Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
1–10 of 98 posts
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#2A question in case grellas or any other brilliant HN lawyers are reading this and care to comment -- assuming that Megaupload actually followed the DMCA as Kim claims and there was nothing illegal about their operations, what sort of remedies are available.
I mean... it seems the company is dead. Can they sue for damages? And if so who pays? Do the courts recognize things like growth potential when they value lost damages, and do they look at profits or just revenue? The reason I ask is because I'm curisou what would happen if this were a smaller startup that was strategically minimizing profits and perhaps even revenues in order to aim for growth.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#3From the article comments:
"This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal.
In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter.
Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively taking down downloads as requested my DMCA takedown requests, then he doesn't have much hope.
I'm a long time Torrent-Freak reader, and it hurts me to say this. Torrentfreak has become a breeding ground extremists dedicated to the theft of music and movies under the guise of a "moral" obligation/right to do them. File-Sharing, such as giving my friend a CD I burned, is not file sharing in the same sense as Torrenting something which is also being torrented by 400 other people. Think about if they DID buy that CD. That's $2,000 to the artist. "
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#4From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
Not to the artist. There's the vendor and then the publisher first.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#5From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
"I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter."
It doesn't justify piracy, but it is a way for the media industry to solve the "piracy-issue" themselves. In short: Give the people what they want and they will pay you.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#6From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
2000 / 400 = 5
Are you kidding me, no artists gets $5 per sold record. If you sell a lot and have a really good deal you get around $2 (britney spears kinda big).
The records my fathers band have recorded give them about $.5 for all of them (six members). They barely cover their production costs with that...
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#7From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
"File-Sharing, such as giving my friend a CD I burned, is not file sharing in the same sense as Torrenting something which is also being torrented by 400 other people."
Actually, I think that the underlying moral principle would be the same for the two. If you are stealing something - it doesn't matter whether it is $5 or $2000; it is still a theft. The scale of it should only govern the punishment if that is the intent was different - which I believe is not. I do not think that one can justify sharing one copy vs sharing 50 copies _morally_; the justification will be economic.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#8From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
2000 / 400 = 5 Are you kidding me, no artists gets $5 per sold record. If you sell a lot and have a really good deal you get around $2 (britney spears kinda big). The records my fathers band have recorded give them about $.5 for all of them (six members). They barely cover their production costs with that...
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
This link always gets mentioned in relation to artists/labels and who gets what, so here it is.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#9From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
Stealing? The internet runs on computers, everything is stolen every other second by buffers, caches and in the end just the machinery. NSA is stealing gigabits of data every second from backbones, yet no one has reported their data lost yet.
Do not start a pity tour for record companies looking to push laws that will actually put real people behind bars for pushing around bits and bytes.
Re: Kim Dotcom: US Government Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
#10From the article comments: "This is the bottom line. Whether or not the business model is out-dated or not has absolutely no effect on whether what Kim was doing was either immoral or illegal. In the Governments eyes, what Kim was doing illegal. I can't just steal something from an Amish person's business because "their business model is out-dated." It doesn't matter. Unless Kim can prove that MegaUpload was actively…
But those 400 wouldn't buy a CD. Maybe 40 of them would. People consume a lot more content when it's free/unlimited. Proof of that is the average content consumption on Spotify vs iTunes, and why some artists complain that they make a lot less "per play" from Spotify than they would on iTunes, but they are looking at this in a very wrong way.
When people have access to a lot more content for the same price or lower, they will consume a lot more content. That doesn't mean they would be willing to pay for each piece of content as much as they would with the old model.