaviour of the US Govt and complicit with them the RIAA etc has been scandalous. I'm all for legitimate use of copyright and services such as Spotify and Netflix are beginning to fill the gap in digital distribuition that exists. However unlike Spotify (which has fought hard to reach this point) the content on Netflix, LoveFilm etc is rather sparse and not the latest releases, from what I understand it the big studios won't sell electronic distribution until physical has made the most amount of money.
When Marx wrote that in the 1840s, US copyright lasted at most 42 years, not the 120 or life+70 years that it is now. When you claim there are only two possible states of having or not having copyright law, which version of copyright law are actually referring to?
I take it you think Youtube should be taken down, with criminal charges made, too then?
@Tapeador:
Just a quick reminder:
- no-one was harmed because of these alleged offenses
- no kittens or puppies were tortured
- no property was stolen
- no-one's reputation was soiled
- no lies were spoken
Files were copied. That's it. That's all.
Get a fucking grip for crying out loud.
I don't believe that we are talking about whether Dotcom is "approved" by ANYBODY. What we ARE talking about (like the man or not) is the application of the same normal justice that should apply to anyone on the planet, which should NOT include alleged illegal raids, New Zealand spooks illegally snooping, the DOJ releasing so-called "evidence" before any trial is even mooted, Dotcom's property (hard drives, I believe) being spirited illegally out of the country to the States and the list could go on. Whatever you may think of Dotcom, he seems to have been the subject of a savage witch-hunt and harassment before any due process is instigated.
Your arguments and methods of putting them forwards (i.e. unrelated ranting that seem to be there for the pure reason of getting responses...aka trolling) feel somewhat familiar...
Do you, perhaps, go by the name Eadon?
All we need from you are a couple of anti-MS comments scattering around, whatever the topic.
Dotcom is a shady businessman who, as many businessmen do (Shady and respected), found a way to stay just barely legal while reaping profit. He was relying on a simple enough plan: It's impossible to effectively police copyright on a public file sharing service, so he knew that even if he made every reasonable effort (he did), infringement would still be rampant.
But that's not enough for the DoJ. They want the political points here, and the big political score, so some shady quasi-legal businessman just won't do. Instead they are going for some sort of mega-conspiracy angle - a weird alternate reality where something as simple and commonplace as regional caching becomes a crime, and putting a few terms into google becomes 'online undercover activities.'
"if he made every reasonable effort (he did),"
Did he???? My understanding is that when a piece of copyright material was found, he would remove the link to it.
However, on each item there was a load of links, but he would leave all the others active and the file still avaliable.,
If that's true, then that;s really not "making every reasonable effort".
(Before anyone says anything I don;t agree with how the DOJ handeld any of this.. in my opinion both are as bad as each other)
> However, on each item there was a load of links, but he would leave all the others active and the file still avaliable.,If that's true, then that;s really not "making every reasonable effort".
You have to remember that MegaUpload was a file locker. That is, you could upload content there and access it from wherever you wanted. Nothing prevents you from putting your entire collection of copyrighted music and films in there, for your own use*; what was deemed illegal was the subsequent distribution of links to world+dog.
The _distribution_ of the link only, because obviously you'd have to retain a link for you to access your own stuff. So the appropriate remedy to a copyright infringement by link distribution would be to remove the distributed link.
Removal of the material on the server is not appropriate, as it's perfectly legal for anyone to put copyrighted material up there in what wasn't called The Cloud yet. Plus, MegaUpload was probably technically advanced enough to have de-duplication going on like crazy, which means that they most definitely did NOT host 349,076,454 separate copies of Never Gonna Give You Up.
So, the distribution of the links was a breach of copyright. When notified, MegaUpload removed the infringing link (which was infringing only in that it was distributed, remember). There was no real way nor reason to remove the file from the server, so this wasn't done.
Seems pretty reasonnable to me. Then again in the opposite corner we have people who think that 120 years of royalties is still too short to provide adequate remuneration to the shareholders, so clearly we don't have the same understanding of the word "reasonnable".
I'll tie this to something else in the news: the TPP treaty.
Under the rumored terms of TPP's "corporate sovereignty", what the U.S. Government has done is seizing a private business, ignoring precedent and internal laws in the process. How is it different than nationalizing oil fields? (Beside the minor detail that the nationalized oil fields were often on public land and being operated outside the contract parameters.)
This prosecution was started at the urging of just a few major US companies. By immediately shutting down MegaUpload, they got the full benefit without further action. If this case were brought under the TPP proposed provisions, the USGov risks paying out hundreds of millions, or even billions in damages. Paid by the taxpayers, not the companies.
If it's not already obvious, my viewpoint on the MegaUpload shutdown is that it damaged legitimate users that relied on their storage far more than it helped copyright holders. The movie studios didn't have to wait for the orderly progress of justice, they just did the corporate equivalent of swatting.
US combat drones can be seen in the skys over New Zealand.
I have a family. A few years ago I would have stuck up for causes like Internet freedom but now I am afraid if we do not give up Dotcom and extradite him, NZ will start appearing on those Internet sites that show those US drone strikes in Pakistan etc.
What if Billy Rae Bob Bob the remote US drone pilot mistakes my sons football for a surface to air missile launcher.
I know I'll get down voted for this because no one ever reads comments on this subjects and just votes against the DoJ and RIAA... buuuuut, I think some of you really dont understand how Mega operated. It was designed to make money from the distribution of copyrighted material. That's the only way most people would pay for the service. Megavideo could not have made people pay unless there was something they wanted behind the link sites it enabled. And yes, I do understand that YouTube has done ok from a similar thing.
Make all the points about this case you want EXCEPT trying to claim that copyright infringement was just an incidental misuse of the service. Honestly. My 5 year old tells better fibs :)
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