Kim Dotcom loses extradition case • Hacker News Board

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#61

Post by djsumdog » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 10:41 AM UTC

such_a_casual wrote: post #18

yarou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising that New Zealand bends over backwards for the United States like this. There are numerous Latin American countries with known narcoterrorists and traffickers that refuse to extradite their criminals to the US, even though their criminals had a direct impact on the lives of US citizens. On the other hand, Kim Schmitz' crimes are relatively benign compared to those committed by narcoterrorists. It just…

I have no reason to believe this is the reason, but New Zealand does benefit from the movie industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_shot_in_New_Zea... Keep in mind a 6 company oligarchy controls almost all of the media coming out of the United States. The United States has a lot more resources than New Zealand. So there are plenty of other ways for them to incentivize cooperation. I just thought I'd th…

Weta Digital. Complete scum shop based in Wellington. They do an incredible amount of movie animation and work employees insane hours. Fuck them.

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#62

Post by scrollaway » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 10:46 AM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #60

scrollaway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, people do tend to forget that most media consumption startups essentially got bootstrapped with a huge amount of copyright infringement. YouTube, Spotify, ... The difference is of course that those startups end up making their content legal. But I don't see how what MU did is not okay, but what YouTube and Spotify did is fine.

MU was paying the people that upload illegal content, specifically because they were uploading illegal content.

How is that different to having your employees scraping torrent sites for music to add to your library?

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#63

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 11:19 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

[deleted] wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> Actually, it's not. There is no criminal copyright infringement in New Zealand. "In some circumstances, a person may commit a criminal offence if they make, import, sell, hire or distribute infringing copies of works. Criminal liability can attract fines of up to $150,000 and imprisonment for up to 5 years." http://www.copyright.org.nz/viewFaq.php?faq=360

[deleted]

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#64

Post by psykovsky » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 11:45 AM UTC

danielbarla wrote: post #25

lectrick wrote: post #23

My only rational objection to this is that I don't think we've figured out how to predict actual losses to piracy. In other words, it is extremely naive (and quite unfair to infringers) to assume that EVERY pirated copy of something is a lost sale. The folks I've known who pirate are more like... data hoarders than payment evaders... Oftentimes they never even bothered consuming the media , it was all about collectin…

And even in the case of the "payment evaders", I'm willing to be that a large percentage is made up of people who would opt to not consume rather than pay the full price. This is especially true in countries with less fortunate economic situations. Multiple downloads and situations where one would actually prefer a cracked, DRM-free copy are also probably counted as "lost sales". The list goes on, and I'm pretty sure…

And let's not even talk about new movies having record box office revenue... That's how much piracy affects them, sending more people to the cinema, on every new movie that comes out.

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#65

Post by nikcub » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 11:46 AM UTC

Sven7 wrote: post #46

nikcub wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really grinds me that he is portrayed by some as an unjust victim of US gov malice and a champion for internet rights issues when he is nothing more than a thief, liar and conman. It doesn't help that people like Snowden, Greenwald and Assange associated themselves with his cause when they appeared at his election event in Auckland where he promised a bombshell against the government but produced what were likely…

So just like YouTube.

I actually have an unpublished draft post on my blog titled "Is Megaupload as guilty as YouTube?".

The idea of the post was to compare and contrast the internal YouTube emails[1] that came out as part of Viacom vs YouTube with the internal Megaupload emails[2] [2.5].

The reason why the post remained unpublished is because after reading the relevant indictments and court rulings I found that there were clear distinctions between the cases.

Namely it was that YouTube were grappling with how to deal with the situation and not sure where they stood while Megaupload knew exactly where they were and what they were doing - they were actually assisting users in locating pirated content when support was emailed.

Google also implemented ContentID to help identity content, while in contrast Megaupload placed a cap on the number of takedown requests a content owner could file and internal emails show Kim Dotcom being angry at employees for taking down copyright content that wasn't explicitly cited in an DMCA request. The employees also discussed how they built their filtering system to take down child pornography but not affect copyrighted content.

In the latest appeal court decision in Viacom vs YouTube the judge vacated all counts against YouTube and found that the company had no knowledge of specific infringements of copyrighted works. The judge also found that there was no evidence that YouTube induced its users to upload infringing videos, or "interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their activity."

MegaUpload did exactly that. Reading the MegaUpload indictment[3] and contrasting it to the appeals court decision[4] in Viacom demonstrates the same with every count or claim (being willful, having knowledge, inducing users, etc.)

[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-intern...

[2] https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-what-made-it-a-rogue-sit...

[2.5] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/1/9436735/megaupload-prosecu...

[3] DOJ vs Megaupload: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/mega...

[4] Viacom vs YouTube district appeals court decision: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/New_York_Southern_District...

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#66

Post by loceng » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 12:20 PM UTC

Atropos wrote: post #41

adrusi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's being extradited now, which means that it's US laws that apply now. I don't think this particular fact is evidence of any law breaking, unless the email the user sent said they were pirating the show. Because it's hard to prove that Kim knew what "Dexter" was, and even if he did, it's hard to prove he didn't assume it was uploaded legitimately (by Showtime, for example). That said, there's a little more to it th…

"Proving" something in a court of law (in criminal law) only requires that there is no reasonable doubt. Providing alternative explanations that are not logically impossible, but exceedingly unlikely, does not help you much. If the Dexter thing occured as written here, proving intentional copyright infringement is very easy.

Assuming they are allowed to use the evidence with how it apparently was gathered. And then there are much bigger problems in the society - however the US got away with torture camps/prisons and other scariness, so "surely" they'll get away with this unless the New Zealanders do something about it.

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#67

Post by neuro_imager » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 12:25 PM UTC

dantiberian wrote: post #27

The timing on this is awful for Kim. In NZ, all of the lawyers will be off on Christmas Holiday from now for at least two weeks, possibly three. Overtime lawyers bills will be expensive.

This is the funniest thing about NZ - the country basically shuts down between christmas and mid-January.

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#68

Post by leohutson » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 12:33 PM UTC

such_a_casual wrote: post #18

yarou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising that New Zealand bends over backwards for the United States like this. There are numerous Latin American countries with known narcoterrorists and traffickers that refuse to extradite their criminals to the US, even though their criminals had a direct impact on the lives of US citizens. On the other hand, Kim Schmitz' crimes are relatively benign compared to those committed by narcoterrorists. It just…

I have no reason to believe this is the reason, but New Zealand does benefit from the movie industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_shot_in_New_Zea... Keep in mind a 6 company oligarchy controls almost all of the media coming out of the United States. The United States has a lot more resources than New Zealand. So there are plenty of other ways for them to incentivize cooperation. I just thought I'd th…

Most countries have had films shot in them. Globally, the film industry does seem to have unusually strong sway with politicians though, considering the relatively small amount of money and people involved.

With regards to dotcom's extradition, I do think the initial raid on his house was an absolute disgrace, but it seems pretty unlikely that he would have had the grace of the court this long in any other OECD country, although that's partly because of the idiotically bungled warrants. The extradition process would have been much faster from the UK for example. [1]

As a rule, our judges are typically not very cooperative with our government [2], let alone foreign ones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_trea...

[2] http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/69299045/judge-critical-o...

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#69

Post by jamespo » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #62

hilbertseries wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MU was paying the people that upload illegal content, specifically because they were uploading illegal content.

How is that different to having your employees scraping torrent sites for music to add to your library?

who did that?

Re: Kim Dotcom loses extradition case

#70

Post by forinti » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

ptaipale wrote: post #24

downandout wrote: post #22

He can still appeal the case to a higher court in New Zealand, and may have a chance there. Copyright infringement isn't extraditable from New Zealand, because it's not a crime there. To counteract this problem, the US also charged him with conspiracy to commit a crime and money laundering, which are extraditable offenses in New Zealand. However, those charges are wholly dependent upon the main copyright infringement…

Even if copyright infringement is not extraditable in New Zealand, it is still a crime, right? So how would it in any way invalidate the extraditability of money laundering "based" on some crime, if money laundering in itself is extraditable even without any other crime having committed by the accused? Money laundering would be extraditable even stand-alone, right? Yes, of course appeals will always be used to delay…

IANAL, but, as far as I know, there is no concept of stand-alone money laundering. You can only launder money that you came upon through crime. So, if there was no crime to begin with, it makes no sense to accuse him of money-laundering.