Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why

http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-the-us-government-is-wrong-heres-why-120326/

by cleverjake • 14 years ago

260 185 14 years ago

parfe• 14 years ago

No surprise about the weakness of the charges. The goal has already been accomplished. Megaupload has been destroyed without a single valid argument being upheld.

cdr• 14 years ago

Entertainment companies are also taking the opportunity to sue: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/valcom-sues-megaupload-for...

pyre• 14 years ago

  > “These are revenues that belong to ValCom, and we’re
  > securing them for the benefit of the company and to
  > increase value for our shareholders,” ValCom president
  > Vince Vellardita said in a statement.

This is like an MBA madlibs statement, all he had to do was fill in the company name.

kokey• 14 years ago

This tactic is not new, and has worked in the past. I'm thinking of a piracy crackdown about 20 years ago. Back then it was a network of dial-up bulletin boards, and people who would commit phone fraud to upload and download data, operating as couriers, in groups. The boards would often fun their hardware through credit card fraud, and many of them made money selling tapes full of pirated material. The crackdown involved raiding the boards, getting the user details, tracking their phone numbers, and getting various people raided in the various countries. A lot of the time the cases would collapse in court on various technicalities, but it would be a year before people would get their seized computer equipment back.

talmand• 14 years ago

Don't forget they've also tried to prevent his ability to defend himself by seizing every bit of property and/or assets they could get their hands on. Kind of hard to defend yourself against a prosecutor that has an unlimited budget and you have no means to fund your defense.

eli2• 14 years ago

Just to play devil's advocate, would you permit an accused pick pocket to use funds from stolen wallets to pay for his defense?

Zirro• 14 years ago

This raises the interesting question: What would happen if Megaupload actually managed to win in court? Would any part on the other side be responsible to pay for the damages caused to uptime and reputation?

Considering how profitable Megaupload was pre-takedown, we're talking enormous sums.

geoffw82• 14 years ago

Yeah, I think the interesting thing here is the flip-side of them (Mega) not being a US entity in anyway. I read a while ago (no links I'm afraid) that essentially a US agency/regulator has to give permission for a US based entity to sue an agency like the FBI. I'd be very interested to see how it plays out for someone like Mega, or their web hosts if in fact they did win. There'd be no protection in place. They'd have to battle.

I'd be interested to know if any HN'ers have anything more solid to add?

ovi256• 14 years ago

So this is pretty much extra-judiciary punishment, then ?

richardlblair• 14 years ago

"Megaupload has been destroyed..."

I don't think it's destroyed at all. It is hurt, and hurt bad, but I think they could make a come back if he can get it back online after this disaster is over.

brazzy7• 14 years ago

Defendants now get to decide whether charges are "weak"?

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Maybe Dotcom should run for New Zealand's Senate, too.

gassit• 14 years ago

They don't have an upper house. Haven't for quite a while.

spoiledtechie• 14 years ago

Bump, President. Cough, cough.

RowanH• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand

mml• 14 years ago

Hopefully the DOJ will eventually abandon ship. They won't forget how bad the RIAA et. al. made them look any time soon if this happens.

fl3tch• 14 years ago

Like the politicians who kept the Vietnam War going long after victory was impossible, they don't understand sunk costs. They are all in at this point. No prosecutor of a case this big will accept the embarrassment of merely dropping the charges. They have to win, so this will go to court.

sp332• 14 years ago

There's more than one way to win. They could declare that they "settled for undisclosed terms", declare victory, and walk away.

luriel• 14 years ago

Many of the people Obama has appointed to top positions in the DoJ are ex RIAA/MPAA folks.

naner2• 14 years ago

This begs the question of why Mega was so aggressively targeted.

I think it's pretty clear. This was one of the largest and easiest to use file-locker services. I used it tons of times because it was so convenient and the free service was much better than any of the other file-locker services. If you had an ad-blocker installed, the site was almost too good to be true. You could download huge files after a 30 second wait, at reasonably high speeds, no captcha or any other hoops to jump through, and you could download another file from the site immediately afterwards without wait (most sites make free users wait between downloads). Files would stay up on the site seemingly indefinitely, while other file-locker services would delete a file after it was not accessed for a specific number of days.

Also Kim was a larger-than-life target. He was living extravagantly. Right after he was arrested there was a huge Ars article about how ridiculous his lifestyle and persona was. So now the government could say: "Hey look at this asshole, he's getting rich off of piracy and stealing American jobs." They couldn't have hoped for a better target.

Unfortunately, Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law and he thought he was untouchable because of his location. That might be a workable strategy for someone keeping a lower-profile but if you piss off enough powerful people they will find a way to get at you, legal or not. (As we are seeing here.)

That being said, since the guy had a family he really should have found a more respectable way to make a living. This was pretty reckless and selfish on his part.

Karunamon15• 14 years ago

  >Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law

I don't think providing a DMCA takedown process which was removing tens of thousands of files a day counts as "thumbing his nose at US copyright law"

naner2• 14 years ago

The site still appears to have been hosting mostly infringing content. Not a business I'd consider getting into if I had a wife/kid.

dlikhten• 14 years ago

Furthermore he fully complied with DMCA which only required links removed. He followed the law to the letter, more he even gave tools that go above and beyond the law. It is not his fault the industry was not willing to properly police.

Now devil's advocate: the MPAA and affiliates CANNOT possibly go over every single website which hosts content and provides different ways of inspecting that information and filter. It is just impossible. They would spend all their money 10x over just policing. Which of course begs the question: are they evolving with changes in tech or just doing everything in their power not to.

brazzy7• 14 years ago

A DMCA takedown process with was a sham and was not actaully removing anything counts as exactly that. Especially when internal mails reveal that the daily cap for takedown notices was determined by what wouldn't impact revenue.

tptacek35• 14 years ago

The site had millions of users. Is the allusion to "tens of thousands" of files supposed to be convincing? Why was there a limit at all? This is a site that had to deal with (say) 10,000 takedowns a day; clearly, it had a rampant piracy problem.

Nelson69• 14 years ago

There are a lot of missing variables here, 10s of thousands of files a day sure does sound like a lot to a lot of people though, for all we know that's just a drop in the bucket.

How many DMCA take down requests does a company like google/youtube get a day? Anyone know? Just out of curiosity.

It all sort of proves the point though, Megaupload had a ton of piracy and all parties involved knew it. I think that might matter more than a lot of people think, they may have complied with the literal letter of the law but can't courts deem it not enough? Napster was ordered by a court to monitor it's use and restrict illegal use and they were ultimately unable to. There are already cases on the books for that, the fact that MU gave out access to tools like direct delete just shows that they knew the extent of the problem. Still, no reason to skip due process, but I don't know what all the evidence is either.

badclient2• 14 years ago

"Hey look at this asshole, he's getting rich off of piracy and stealing American jobs." They couldn't have hoped for a better target.

The problem with this argument is that the government can make similar arguments about most wealthy people if they have already decided they'd like to bring them down. Does this mean you shouldn't live big purely out of fear of the gov? Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

rasur• 14 years ago

In a recent interview (also linked to on HN), he also stated that he provided direct access to (all of) the media companies, so that they could directly delete infringing links themselves.

brazzy7• 14 years ago

Yeah, I would also claim that in his situation.

deathwarmedover• 14 years ago

It's worth pointing out that Dotcom defending himself on this point in an interview recently: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1203/S00018/kim-dotcom-inte...

  And those clips were long before I had a wife and a family and kids, you know, 
  my priorities have changed. I’m a family man, you know, I am not 
  doing these kinds of things – that was childish stuff, and it was 
  fun at the time and I don’t regret it, but that is not me today, I 
  am a different guy.

majani• 14 years ago

I'm not buying that. He had bloody giraffes on his lawn when they were taking him away.

why-el• 14 years ago

This is a very inaccurate comment. How is he "thumbing his nose at US copyright law"? And since when does copyright infringement pursuit only get triggered when the infringer decides to show off?

powertower6• 14 years ago

> obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law and he thought he was untouchable because of his location.

That and the fact that MU made its profits from tricking people into paying for the download privilege of illegal content and/or displaying ads on those pages.

If they did not charge or monetize that illegal content in some way, they would not have made the 100s of millions that they did.

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

Tricking people? They promised and delivered faster downloads.

badclient2• 14 years ago

Don't forget the MPAA CEO is none other than former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd.

Also, Obama's copyright czar received a strong endorsement from the RIAA/MPAA.

It seems like Obama/White House should create another position that "competes" with the copyright czar and takes the other extreme position.

(Obama voter here so don't really mean to make a political statement with this post)

jbooth• 14 years ago

My cynical guess is this was the price to keep the money flowing after they opposed SOPA/PIPA publicly.

sequoia2• 14 years ago

I never used megaupload so I apologize if I'm way off, but I'm really confused: After this "bust" it seems the received wisdom is that MegaUpload was not some shady illegal file sharing site; whereas beforehand (if memory serves), it was common knowledge that that was exactly what it was. Some friends who engage in such sharing tell me they "don't use bittorrent anymore, DD [direct download] is easier."

Have I gone crazy? Do most BT tracker sites that feature "illegal" content not advertise direct download sites as an alternative way to download stuff illegally?

I'm really confused because I thought that "DD sites are a competitor to BT for downloading stuff illegally" was common knowledge, now we're shocked-SHOCKED that such unseemly allegations would be leveled at such respectable Netizens as Megaupload. I am not commenting on whether copyright is broken, merely "was this not a popular site to d/l illegal stuff?"

ori_b5• 14 years ago

The question isn't whether it was popular to use them to host infringing material -- I think everyone agrees that it was. The question is whether they acted as they were legally required when it came to takedown requests.

That's what determines if they are liable for other people putting infringing content on their servers.

icebraining6• 14 years ago

Yes, it was a popular site to download stuff without a proper license. That doesn't mean they were an "illegal file sharing site". Youtube is also a popular site to view illegally shared videos, but they're not an "illegal video sharing site".

powertower6• 14 years ago

MU made its profits from tricking people into paying for the privilege of downloading that pirated content.

That's the difference.

tptacek35• 14 years ago

Youtube is a popular site to view unreliable, low-quality streaming versions of unlawfully shared videos. Nobody thinks Youtube is a substitute for (say) a Hulu+ or Amazon Prime subscription.

People also shared legitimate content on Napster. Once in a blue moon, someone will use BitTorrent to transfer a Linux kernel. But we all know why those services were or are popular.

Nerds appreciate good hacks, and are also infuriated by how fuzzy and nondeterministic the legal system is. So they tend to vigorously adhere to arguments like "how can you prove a DVDRIP of The Muppets wasn't a lawfully-created backup of a purchased DVD stored for entirely legitimate reasons", or, "how can you claim a service like MegaUpload is a gigantic scam that milks millions of dollars out of piracy when people obviously do use it to store Linux kernels". If the legal system worked the way nerds want it to, these arguments would be totally convincing: if you can't prove as if to a programming language runtime that something is criminal, well, you shouldn't even be able to get an indictment.

Of course, that's not how the legal system works. A gigantic portion of almost every criminal case hinges on the question of intent, which involves proving to a jury what someone was thinking. That's a head-explodey concept, because you can't write a computer program to evaluate it. But it's also the basis for many centuries of western law.

Similarly, if you find some awesome, clever scheme by which you can profit from piracy without ever touching pirated content, the law is not going to evaluate your culpability simply from the bits on your hard drive. The totality of the circumstances involved in your scheme will be used to make a case as to your interest in and promotion of piracy, much of which will involve trying to read your mind based on tea leaves like "what sites did you choose to run your ads on".

Similarly, the DoJ is required to spend their time on cases they believe they can win. It can be considered unethical for them to prosecute cases they don't have a reasonable shot at. So as audibly as the pattern engine in the nerd cortex may ring with recognition at the similarities between Youtube and MegaUpload, they fact that Youtube isn't being prosecuted is irrelevant. The DoJ will start with the cases it can win.

FreeKill• 14 years ago

It was a popular site to download illegal stuff, but that's not the real issue with this case. The debate is whether or not they complied with DMCA takedown laws when they were alerted to copyrighted content and also if they personally uploaded illegal content themselves.

marknutter2• 14 years ago

Google's search engine yields links to all kinds of sites engaging in "illegal" activity. Why are they immune to this kind of attack?

brazzy7• 14 years ago

Because they're not hosting the stuff themselves. Megaupload did.

sequoia2• 14 years ago

A: Tunnels under the US/Mexican border are to be shut down because they are used to transport drugs.

B: Well the US Postal service is used to transport drugs as well, are you going to shut it down too???

ahem Do you really not see any difference between what MegaUpload used to do and what Google does? If so, I suspect willful ignorance. Again, I'm not arguing that copyright laws are sane, just saying I'm confused about the reactions of "how DARE they cast aspersions on MU and suggest that their model was based on piracy" when, well, casual observation of MU's case and the industry as a whole (RapidShare etc.) seems to strongly suggest that their model was based on piracy.*

Heck, I'll just say it straight: it's universal common knowledge that RS, MU, etc. build their businesses on piracy; people in this thread and on TorrentFreak who are trying to suggest otherwise are willfully ignoring the obvious in order to make a point. This makes the point weaker, so I suggest they stop. :)

tripzilch6• 14 years ago

Another problem is that, even if MegaUpload had all the MPAA infringing content you can imagine, taking all of those 25 petabyte offline is kind of similar to nuking a big city in order to take down a few local drug dealers.

woodall• 14 years ago

Yes. Anyone who says otherwise is using some strong cognitive dissonance.

orenmazor• 14 years ago

Now that you think about it, they probably chose the wrong guy to make an example out of. A rich nerd who likes attention? of course he's going to make this into a big deal (whether he's right or not)

billpatrianakos7• 14 years ago

Am I the only one who noticed how ridiculously flimsy this article was? Let me sum it up:

Kim Dotcom says he did nothing wrong. Legal documents say one thing but they're wrong because Kim says that they're wrong. Kim Dotcom would never lie, right? So he must really have never done anything wrong.

There's also this weird backtracking that goes on in the article. First the article claims that Mega is in the clear pretty much based on what Kim Dotcom says and nothing more but then goes on to imply that even if Mega did do something wrong it's totally cool because there are some people using it to share photos and videos of themselves. And those people are US soldiers so the Feds just have to forgive Mega because after all, we can never imply a US soldier would do anything unethical!

Then the 50 Cent thing... "Well, yeah I uploaded the 50 Cent song but I totally bought it first and it was random and the the link was private! Just take me at my word TorrentFreak". And TorrentFreak does take him at his word.

Then, because some big media companies wanted to do business with Mega it somehow absolves them of any sin related to hosting and facilitating the piracy of those same companies' works. Really?

And it just goes on...

Basically as long as what you say supports the TorrentFreak agenda they'll just take you at your word and report what you say as truth. This is 5th grade expository writing, not a news story. The sad thing is that people will read this garbage and take it as truth because it sounds bad like you should be outraged and it kind of sort of includes some semblance of fact.

I can't say if MegaUpload did anything wrong or not based on this story because it's such a terribly written one. Lots of topic sentences, little to no supporting details, and no one seemed to check if what Dotcom was saying is really accurate.

lftl• 14 years ago

I think it's pretty clear from the introduction that this would just be a one-sided response to some of the government's weakest claims. It's essentially just reading one side's legal brief and ignoring the other.

Particularly Dotcom completely ignored a number of the accusations the government has made (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds...). Namely, he didn't address at all that they paid users who were popular uploaders with known infringing content. He also cherry picked some instances of his own use of the system without addressing any of the instances of employee abuses cited above.

chris123• 14 years ago

Glad to see someone fight back against the the corruption that is American politics and status quo and it's growing inquality and accelerating movement towards dystopia. Maybe Dotcom committed crimes, maybe he didn't. I really don't know. But I do know that people are bullied and/or fear- and/or debt-slaved into submission every day and that the only to have a chance to change anything is to stand up for other people and yourself and not go down without a fight.

Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why

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