Kim Dotcom: Joe Biden Ordered the Megaupload Shutdown

https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-joe-biden-ordered-the-megaupload-shutdown-120703/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

by rkudeshi • 14 years ago

217 86 14 years ago

torrentfreak.com

mtgx• 14 years ago

MPAA "lobbying" the VP of US, and then the VP ordering the shutdown of a company from another country on behalf of MPAA (illegally it seems, from recent news).

I think this would be called "corruption" in any other country but US.

shin_lao• 14 years ago

It's not corruption if he didn't personally benefited from it.

The problem is that if your only source of information is biased, you take the wrong decisions.

chmike2• 14 years ago

It depends what is considered a benefit. There is something like elections in the next months...

swombat• 14 years ago

I'm sure the MPAA members are generously contributing to the Obama/Biden re-election funds.

epoxyhockey3• 14 years ago

From the article: Noteworthy is also the MPAA's lobbying disclosure statement of last year which includes money spent on lobbying the office of Vice President Joe Biden.

reitzensteinm2• 14 years ago

I'd say reelection to the second most powerful office in the country is a pretty compelling personal benefit.

The fine line usually placed in the US between corruption and politics as normal is that of the quid pro quo; it's fine to take money from people who happen to share your beliefs, but if you change your votes because of that money, it's corruption.

Politicans have always hidden behind the plausible deniability this gives. You can always claim that you changed your mind on an issue of your own free will, and the donations came later as an unexpected benefit.

But ultimately, it causes well funded interests to dominate political discussion. The teacher's union is almost uncrossable, but how much funding do homeless lobbies get?

Charitably, this is because of survivorship bias - politicans who don't have platforms that generate revenue die out - senators already literally spend half their time raising money [1]. More likely, everyone in congress and the senate sees the writing on the wall and preemtively switches to the right platforms.

The cracks are starting to show in this veneer of innocence, with Chris Dodd earlier this year directly threatening to withhold donations based on SOPA, unless the Obama administration toes the line [2]. It's so long been an open secret in Washington that it was a small step forward for Dodd to take, but it had the unusual effect of exposing the Washingtonian power games to the rest of the country, so it caused quite a bit stir up.

I'm not taking a side on what happened. I genuinely have no opinion one way or another. But if it were as mtgx suggests to curry favour with the MPAA to mend bridges after SOPA, there is zero lattitude on this. It would be corruption.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/a-big-moment_b...

[2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/14472117492/mpaa-d...

Edit: tows->toes. Yes I am an idiot.

cabalamat• 14 years ago

> It's not corruption if he didn't personally benefited from it.

I expect the Obama/Biden election campaign got contributions from MPAA companies. Shutting down Megaupload was payback.

eswangren3• 14 years ago

We call this corruption or perhaps incompetence here too. Where people from outside the US get the idea that we're all a bunch of blind, unthinking, flag waving yokels I do not know.

mcnees287• 14 years ago

If you only hear one side of the story you can't make an informed decision. Fact is the entertainment industry lobby is well organized and able to have their voice heard. The general public is unorganized in this area and rather dispersed.

This is a classic case of concentrated benefits with dispersed cost. It's a messed up situation, but not corrupt.

llasram• 14 years ago

If this is actually true, I think it gets called "corruption" here too. Biden may not have received monetary compensation, but if this is what happened, Dodd owes him a hell of a favor.

sp3323• 14 years ago

I don't think what you described is corruption. That sounds like protecting the interests of US businesses from overseas criminals.

grecy• 14 years ago

So if I pay a cop $1mil to kill the guy that was convicted of raping my child, is that cool too?

Just because someone is or is not guilty, that does not make corruption OK.

droithomme2• 14 years ago

"I think this would be called "corruption" in any other country"

Boys, looks like we got us a terrorist right here. Better shut down his terror website.

spoiledtechie• 14 years ago

It most certainly is called corruption by the people of the US....

Im as an American am both ticked at Biden, and happy that this sort of thing is coming to light due to the Dotcom political thriller.

J3L2404• 14 years ago

I love when experts give their opinion.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

As much as the MPAA appalls me, this really isn't corruption unless a gratuity was offered in return for some sort of political favour.

Establish that, then you have corruption - in the U.S. and everywhere else in the world.

ericd• 14 years ago

I seem to recall that there was a threat of cutting off the campaign contributions if the administration didn't pass the laws that the MPAA wanted passed.

badclient• 14 years ago

From another perspective, Chris Dodd is a lobbyist who's earned every penny of his pay. Still a scumbag, though.

incongruity• 14 years ago

On first glance at the headline, I really thought Kim Dotcom had gone off the deep end, but the evidence really does make it sound plausible.

Sigh. We definitely have the best politicians money can buy...

droithomme2• 14 years ago

Yeah, the evidence is pretty damning. No doubt those visitors logs will soon be pulled from public access due to national security reasons for protection from terrorists who run file locker services.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy#Wheeling_speech

cjensen5• 14 years ago

The Democrats have long been best friends with the Entertainment Industry, but so what? The Vice-President simply has no power to order anything more complex than pizza. He can suggest, plead, and implore, but someone else has to actually take the responsibility for the action and order something to occur.

This is a discussion, not a Court of Law, so let me state my view clearly: Kim Dotcom created an extensive enterprise aimed specifically at violating copyrights while attempting to shield the enterprise with the minimum amount of "compliance" they could get away with. It's entirely possibly that his corporation broke no laws. Regardless of his possible legal innocence, the speculations of a sleezy businessman like Dotcom regarding the integrity of the Vice President is unworthy of consideration.

Karunamon2• 14 years ago

> the speculations of a sleezy businessman like Dotcom regarding the integrity of the Vice President is unworthy of consideration.

Textbook ad hominem. His business practices are completely irrelevant to the questions of impropriety raised and the illegal conduct of the authorities involved.

cjensen5• 14 years ago

Ad Hominem applies to facts and reproducible reasoning. It does not apply to mere slander.

Name one serious question of illegal conduct raised by Dotcom.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

Logical fallacies are all that are going on here - all of the evidence that has been presented is highly circumstantial. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it happened.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

While I'm all for decrying corrupt business practices there are far more worthwhile targets out there like Goldman Sachs but they've bought political immunity and worse still this case clearly shows the ugly side of insidious corruption in American politics regardless of your views on Kim Dotcom.

His worse crime seems to have been not paying off the politicians.

And cheering that on from the sidelines seems an odd choice for a rallying call against legalized corruption.

cjensen5• 14 years ago

Somewhere, the MPAA is watching people who want to liberalize copyright law. Watching them tarnish the reputation of the entire liberalization movement by publicly cheering on an sleazy businessman whose picture and life history are repugnant to those who are uninformed on this issue. The MPAA could not have picked a better person to play the villain if they tried.

They are very, very pleased with this outcome.

sown• 14 years ago

> The Vice-President simply has no power to order anything more complex than pizza. He can suggest, plead, and implore, but someone else has to actually take the responsibility for the action and order something to occur.

Although officially the office only has a couple of duties, a modern US VP has a bunch of roles and powers that are not outside of the law but not spelled out. Really, modern US VPs are kinda like co-presidents. VPs now get included in cabinet meetings, do negotiations with Congress or more. Kennedy put LBJ in charge of the space program. Rockafeller headed certain judicial inquiries. Nixon, when he was VP, sat in on the National Security Council.

So, when Biden talks, is that Obama talking? Maybe.

> Kim Dotcom created an extensive enterprise aimed specifically at violating copyrights while attempting to shield the enterprise with the minimum amount of "compliance" they could get away with. It's entirely possibly that his corporation broke no laws.

That's no different than what other companies do, now. Sometimes they won't even go that far. :)

Anyways, if the words “Obedience to the law is liberty” means anything, that has to include our leaders, too.

cjensen5• 14 years ago

> So, when Biden talks, is that Obama talking? Maybe.

Your reasoning fails here. An ATTORNEY does not just guess at who is ordering him to do something. An Attorney only obey an order from the VP if someone he reports to ordered him to, in which case the person who ordered him owns the responsibility for the action.

And since the action is hardly a secret, that person knows and owns the action.

jonhendry2• 14 years ago

"Really, modern US VPs are kinda like co-presidents.

Modern VPs have only the powers and responsibilities allotted to them by the President. Cheney was an outlier, and was able to grab so much power because Bush was a moron, and agreed to it.

epoxyhockey3• 14 years ago

The Vice-President simply has no power to order anything more complex than pizza.

Having the tie-breaking vote in the Senate is a very tangible power of the VPOTUS, especially when it is needed.

I do agree that MU may be able to prove that it didn't break any laws, due to their minimal DMCA compliance. And, it is for that reason that higher powers in the US may have had to resort to illegal tactics to shut the website down. I also agree that Biden, if he was involved, would not actually take the responsibility for any actions. However, politicians are playing a game of public perception, and none of them want their names brought up when foul play is being exposed.

tedunangst• 14 years ago

Ever since we decided that all senate votes are going to be 60-40, the vp's vote has become a lot less important.

sxp• 14 years ago

Tie-breaking votes haven't been used since the Carter administration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tie-breaking_votes_cast...

guelo2• 14 years ago

The striking thing to me about the MU shutdown was the timing right after the defeat of SOPA. It was like the government wanted to teach "the people" a lesson for getting too uppity. Like "Oh, you think we can't shut down your websites just because we don't have this little law that you rose up against? Well watch this."

With all the political uproar that was going on that week it would be surprising if the FBI had not gone to the White House before pulling the trigger on the raid.

tzs• 14 years ago

An operation like the MU investigation and raid takes many months, if not years, to plan and execute, especially when it involves cooperation with officials in several countries.

It is almost impossible that the timing had anything to do with SOPA, considering that the SOPA defeat was rather unexpected.

powertower• 14 years ago

You're using logic and an unbiased point-of-view.

Which is starkly different from the other side, which tends to revert to conspiracy theories every time.

ekianjo• 14 years ago

It did not seem like they were prepared very well, since they couldn't even get the paperwork right for the arrest. That does not look like something well planned at all.

billpatrianakos• 14 years ago

That's very paranoid. Occam's razor, my friend. They were probably going to do this anyway with timing being a coincidence. People give the US government too much credit for planning devious things. Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors. Nothing more. I sincerely doubt the Feds did this as so to give the finger to protesters. They've been doing this long before SOPA was introduced and will continue too. SOPA just codifies the status quo so that the chances of anyone getting in trouble for shutting sites down becomes nil.

rdtsc• 14 years ago

> Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors.

There is a contradiction there perhaps. Political favors includes buckling due to lobbying. Then US govt. is just a proxy for large banking interests, the military industrial complex, pharmaceuticals, large agribusiness etc. So no the govt. might not have really cared about MU but maybe MPAA cared and when they care they line pockets and make promises about future rewards

hobb0001• 14 years ago

It's more likely that the shutdown was planned to coincide with the SOPA bill. Even though SOPA was unexpectedly derailed, the raid had too much momentum and continued on regardless.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

The timing of the shutdown likely had more to do with:

(1) Megaupload suing Universal, in a lawsuit they were likely to win, and were then forced to drop the lawsuit after the raid.

(2) The raid happened just prior to Megaupload releasing a new service called MegaBox, which would allow artists to legally sell music directly to fans, allowing artists to keep 90% of the profits, as well as introducing a feature that allowed artists to make money off music that listeners were streaming for free.

It turns out the FBI had been spying MegaUpload for the past 5+ years

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57368523-261/feds-we-obtai...

With the fact that they don't have any evidence to present a case that there was actual illegal activity going on that required the raid, I would say it's more likely that the pressure for the raid to come when it did came directly from the entertainment industry / UMG.

roguecoder• 14 years ago

It seems at least as plausible that they were there to discuss ACTA, which was signed three months later.

Beside, it wasn't the Executive branch that ordered the Megaupload shutdown: it was the grand jury, followed by an Australian judge (apparently improperly.) Mr. Dotcom doesn't appear understand the US legal system.

Or, more likely, he is willfully ignoring it in favor of a story. Given the lack of evidence that the VP actually did anything, much less that he did anything corrupt, this seems like a desperate bid for attention.

rmc• 14 years ago

Australian judge

New Zealand. You might aswell call Joe Biden vice president of Canada.

guelo2• 14 years ago

A grand jury doesn't form on its own, an FBI prosecutor initiates the indictment, and as the famous quote says, a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if that's what he wanted.

Also, yea, New Zealand is not Australia.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

I know a lot of NZ'ers who would consider your comment an insult!

sage_joch• 14 years ago

I just cross-posted this to a subreddit I started recently, /r/Orwellian. It's still small at 76 readers, but I figured there might be interest here. I'm hoping for it to be a non-partisan place to share/discuss the myriad of government abuses coming to light.

WiseWeasel• 14 years ago

Can't say I'm a big fan of the name "Orwellian" for that category. I know the term commonly refers to the premise of Orwell's 1984 novel for which he's most known, but he wrote important pieces on other subjects, such as communism, which adds baggage to the term. Maybe referring to the novel 1984 more directly, such as /r/1984 or /r/bigbrother would be an improvement. Otherwise, I'd probably go for something a little less tinfoil-hat since there's already a /r/conspiracy with lots of followers.

Slashdot has "Your Rights Online". Ars has "Law and Disorder". Looking up a few keywords, I notice that there's also /r/SOPA, /r/rights, /r/yro, /r/privacy, /r/freedom, /r/internetfreedom, /r/civilliberties, /r/civlib and others. Maybe some consolidation is in order.

Ahmes• 14 years ago

These "gift" investigations and the game theory behind them are somewhat troubling.

Most medium to large sized technology companies that get big enough to attract parasites will gladly cooperate with an investigating authority (such as the FBI) and turn over user activity records without much of a stink in exchange for a future favor down the road rather than hold their ground and demand warrants, subpoenas and the rest of the 9 yards.

If you promise to aid the FBI into perpetuity, they will on occasion nail some malicious user that's giving you a hard time - like that 16 year old from Des Moines who is submitting stolen credit cards (that were found on twitter via @NeedADebitCard, naturally) to pay for your merchandise and giving you a headache in chargeback fees.

It's a cool superpower but it's probably not doing much to address the root of your problems.

Worse, it quickly turns the FBI into a sort of protection racket for the Fortune 5000.

evilbit• 14 years ago

that biden is a stooge for the entertainment industry is no secret, though i doubt he could've made this happen at a drop of the hat, as the article purports.

mpaa chairman chris dodd is an influential democrat with strong ties to the obama administration, biden in particular. entertainment industry has historically had an oversized presence in washington, and the tech industry an undersized one. this is why our copyright debate has been driven by an incumbent-dominated industry rather than the innovator/disruptor one such as ours.

it's telling that we've all so negatively reacted to recent story of washington telling apple to spend more on lobbying, calling it a shakedown - but we'd be wise to think about that more carefully and not dismiss at our own peril.

gogobyte• 14 years ago

Joe Biden is sick idiot.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. As I've said before, including in reply to some hopeful comments regarding the Obama Administrtion's possibly intervening in the SOPA/PIPA fracas, Biden is a tool -- and a complete tool, in this regard.

Joe Biden: Tool. Perhaps his legacy, reduced to a single word. (Oh, and "trains!")

Kim Dotcom: Joe Biden Ordered the Megaupload Shutdown

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