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Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

reuters.com

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Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#51

Post by Mononokay »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #46
Mononokay wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy He actually got rich off of the Dot Com bubble years before, which is why he changed his name to Kim Dotcom. He embodies a lot of the stereotypical hacker image that people have - overweight, hacked the Pentagon+NASA+Citibank before he was old enough to drink in the US, a touch dramatic, etc. It's only natural that he's giv…

He didn’t hack anything nor get rich off of the bubble. He was always a fraud.

> nor get rich off of the bubble.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/jan/26/internetn...

> He didn’t hack anything

He claims to have, and I'm fairly sure he's convicted of doing so in his home country, but I'm not going to contest it because I'm not incredibly familiar with that part of the issue. I was going off of his Wikipedia page, which as always can be innaccurate.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#52

Post by liberte82 »

ponderatul wrote: post #9

I always wanted to know how is the damage done determined ? "U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material." Distributing copyrighted stuff is illegal, period. But the way those calculations are made worries me. Do they start fr…

You wouldn't download a car, would you?

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#53

Post by ballenf »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #48
ebbv wrote: post #25

Why is this guy's legal troubles news? Honestly. There's tons of rich jerks like him who have legal troubles that we don't hear about. But for some reason he likes to put out press releases about every step of the way and then they actually get picked up and upvoted on sites like this. Why? I really don't understand. It's not like he's some principled crusader fighting for a precedent that affects all of us. He's jus…

im really suprised this is so downvoted, its articulate, and seems right to me. why would you like this guy? some people like anyone rich apparently...

The comment could be read to imply that due process is something to be earned with good behavior, instead of something to be afforded as a matter of law to all accused, even the most heinous criminals.

I personally am not a fan of "why talk about this one example when there are so many other examples" type comments, because it's literally impossible to talk in any depth about the topic generally if we insist on finding the best example first. We'll spend all our time debating which person is the better victim instead of talking about whether our criminal justice system is working properly.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#54

Post by jdmichal »

chrischen wrote: post #41
franciscop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the country! In Spain for instance it's totally legal as long as there is no commercial intention. Both "distributing" and "copyrighted" are terms that some times have not such clear boundaries. Is giving your sibling a used DVD illegal? Is selling it to a 2nd hand store illegal? A book is clearly legal to resell, right? Then why wouldn't some digital material be? There is a whole industry interested in…

People paid for their service too. So they are making money directly off of users’ illegal actions like how 1) airbnb users illegally converting rooms into short term rentals 2) amazon helping people avoid sales tax 3) uber lyft allowing drivers to drive taxis without a taxi license

As for point (2), technically it's on the consumer to pay use tax on an item that they did not pay sales tax on. Amazon was operating in a perfectly normal manner; it's just that interstate sales like that weren't common before the internet. The laws are still trying to catch up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamlined_Sales_Tax_Project

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#55

Post by ebbv »

ballenf wrote: post #53
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im really suprised this is so downvoted, its articulate, and seems right to me. why would you like this guy? some people like anyone rich apparently...

The comment could be read to imply that due process is something to be earned with good behavior, instead of something to be afforded as a matter of law to all accused, even the most heinous criminals. I personally am not a fan of "why talk about this one example when there are so many other examples" type comments, because it's literally impossible to talk in any depth about the topic generally if we insist on findi…

> The comment could be read to imply that due process is something to be earned with good behavior, instead of something to be afforded as a matter of law to all accused, even the most heinous criminals.

That is a pretty deliberate misreading of my comment. I'm very obviously saying why does his legal process continue to be news, not whether he deserves to have legal proceedings. Nothing even close to that.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#56

Post by nsomaru »

liberte82 wrote: post #52
ponderatul wrote: post #9

I always wanted to know how is the damage done determined ? "U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material." Distributing copyrighted stuff is illegal, period. But the way those calculations are made worries me. Do they start fr…

You wouldn't download a car, would you?

If I could, I would. I'd love an open source electric car design that can be printed on home 3D printers. We're still a way aways from this, but it doesn't seem like the realm of complete fiction :)

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#57

Post by TallGuyShort »

ponderatul wrote: post #9

I always wanted to know how is the damage done determined ? "U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material." Distributing copyrighted stuff is illegal, period. But the way those calculations are made worries me. Do they start fr…

It's absolutely a false dichotomy. I have wanted DRM-free digital copies of movies that I paid to see in theaters and paid to get the DVD. Where can I get a DRM-free copy? Illegally. I would pay for it, but it's not for sale. Many statutes of limitations ago, I pirated a lot of music that I would never have paid for otherwise. I actually went and bought a lot of it on CD because I discovered I liked it and wanted to own the original CD. In my case, piracy has caused no loss to movie studios because I've never pirated a movie when I had the faintest option of buying it legally, and was a net gain to record labels because I've bought music I wouldn't have even discovered without piracy. I'm sure the odd thing has slipped through that maybe I would have discovered and bought through some other channel eventually, and not everyone does this maybe, but I agree with you that the calculations are way off and presume too much.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#58

Post by wpietri »

Mononokay wrote: post #33
ebbv wrote: post #25

Why is this guy's legal troubles news? Honestly. There's tons of rich jerks like him who have legal troubles that we don't hear about. But for some reason he likes to put out press releases about every step of the way and then they actually get picked up and upvoted on sites like this. Why? I really don't understand. It's not like he's some principled crusader fighting for a precedent that affects all of us. He's jus…

> He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy He actually got rich off of the Dot Com bubble years before, which is why he changed his name to Kim Dotcom. He embodies a lot of the stereotypical hacker image that people have - overweight, hacked the Pentagon+NASA+Citibank before he was old enough to drink in the US, a touch dramatic, etc. It's only natural that he's giv…

I don't believe Section 230 is a sufficient defense here. If you have a site that is used for a lot of things but has the occasional bad actor, then Section 230 means that bad actor is the legal publisher of the content, not the site.

Megaupload, though, was not that. They paid people who uploaded popular content, which was of course mostly other people's property. They they sold ads against it. If you look at the structure of the business and compare it with a a real cloud storage provider, it's pretty obvious they are no Dropbox:

https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Virginia_Eastern_District_...

The indictment has a clear claim that Section 230 doesn't apply, as well as a lot of detail. Dotcom was pretty clearly running a criminal conspiracy, and just thought he was clever enough to avoid getting arrested for it. Had he stayed small, he might have managed.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#59

Post by baldfat »

This is attempting to fix something that is already fixed.

Morally I want to pay for everything I use. I music production I own a license for everything I use or demo. It is very simple to pirate plugins (Kayne West pirated DeadMau5's Serum plugin) https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/dance/6897291/deadma...

In the past it was impossible to pay for content and the only place it was available was on torrents. It wasn't available and now people just pay for streaming services because it is available. Also it is just easier to use streaming services.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#60

Post by chrischen »

jdmichal wrote: post #54
chrischen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People paid for their service too. So they are making money directly off of users’ illegal actions like how 1) airbnb users illegally converting rooms into short term rentals 2) amazon helping people avoid sales tax 3) uber lyft allowing drivers to drive taxis without a taxi license

As for point (2), technically it's on the consumer to pay use tax on an item that they did not pay sales tax on. Amazon was operating in a perfectly normal manner; it's just that interstate sales like that weren't common before the internet. The laws are still trying to catch up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamlined_Sales_Tax_Project

My point is that it's on the consumers to follow the laws, but in each of those cases the companies are implicitly benefitting from mass "illegal" activity from users.
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