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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

#81

Post by pluma »

tempodox wrote: post #48

Article quote: In court papers, Nomm agreed that the harm caused to copyright holders by the Mega Conspiracy’s criminal conduct exceeded $400 million. Poppycock. How is a computer programmer qualified to estimate the pecuniary value of “harm caused” by the shop they're working at? What about the harm caused to Justice by farces and show trials like this?

"Agreed" is also such a weasely claim.

And of course the "harm caused to copyright holders" is a farcical concept to begin with. You can't just take, say, the total number of downloads and multiply that with some fictitious amount of lost revenue and then claim that as damage, yet that's exactly what the rights utilization industry has been doing for decades.

This concept is based on the idea of physical theft. If I steal a truckload of soap and then sell it myself, the damage I'm doing to the legitimate owner is equivalent to the volume I stole multiplied by the original selling price minus regular shrinkage (e.g. lost sales because of faulty products, damage during regular handling or natural expiry).

Digital goods don't work that way. The "theft" of digital goods does not result in you having less products to sell. Instead it's more similar to the damage done via the "theft" of trade secrets. If I steal the Coca Cola recipe and begin giving away knock-off cola for free, I arguably cause damages due to lost sales, but it'd be ridiculous to assume that every "sale" of my product is equivalent to one lost sale of the Coca Cola company.

In fact, MegaUpload didn't even "steal" anything. If we want to use physical crimes as metaphors, it's simply dealing with stolen goods -- or more precisely: giving stolen goods away for free. And if one million users downloaded the same illegal content, they didn't give one million stolen goods away, they merely gave the same stolen goods away a million times.

It's not that copyright violations can't cause damages, but the current system for valuation of those damages -- especially in the US -- is entirely ridiculous and only continues to exist because the courts are either too apathetic or too ignorant (or sometimes both) to dismiss it.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#82

Post by kaoD »

tzs wrote: post #74
DigitalSea wrote: post #60

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…

> 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. Neither Google nor Dropbox was set up with the intent of aiding copyright infringement. Neither Google nor Dropbox based their business model on aiding copyright infringement. The comparison is invalid. > As a developer t…

To be fair, Megaupload didn't explicitly condone copyright infringement, and if I recall correctly infringing files were removed.

Are my memories flawed and Megaupload ignored the copyright infringement notices, or is Megaupload the fall guy to scare everyone else?

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#83

Post by pluma »

jcrei wrote: post #25

What if you are a programmer working for any major corporation that happens do be doing some illegal stuff (Banks, Oil, gambling, etc). Should you be afraid to go to jail?

Yes. At least if the illegal activity is well-known.

Supporting a criminal activity makes you an accomplice. If you do so knowingly, you face similar consequences to the direct perpetrators.

Three examples:

Let's say you work for a bank. Your superior is involved in criminal activity using the bank's resources. The bank may profit from that activity. You do not make any attempts to bring attention to the criminal activity (neither internally nor to the police). You're an accomplice and will face legal consequences.

Let's say you work for a bank. Unknown to you, the bank is a money laundry front for a local organized crime group. A federal investigation busts the operation and defines the bank as a criminal organization. You're an accomplice, but having had no reason to suspect the bank is involved in illegal activities, you'll likely not face any consequences.

Let's say you work for a bank. Unknown to you, some members of senior management are engaging in illegal activities. They are caught and put on trial. You are not an accomplice and don't face any consequences.

(IANAL, but that seems to be how it works in most jurisdictions I'm aware of)

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#84

Post by kamjam »

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…

Whilst CP is a horrible thing, and we all thank you for the amazing work you are doing (genuinely, no sarcasm intended), your view does seem extremely biased. If the intention was to go after CP then if that was stated as the reason for closing MU then no one would have batted an eyed and everyone would have got a pat on the back.

Of course, Hollywood really doesn't give a sh*t about CP, and the CP is just a side effect of what they deem to be a massive threat to their antiquated business model.

But keep up the good work, I'm sure it's getting tougher and tougher as this stuff goes more underground. Question: Would you rather the CP stayed a bit more "mainstream" so it was easier to catch people, or overall is "less" damage done if it goes more underground?

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#85

Post by pluma »

Sidenote: it's so weird the English language uses the same word "justice" for the legal system and the moral concept. In German for example the two are different, making it easy to explain to people how the legal system is about equal application of the law, not personal closure. The domain "justice.gov" just sounds like propaganda (imagine "freedom.gov") to me as a non-native speaker who mostly hears the term used in that second (moral) meaning.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#86

Post by BlueAndroid »

icebraining wrote: post #54
BlueAndroid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The aim isn't just prosecution, deterrence and reducing ease of use is an aim. And self selecting by choosing a service that only hosts CP makes it like shooting fish in a barrel when you do roll the admin/server. Ask "freedom hosting" and some Tormail folks about that. I was actually really surprised at the time to see the site that hosted my favorite OCR tech pdfs- yes, mega, was pretty obviously allowing forums to flourish under it's nose. Maybe there was too much content for them to check or maybe they didn't care. Yes, the investigator's job get's harder but not having this material turn up in effectively mainstream environments is a good thing. I'm technical rather than investigative but good investigation + sloppy OpSec breaks the veil of anonymity, technical brilliance rarely does. Those barriers you are thinking of- they have always existed in meatspace. Digital space is a cornucopia of evidence in comparison.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#87

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

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…

Your gross simplification of the issue to "free movies vs raping children" is a straw-man. That kind of patronizing condescension may work on morons, but there are those who have given careful consideration to the issue and decided that despite the negative aspects of free speech and the rule of law, that free speech is in fact more important than catching file-sharers of any kind, and that your ends-justifies-the-means philosophy is absolutely the wrong way for police to operate in a "free country". I'm glad you realize that you're playing wack-a-mole, while perverts film themselves raping children and then sell that. Hopefully one day you'll graduate to actually stopping child abuse at the source, but hey, feeling good about yourself in this moment is more important than actually doing good, right?

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#88

Post by BlueAndroid »

jacquesm wrote: post #73
BlueAndroid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ran a file sharing site for a while (it started out as a way to get around email file attachment limits). Sure enough the child pornographers found out about it and started using it but close collaboration between the dutch child porn taskforce and myself meant that using the service for child pornography was a huge risk to the uploaders and downloaders alike. The police never cared about any potential copyright in…

I wish people were more considered, less cavalier, when providing services. You obviously thought about it. That's important and some people appreciate it. I don't buy the "I just do X, what happens next is not my fault". It doesn't wash in commerce, it's equally invalid in ethics.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#90

Post by restalis »

stef25 wrote: post #65
maaaats wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lawyers are for, I hope he had a good one.

Actually, the fairness of the trial should be a given, and the lawyers should be merely additional parties whose role is to assist the defendant's handicap of lacking the needed professional law knowledge. Lawyers are not something that one must employ in a dog fight against abusive prosecutors.
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