Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 357 posts

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#261

Post by tensor »

larrik wrote: post #16
nphrk wrote: post #5

Why did they charge the graphic designer and the developers?

I assume because they needed to grab everyone they could in one shot, since they are outside of the U.S., and it can turn out that one or more of them are in fact guilty. Otherwise, they can just disappear and you'll never get the chance again. This actually makes sense if you consider that these laws are aimed at the mafia, and that there is no penalty to the U.S. government for being wrong. EDIT: I find it interest…

The difference between wrongful accusation and defamation of character is often a fine line, let alone damages due to lost revenues and customers by being in jail. I imagine that their clients are not to impressed when the person they contracted is in prison.

I would hope that they would be damn sure when taking such drastic measures. This designer is not even a US citizen nor does he live or reside in the US. Is the onus really on a designer to vet all customers for the legality of every country on earth?

Without knowing details, it sure does seem strange to arrest the designer.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#262

Post by icegreentea »

Heh, feel kind of late joining the party. Just wanted to add some more perspective to a lot of the stuff going around. Strolling by my favourite 'warez' forum, it's pretty clear that MU is one of the favoured hosting solutions for distributing 'pirated' material. That along with rapidshare, filesonic, and a few others.

So actually, it's not really a case of playing wack-a-mole. If the top 3/4 were taken down at once, literally years of work would be undone. Sure, it could be reposted, but at a massive inconvenience to both the uploaders, and downloaders. With sites like MU, traffic will always converge onto a relative handful of sites, because of their business models. They give incentives to users who upload stuff that get downloaded a lot (at least 90% of that stuff got to be 'pirated'). They cap the download rate for anyone who doesn't pay for their service. Since people rather not pay for a bunch of sites, uploaders and downloaders will converge onto a select few sites to minimize friction.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#263

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #259
dangrossman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US don't have to comply with DMCA notices either. The safe harbor provision of the DMCA does not create new obligations, it creates a "if this then that" situation: IF a service provider receives a notice of infringement AND promptly disables access to the content, THEN the service provider is granted immunity from liability for that infringement. If you ignore the notice then this provision simply does…

What you're saying makes no sense. Can Iran extradite me for writing software to upload pornography to the Internet? (It's a capital offense there.) Of course not, because that's not how laws work. They can try to extradite me, of course, but no reasonable country would ever assist them. Similarly, it makes very little sense to extradite programmers at Megaupload. Sure, Megaupload is probably illegal in the US. But w…

[deleted]

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#264

Post by easp »

davorak wrote: post #139
adestefan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. MegaUpload lost their safe harbor status by doing the following as spelled out in the DoJ press release: As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. F…

Multiple people upload the same file with the same name and the same content. The file is hashed as it comes in and only one copy is kept. If the provided link is private, not index by megaupload or search engines, then it can be thought of a private locker with the key being the link. In this case it should not be Megaupload's job to know who is supposed to have the key and who does not and it seems reasonable that…

It's not even clear that they were deduping at the application level.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#265

Post by zalew »

nickmolnar2 wrote: post #166

Can we just take a moment and note that Kim Dotcom had two Mercedes ML63 AMGs seized in the raid. One had the license plate 'Guilty' and the other 'Mafia'. He knew what business he was in: working around the law to facilitate massive scale copyright infringement. If we want this anti-SOPA sentiment to stick, we need to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Even on a free and open web there are going to be some people wh…

These are inside jokes referring to his past activities with computer fraud and insider trading. He was a black hat hacker sentenced for 2yrs, when he got out he started a security company, due to his fame quickly got huge clients like Lufthansa (AFAIR) and so, and became a millionaire, this time legally.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#266

Post by electromagnetic »

Zirro wrote: post #187
electromagnetic wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd that they'd have to pay their employees to submit pirated content when there's droves of people online who would willingly submit it for free. This accusation is as absurd as saying TPB had to pay its employees to upload trackers of pirated content.

I can't resist pointing out that this is exactly what Grooveshark is currently being sued for.

From what I read Grooveshark is being sued by EMI for non-payment of royalties. UMG is suing Grooveshark for uploading music from its pre-1972 catalogue. However this all depends on the wording of the licensing agreement.

This is hardly comparable to uploading DVD screeners and R5s. Grooveshark to be operating legally (as they didn't get raided I'm guessing they're operating way too close to the law - well within counter-suit territory - for the major labels to actively attack them) would have had to be uploading the labels authorized versions, which likely means UMG gave them access to their pre-1972 catalogue without giving them approval to use it.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#267

Post by iamandrus »

jrockway wrote: post #125
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…

Why does megaupload have to comply with the DMCA; they're a Hong Kong company. The US simply has no jurisdiction over what they do.

They apparently rented servers in Virginia, which gave the US jurisdiction.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#268

Post by itsnotlupus »

ssebro wrote: post #7
brador wrote: post #3

So in terms of precedent, if dropbox can be used to store copyright files, could they also be shut down on a whim like this?

I think it's worse that dropbox dedupes files, which means that they(dropbox) already have infrastructure that could seriously combat their use in infringement. I do wonder how this plays into the whole Swizz Beats is CEO news.

The indictment papers specifically claim that megaupload was also dedupping files (general allegation 22.)

That's related to their claim that the DMCA take down requests weren't honored: Allegedly, while appearing to comply with requests to remove infringing content, they would merely take down the reported links, yet would keep alternate links to the same md5-hash-matching content working.

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#269

Post by abhaga »

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…

Well, if it helps to know, while I don't use it to send files, I receive files through Megaupload all the time. Files sent by their rightful owners. I try to get them to use Dropbox now but old habits die hard. (Hasn't Megaupload been around since before Dropbox?)

Re: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

#270

Post by vessenes »

DennisP wrote: post #174
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 don't understand this. Megaupload is based in Hong Kong. How does the DMCA apply to them? The site operators were arrested in New Zealand. Most aren't even U.S. citizens: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/megaupload-indicted... Now they're being charged by the FBI. How did it happen that the entire world is supposed to comply with U.S. law?

I believe that the money laundering charges significantly ease extradition matters.
Post reply on HN