Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers • Hacker News Board

Re: Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers

#61

Post by MadGouki » Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 8:57 AM UTC

lancewiggs wrote: post #48

mpyne wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy. It was proven to a grand jury -- that's why they (and not the government) handed down an indictment. The treatment is actually similar to what would happen to the brick-and-mortar assets of an indicted meth distributor. Normally w…

It may have been proven to a grand jury in the USA, but not in courts in the rest of the world, and certainly not here in NZ. This is punishment before guilt is proven or even contested.

Why should the US be allowed to punish the native of another nation like this? I don't understand it, Australia should be trying him. We aren't respecting the "jury of their peers" thing we Americans love so much. I remember a similar incident in the news recently as well, some British kid I think.

Re: Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers

#62

Post by powertower » Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 2:09 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #60

powertower wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I think they made money from a LOT of users signing up for paid accounts. Except that the indictment states that MU had only a few paid users and was largely ad supported... And I could have sworn that before all this happened, MU said the same thing. > Legislation such as DMCA was supposed to protect business from copyright violation liability when the infringement was committed by third parties as long as the…

I did not remember reading in the indictment that it was largely ad supported and not subscriptions as you indicate, but you do cite the indictment itself so I assumed you noticed something I did not and went and reread it. It documents $8,840,000 in ad revenue in items 42 through 44, $110 million in subscription revenue from PayPal in item 41, and then in item 67 says "Between September 2005 and the date of this Ind…

I've looked it over again and you're right. The majority of that came from premium accounts.

This still does not help MU if the signup originally came after a user visited a page with illegal content, and signed up to be able to get that content or to partake in sharing illegal content and get bounties on it....

Which would all be easy to check by taking a small sample of the logs and seeing what's what.

Though it does help MU if it can be shown those were all legitimate users.

Aside from that, the indictment is still very damning on other points. Even if the revenue was mostly legit, the primary driver to that revenue and the way MU conducted itself looks to be questionable at best.

Re: Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers

#63

Post by victork2 » Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #42

dsthysd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-Megaupload never got to state their case -There was no trial (and probably will not matter because their site has already lost all its traffic and revenue) -It is not a US based site -The majority of its traffic did not come from the US -There is not much evidence that that they were doing anything illegal by US law. They had a system in place (such as youtube) to remove copyright infringing content if found. The fa…

> -Megaupload never got to state their case That usually happens at the trial. This is like saying that my life was disrupted when the police arrested me, because I should have had a chance to state my case before being arrested and indicted. > -There was no trial (and probably will not matter > because their site has already lost all its traffic > and revenue) The site was taken down because the servers were confisc…

Hi Pyre,

I agree with your comment. However I would understand due process as process that seems to be fair and just, not something legal. Because if tomorrow the government says by law that part of the trial is to kill the culprit before the trial that would be legal in regards to the law but not in regards to the basic human principles. I know the example is extreme but I hope you see my point on the matter. In that case even before the trial the parties are punished and destroyed: no presence anymore on internet, no servers, no domain names. It certainly feels like somebody is punished even before the trial, no?

Also the fact that the FBI (FEDERAL) has power to seize or take things oversea is seriously worrying. I believe there are more urgent matters that needs to be taken care in the united States by the FBI before investigating that. This is a result of the PATRIOT Act. Great!

To sum up I believe that MegaUpload profit came massively from copyright infringement but even the worst killer should have his rights guaranteed.