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Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#31

Post by lotsofmangos »

pyre wrote: post #23
lotsofmangos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we aren't starting from a position of knowing that a majority of society agrees, which is my point. If you state that you don't know much about x , so have no opinion, but believe that most reasonable people believe y about it, then you still are stating an opinion about x , even if you are doing it at one level removed by saying what you think other people might think.

I think that a majority of society thinks about law and order through an entirely simplified lens, and would see such a law through said lens without considering the actual implications of it. The idea that "money came from bad people doing bad things, so we should punish them" being the only really "logic" here. Much in the same way that you can skew poll results based on the way that you phrase a question. For exam…

You are right in that it matters how you phrase the question.

You could ask: "Do you think court should be simplified and less money wasted on lawyers by not chasing unnecessary extra charges?"

That's a simple enough question that most people could get behind.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#32

Post by logfromblammo »

acqq wrote: post #6

This was insightful for me: ""Congress, initially as part of the War on Drugs but later expanded to include most federal offenses, criminalized almost every financial transaction that flows from funds that are the proceeds of ‘specified unlawful activity,’" Bruce Maloy, an Atlanta-based attorney and an expert in US extradition law, told Ars by e-mail. "In simplest terms, if you possess funds from a crime and do anyth…

Pecunia non olet.

It means "money does not stink". A coin earned from scrubbing toilets spends the same as one earned from curing cancer, or one earned by selling contraband, or one given to charity, or one slipped into a g-string.

If you start spending your dollar bills, and someone demands to know where they came from, the only proper response is that it does not matter, because they are bearer instruments. All that matters is that the person who holds them is presumed to be the owner.

If the possibility that someone might steal your dollar bill and spend it for his own benefit galls you too much, don't use cash, or any other bearer instruments. Or keep receipts every time the notes change hands. But be assured that your mugger is taking your cash because he intends to spend it later, in lieu of performing multiple less-convenient crimes.

This business of pursuing someone for spending supposedly tainted money cannot end well. How is an ordinary person supposed to know when they should not accept it, when the money itself does not stink?

The crime rightfully attaches to the criminal, not to his cash.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#33

Post by [deleted] »

corin_ wrote: post #9
Symmetry wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why think he's guilty of the charges against him. Now, he's obviously guilty of civil copyright violation and can probably be sued into bankruptcy. But criminal copyright infringement requires mens rea and internal company transcripts show that the people at MegaUpload thought that they were within the law on some technicalities. They weren't but a reasonable belief that they were means that this wasn't c…

Not only am I not a lawyer, I also don't know/remember many of the details of this case. And I said likely, not definitely, guilty in my opinion. Regarding mens rea, I imagine it's tougher to argue that you thought you were legal technically than to argue you had no idea you might be breaking the law? E.g. Someone who has never heard of magic mushrooms but find then growing and sells them has a better chance of not b…

[deleted]

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#34

Post by nickysielicki »

undefined0 wrote: post #25
Pyxl101 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An objection that I heard mentioned previously: removing the links didn't remove the actual content, which could be available through another link (or hundreds of links, some in private forums, etc.). So actually getting content off the platform was tough. Mentioned in: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/why-the-feds-smas... On the other hand, who can say whether content is illegal in all contexts. Perhaps yo…

Not only was it reachable by the other links to the file, the file ID which had been DMCA'd could regenerate links via the premium account API. So warez sites could automatically regenerate megaupload links everytime a file gets a DMCA. Surely this is incriminating?

IANAL but I think not, he's still complying with the DMCA.

All Megaupload needed to do was allow copyright holders to play the cat and mouse game of takedowns to be within the law. A DMCA takedown doesn't have the oversight from a judge or anything, it can be totally wrong and there's really no reprocussions (as we've seen on youtube multiple times, this occurs frequently.)

You cannot expect Megaupload to delete the content from their servers, as their business is data retention. You also cannot expect Megaupload to flag files as DMCA'd and not allow them to ever be downloaded, the fact that their entire business model is people sharing content and the sheer amount of DMCA requests they recieve makes it impossible for them to investigate each case properly.

The DMCA protects him by simply allowing takedowns of a single link. The content can stay, and he can stay within the bounds of the law by some external individual creating an additional link to be inevitably DMCA'd again.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#35

Post by abhorrence »

[deleted] wrote: post #33
corin_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only am I not a lawyer, I also don't know/remember many of the details of this case. And I said likely, not definitely, guilty in my opinion. Regarding mens rea, I imagine it's tougher to argue that you thought you were legal technically than to argue you had no idea you might be breaking the law? E.g. Someone who has never heard of magic mushrooms but find then growing and sells them has a better chance of not b…

[deleted]

Parent was discussing mens rea ("guilty mind"). Essentially there are certain classes of crimes where whether or not you were of guilty mind (you knew or had reasonable suspicion that what you were doing was illegal) actually matters somewhat, usually for sentencing purposes.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#36

Post by acqq »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #26
new299 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I guess it could be argued that this is part of the way they managed their deduplication system, and that once all links had been removed the context would be removed. Certainly similar arguments could probably be used for copyrighted material on Dropbox, and I imagine there maybe a deduplication on Youtube, and similar issues also. If this really is the only issue it seems like quite a weak case to me, as with…

Well, it literally cost a user nothing to create a new link to the same data. Meanwhile the copyright holder would have to submit a DMCA take down for every single link before a new link could be created. Also, MegaUpload changed their policy to only allow one request at a time. So you couldn't, for example, submit a list of the thousand links to your movie. You'd have to submit 1,000 DMCA take downs. I think it's pr…

"Dragging one's feet" isn't a crime.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#37

Post by Consultant32452 »

acqq wrote: post #36
Consultant32452 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it literally cost a user nothing to create a new link to the same data. Meanwhile the copyright holder would have to submit a DMCA take down for every single link before a new link could be created. Also, MegaUpload changed their policy to only allow one request at a time. So you couldn't, for example, submit a list of the thousand links to your movie. You'd have to submit 1,000 DMCA take downs. I think it's pr…

"Dragging one's feet" isn't a crime.

Dragging your feet is a crime if it's reasonable to believe that the purpose of dragging your feet is to facilitate crime. And I think anyone with a brain recognizes that's what was going on.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#38

Post by acqq »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #37
acqq wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dragging one's feet" isn't a crime.

Dragging your feet is a crime if it's reasonable to believe that the purpose of dragging your feet is to facilitate crime. And I think anyone with a brain recognizes that's what was going on.

Try to figure out how his service was fundamentally different than Youtube except for later being owned by superrich Google. Let's bet that Google earned more money by distributing unlicesed material than Kim could in 10 of his lives.

Then consider how much years Google needed to start to be even slightly effective. Wasn't that dragging the feet?

The justice for small guys and superrich is not the same. Kim is a small guy in this comparison.

Re: Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload

#39

Post by Consultant32452 »

acqq wrote: post #38
Consultant32452 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dragging your feet is a crime if it's reasonable to believe that the purpose of dragging your feet is to facilitate crime. And I think anyone with a brain recognizes that's what was going on.

Try to figure out how his service was fundamentally different than Youtube except for later being owned by superrich Google. Let's bet that Google earned more money by distributing unlicesed material than Kim could in 10 of his lives. Then consider how much years Google needed to start to be even slightly effective. Wasn't that dragging the feet? The justice for small guys and superrich is not the same. Kim is a smal…

No, google meaningfully acted to abide by the DMCA take downs and over time progressively improved its tooling to facilitate that. Mega did the exact opposite.
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