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Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

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Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#221

Post by mbreese »

anamax wrote: post #88
gte910h wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, it's now up to them to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this is true. Federal prosecutors have a 95 conviction rate for trials that go to jury. Almost everyone plea bargains.

> Almost everyone plea bargains. Yup, because the feds have amazing resources and the "law" is such that everyone is guilty of enough "crimes" to get 100 years. In other words, feds win a rigged game.

In other words, they don't bring cases that they can't win. If you are Federally indicted, it's because they have more than enough evidence to convict. They don't like to lose cases, so they don't bring cases that are risky.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#222

Post by libraryatnight »

molmalo wrote: post #217
libraryatnight wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the Alpha Centauri quote a lot so I searched it and I think the beginning of the quote is just as interesting: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century..."

You are absolutely right. But I didn't write that sentence, because I think it applies to everyone, not only American. In one example, take the Arab Spring for example, making governments fall thanks in part to the free flow of information (via internet). Or Spain's Sinde Law (which brings SOPA-like restrictions to Spain). We are a global community now. So it applies to everyone, everywhere.

I agree completely, I just thought it was awesome that right now many of the headlines are focused on the U.S. which aligns with the "Painful" learning of the Americans in the context of the game ;)

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#223

Post by miek »

troll24601 wrote: post #193
miek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your thought process-- however, there is no reason to talk about what % of the service was used for piracy and what % wasn't. Non-owner/operator users should be viewed as completely separate from the owners and operators' and their actions. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the users are pirating content, as long as the owners & operators were not engaging in illegal activities (including knowingly aiding pi…

I'm pretty sure that the Feds didn't get copies of emails from Eric Schmidt saying that they need to fix the audio/video synchronization on the Sopranos... or that they need to rate-limit DMCA takedowns so they don't interfere with growth... or that they should ensure that when they do takedowns that they don't take EVERY copy down. It's a specious comparison, made possible only because almost nobody on HN bothered t…

Thanks for letting us know; you are correct- I didn't see the indictment. I read the article quickly and came here to see what people were saying. I saw a lot of debate about "% of piracy," so I commented.

Wow the executives were deep in blatant piracy. It's fair that the site was shut down. Amazing, not surprising though.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#224

Post by makomk »

troll24601 wrote: post #193
miek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your thought process-- however, there is no reason to talk about what % of the service was used for piracy and what % wasn't. Non-owner/operator users should be viewed as completely separate from the owners and operators' and their actions. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the users are pirating content, as long as the owners & operators were not engaging in illegal activities (including knowingly aiding pi…

I'm pretty sure that the Feds didn't get copies of emails from Eric Schmidt saying that they need to fix the audio/video synchronization on the Sopranos... or that they need to rate-limit DMCA takedowns so they don't interfere with growth... or that they should ensure that when they do takedowns that they don't take EVERY copy down. It's a specious comparison, made possible only because almost nobody on HN bothered t…

Have you looked at how all the popular open source media players handle bug reports? Pretty much all of them don't care whether the file in the report is pirated or not and a surprising amount of bugs seem to be found and fixed because they break pirated content...

Also, trying to take every pirated copy down has a huge false positive problem.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#225

Post by mikemoka »

AlexMuir wrote: post #39

At the risk of megadownvoting here... Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content. It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators. Now if people believe that…

I agree about watching out against abuses by corporations or by the government, but megaupload was never the answer simoly because it didn't fill his purpose, which ideally should be to replace music and video brick and mortar stores. Netflix was better at that,and he was fighted for that too, unfortunately.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#226

Post by atomicdog »

AlexMuir wrote: post #39

At the risk of megadownvoting here... Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content. It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators. Now if people believe that…

>Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests

Really? Because that statement completely goes against what people are currently saying over on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/onplj/feds_shut_...)

Some examples:

>I'm a DMCA agent and this may well make my job harder. Megauploads was incredible with their response time to DMCA notices.

>They swiftly remove violating content, which will inevitably appear due to their business model. They do not condone piracy, and comply with DMCAs.

>The funny thing is that they TRIED to prevent this. They allowed record labels and movie studios to search through the files and delete anything they found as a copyright violation.

So someone's either misinformed or lying.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#227

Post by molmalo »

troll24601 wrote: post #204
noonespecial wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not "criminals" until after the trial. This is the problem people here are having with this. Site confiscated -> branded criminal -> trial. Is ass backwards.

KIM DOTCOM is a convicted criminal. (securities fraud, embezzling, and some other crap) He's about to be tried again, for another crime. But he's already a criminal. The person I responded to was comparing mass genocide to the orderly trial of a criminal who is suspected of committing more crimes. That disgusts me. It casually trivializes massive horrors.

For your information, half of my father's family died in Auschwitz. Luckily, my grandparents came here before war started and they saved their lives. So that's why I have very present what that quote means. But I also live in Argentina, where 36 years ago a Dictatorial Government killed people passing laws, just to arrest and disappear the ones who opposed to them. And what was the reaction of the rest of out society? Just say to their children: "Don't get involved in that." "Just leave well enough alone."

So no, I don't compare piracy with holocausts. That would be mad. But I have present that passing laws that allow the government to monitor everything you do online, may gradually and eventually lead to a dark future. And I dont want to get there seeing this moment as where it all started, and having done nothing about it.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#228

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

Does anyone know how MU collected money? With all of the restrictive ToS used by payment processors these days, I am very interested to know how they were able to maintain an income stream, for so many years, while their payment processor must have been aware of the potential illegality happening at MU. I'm not making a statement for or against MU, just wanting to know how they were able to keep going when an entity such as WikiLeaks, or a small guy on PayPal who has one chargeback, are so easily financially cut off.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#229

Post by rickmb »

AlexMuir wrote: post #39

At the risk of megadownvoting here... Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content. It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators. Now if people believe that…

Let's analyze the propaganda speak here:

> Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests

Based on not only the experience of others, but the claims of the DoJ itself, this is clearly false.

> The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content.

This is true in the same way YouTube provides advertising around, and your friendly local ISP provides access to, pirated content.

> The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content.

So does YouTube. So do various other business models.

> It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.

How many legitimate business don't have their owners wrapped in layers of corporations strewn around the globe? Nothing particularly unique or illegal here.

> Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips...

It's an outright lie to claim that they themselves filled it with said rips. The users did. Just like many other sites, usenet servers etcetera.

> Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money

Yeah, that's a crime...

You've already corrected one claim, that Megaupload wasn't used for legitimate purposes.

Full disclosure: personally, I believe copyright in it's current form should die. Partly because of exactly this: it makes virtually impossible to provide any service around something that is way more important than the profits of the entertainment industry: the freedom of people to share information.

I also highly doubt this would actually be much of a problem if there was any economic impulse for the entertainment industry to provide a decent alternative.

In the current context, with a ridiculous artificially created scarcity, how the hell is anybody supposed to run a site like Megaupload and not have it full of "illegal" DVD-rips and shit, whether they like it or not?

The DOJ might have evidence that this was deliberate, but all the rest of us have is propaganda and deeply biased speculation.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#230

Post by Zakharov »

randallsquared wrote: post #165
sophacles wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips,and then charge $10 a month for access then no wrong has been committed. But I think most right-minded people would say that is wrong - otherwise we'd all be doing it. Just not true. I don't think there is anything wrong with videotaping police going about their business (without breaking any other laws, hindering…

I believe AlexMuir's implication was that things which are illegal are automatically wrong, since it's obvious that HN, in particular, has lots of users who don't believe filesharing is wrong.

I can't speak for Alex, but I'm quite sure that wasn't his implication. He was stating that knowingly distributing pirated content for profit was wrong.
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