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Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

justice.gov

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Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#51

Post by maaaats »

draugadrotten wrote: post #39
chii wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would anyone waive the hearing (presumably, where you would argue that you shouldn't be extradited)?

Plea bargains. A promise of 1 year in low sec prison vs the risk of getting a life sentence in solitary. It's similar to what was done to witches in medieval times: "Confess, and we will kill you gently, or be sentenced and be burned alive."

Plea bargains is such an odd and dangerous concept. It can be misused heavily. "This petty crime has a max sentence of 10 years, if you confess we will give you 2" may trick even innocent people into confessing.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#53

Post by jkot »

> Nomm agreed that the harm caused ... exceeded $400 million... group obtained at least $175 million ... Megaupload.com ... it accounted for four percent of total Internet traffic, having more than one billion total visits, 150 million registered users and 50 million daily visitors.

> Nomm admitted that he was a computer programmer ... from 2007 until his arrest in January 2012. ... he was aware that copyright-infringing content was stored on the websites ... which contained the “FBI Anti-Piracy” warning.

> Nomm also admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from the Mega websites.

Replace megaupload with any website or service provider (Youtube, Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook) and it gets scary very quickly.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#54

Post by icebraining »

BlueAndroid wrote: post #23
KhalPanda wrote: post #2

This just seems ridiculous to me. I may well get downvoted, but it needs saying. Why do 99% of the world's governments seem completely retarded when it comes to copyright laws? How many tens of millions in legal resources were expended in bringing 'justice' here? And what does the outcome even matter? Good job, tens of millions down the drain for one year of an Estonian's time? The system would surely be better serve…

I work in Law Enforcement, so feel to disregard my opinion as biased , however, 75% of my work relates to child exploitation material, and an enormous amount of child abuse material disappeared from easy access when mega-upload went down. I used to find computers with lists and lists of megaupload urls. When that method died out a little beacon of happy shone for me. Now I understand that free movies trumps removing…

I don't understand. They were using a service were everyone's IPs and other data were logged and could be subpoenaed, now they're using services that add many more barriers to discovering their identity, and you consider that an improvement? What am I missing?

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#55

Post by throwaway49873 »

BlueAndroid wrote: post #23
KhalPanda wrote: post #2

This just seems ridiculous to me. I may well get downvoted, but it needs saying. Why do 99% of the world's governments seem completely retarded when it comes to copyright laws? How many tens of millions in legal resources were expended in bringing 'justice' here? And what does the outcome even matter? Good job, tens of millions down the drain for one year of an Estonian's time? The system would surely be better serve…

I work in Law Enforcement, so feel to disregard my opinion as biased , however, 75% of my work relates to child exploitation material, and an enormous amount of child abuse material disappeared from easy access when mega-upload went down. I used to find computers with lists and lists of megaupload urls. When that method died out a little beacon of happy shone for me. Now I understand that free movies trumps removing…

To quote a random article on the subject:

"What is the moral to this story? The record companies have made an entire generation of college students into criminals, and as such, those college kids have resorted to technical means of avoiding detection - which create a gigantic crowd of encrypted and obfuscated data in which 'real' criminals can hide. These evasion methods are the very same techniques which can frustrate legitimate and useful law enforcement, which as an unintended side-effect, suffer. The ability to catch genuine terrorists and child pornographers is significantly limited through the short sighted actions of the major media companies."

http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2007/03/how-riaa-and-mpaa-unknow...

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#56

Post by higherpurpose »

maaaats wrote: post #51
draugadrotten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plea bargains. A promise of 1 year in low sec prison vs the risk of getting a life sentence in solitary. It's similar to what was done to witches in medieval times: "Confess, and we will kill you gently, or be sentenced and be burned alive."

Plea bargains is such an odd and dangerous concept. It can be misused heavily. "This petty crime has a max sentence of 10 years, if you confess we will give you 2" may trick even innocent people into confessing.

That's what I don't get. If you threaten someone with 10 or 20 or 50 years in prison, then why the hell would you allow that person to only serve 2 years? If you thought about giving him that much, then clearly he must be a very dangerous person to society. I probably wouldn't want such a person to get out after only 2 years. If the prosecutors are charging such a person with 10x less than what he should be getting then maybe those prosecutors should be investigated for corruption. For instance, like how it happens when the prosecutors are always somehow much more lenient against cops.

But of course it has nothing to do with how dangerous he is in most cases. They're just selectively enforcing vague laws just to pile them up and force him to accept at least some prison time, even if he considers himself innocent.

That should be illegal and considered against human rights, especially since usually I believe the judges have no say in it, as the charges happen before the accused is brought in front of a judge. Without a judge you can't have "justice" either. You just have government bullies using the government's might to put someone - anyone - in prison, even if he's innocent or only guilty of minor offences. This is exactly why such abuses of power should be illegal.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#57

Post by tinco »

simon_vetter wrote: post #46
chii wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would anyone waive the hearing (presumably, where you would argue that you shouldn't be extradited)?

This. I'm having a hard time to understand why he waived that hearing. Pleading guilty (basically renouncing to a fair trial to determine if he's guilty or not) is something he could have done in the Netherlands as well. Arguably, copyright laws in the Netherlands (and in the EU as a whole) are fairer to the defendant than their US counterparts.

He would not be allowed to plead guilty in The Netherlands, as The Netherlands is not charging him. The extradition hearing is about whether he will be extradited after being sentenced. So it would go like this: US says you are guilty, 25 years in jail for computer hacking and mass copyright infringement. US sends warrant for your extradition to The Netherlands. The Netherlands arrests you but allows you to go to explain why you should not be extradited. You cry and say it's unfair. The Netherlands grants the extradition anyway(why not?). You'll be in an American prison for most of your life.

See how bargaining can make your life a bit easier?

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#59

Post by leke »

maaaats wrote: post #51
draugadrotten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plea bargains. A promise of 1 year in low sec prison vs the risk of getting a life sentence in solitary. It's similar to what was done to witches in medieval times: "Confess, and we will kill you gently, or be sentenced and be burned alive."

Plea bargains is such an odd and dangerous concept. It can be misused heavily. "This petty crime has a max sentence of 10 years, if you confess we will give you 2" may trick even innocent people into confessing.

I also think that systems that have plea bargains, also have a tendency towards longer sentences for petty crimes. Just so discourage people fighting long, expensive trials.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#60

Post by DigitalSea »

Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Lets jail the developers of uTorrent while we are at it, thanks to them, I am able to easily queue up a torrent of Game of Thrones.

We are living in a world where people are being jailed or acts that cause no actual harm to anyone all the while people committing actual crimes go unnoticed or repeatedly go in and out of the system. People slinging drugs in the streets probably get lesser sentences than Andrus got for helping develop Megaupload.

"In court papers, Nomm agreed that the harm caused to copyright holders by the Mega Conspiracy’s criminal conduct exceeded $400 million. He further acknowledged that the group obtained at least $175 million in proceeds through their conduct."

Classic entertainment industry mathematics. How can a figure as large as $400 million be accurately proven? Seems like they just spun a massive wheel down at the law firm and chose whatever number sounded large, but not over the top. More specifically, how can a computer programmer who doesn't sound like had any involvement in the business side of things know how much Megaupload supposedly cost the industry?

There are so many things about this story that don't sit right with me. They went after the low hanging fruit. They couldn't touch Kim Dotcom, so they're going for the vulnerable and lesser high profile people involved in hopes of building up a case for bringing down Dotcom. This is what it is all about: sending a message to Dotcom and trying to slowly try anyone even remotely involved in the Megaupload site. They know Kim won't go down without a fight, they'll basically say: Well one of the sites developers admitted there was copyrighted material on the site and he knew about it, he was sent to jail.

As a developer this worries me. If my employer is committing illegal acts I don't know about like copyright infringement or fraud, does that mean I'll be sent to jail even if I legitimately didn't know? We should all be concerned with this judgement.

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