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Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

reuters.com

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Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#111

Post by slg »

balabaster wrote: post #92
slg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this whole case seems to have turned him into a modern day Robin Hood. This dude is a professional troll and you comparing him to Robin Hood means you are falling for his schtick. The most recent example of his trolling is the fact that he has become one of the biggest public supporters of the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was behind the DNC leaks and not Russia.

Um... Robin Hood was a fictional character. The schtick is what makes the legend. Without the schtick, he's just some schmuck that got busted for trafficking illegal copies of files. Don't confuse "being thoroughly amused by" with "falling for."

At the heart of the story Robin Hood is about a good person who was breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy. Kim Dotcom wants you to think he is breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy but he is actually doing it for his own personal enrichment either financially or egotistically. That it the distinction I want to make that I think was missing from your initial comment.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#112

Post by xbkingx »

ben_w wrote: post #105
Retric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather tenuous connection. EX: "Transitory storage" does not count as a copy. You need to make a copy of a book on the back of your Retna to read it, however nobody calls that copying. It's easy to argue that playing a DVD is not actually copping the DVD as at no point does a DVD player copy the full DVD. Without a durable copy it's no more copping than the back of your Retna.

I recall there was a court case about that. A copy of a program in system memory was deemed non-infringement because it was necessary for use of the software, however (certain classes of) modified copies were unlawful. I believe this is the precedent used to take down cheating apps for (e.g.) World of Warcraft.

From what I understand, it usually comes down to whether copy protection mechanisms were circumvented in order to make the copy and whether the copy was transmitted to a nonlicense holder.

So, making an image of a DVD isn't illegal, but sending that image to someone that doesn't own a license is. But, ripping that disk to mp4 is illegal if any form of protection is in place, no matter how weak.

Of course, ripping to mp4 and then sending it to someone is double illegal, which makes it legal. I should mention now that IANAL.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#113

Post by fareesh »

jaclaz wrote: post #85
the-pigeon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they froze most of his assets initially so he didn't have money to defend himself. It's been a mix of luck, US Government mishandling the case and the tenacity of Kim.

>It's been a mix of luck, US Government mishandling the case and the tenacity of Kim Don't forget the local (NZ) mishandlings.

Yep. I don't think many people can make the claim that they have had a head of state apologize to them on national TV.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#114

Post by the_cat_kittles »

redm wrote: post #70

Love Kim Dotcom or hate him, you have to applaud his tenacity in defending himself. When he was arrested in 2012, I don't think anyone remotely imagined he would still be battling, and, in many regards, winning against the US Government.

i dont have to applaud his tenacity. i think he is a jackass who made a bunch of money in a douchey way. i think winning legal battles resulted from fundamentally unethical behavior is not a win at all in the grand scheme. whether or not he broke the letter of the law seems like it should be irrelevant in the court of public opinion. why do people root for someone like this?

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#115

Post by fareesh »

Kim claims that he gave Hollywood companies direct DB delete access for anything they didn't like, in addition to DMCA takedown request processing.

There are arguments suggesting that he and his team knew that there was illegally copied content on his servers and they did nothing about it of their own volition. Is there a law that says that if you see something that was uploaded and you don't believe that it's licensed, you are legally obligated to suo moto delete it? Genuine question

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#116

Post by xbkingx »

logfromblammo wrote: post #32
DavidNielsen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob Reid did a funny 5min TED Talk on this called the 8 Billion dollar iPod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0 He used the same premise when he wrote the comedy sci-fi book Year Zero, the story of naive aliens accidentally pirating all of Earths music and the legal consequences thereof, i.e. owning the citizens of Earth literally all the money in the universe leading to the ruination of their delightfully h…

Maybe we should execute an international copyright convention that specifies that the public domain is only free for Earth people. We could own two entire universes someday.

Pffft Preemptive market inclusion never works. We tried with the 'World Series', and all we got was a few stray Canadians. Miss Universe? Still no aliens and we can't even get a Miss Antarctica.

From: Infiltrator 72a9

To: Glop Flirbstekker

Glorp, stop downloading that Earth music immediately. They've figured out a loophole in Protocol 3 that could make the Level 7 event on Stlafft look like a Level 2! I don't care how much you like Roy Orbison. Stop immediately!

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#117

Post by xyzzyz »

gambiting wrote: post #43
franciscop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the country! In Spain for instance it's totally legal as long as there is no commercial intention. Both "distributing" and "copyrighted" are terms that some times have not such clear boundaries. Is giving your sibling a used DVD illegal? Is selling it to a 2nd hand store illegal? A book is clearly legal to resell, right? Then why wouldn't some digital material be? There is a whole industry interested in…

In Poland it's the same - downloading pretty much anything for personal use is perfectly legal, only sharing isn't(so using Kim's service would have been 100% fine).

Except of software -- downloading software is still illegal in Poland, even though it is legal to download books, music, movies etc. There's an explicit provision for this in the copyright law.

So, using Megaupload is completely legal in Poland as long as you don't download software, just operating it and uploading to it isn't.

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#118

Post by chrisbennet »

ponderatul wrote: post #9

I always wanted to know how is the damage done determined ? "U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material." Distributing copyrighted stuff is illegal, period. But the way those calculations are made worries me. Do they start fr…

Obviously, once Megaupload was taken down, the subsequent jump in the injured parties revenues would indicate how much they were losing before. Oh wait, are you telling me there wasn’t a jump? /s

Re: Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition

#119

Post by FussyZeus »

tristor wrote: post #84
FussyZeus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They violated the law, and assisted others in violating the law, openly, and defiantly. When he was raided it was of no surprise to anyone who was paying attention, himself included. People like to paint this up as "this guy was just running his business in full compliance with the law and Big Government came in with their jackbooted thugs and took away his business" but the reality is a lot more complicated than tha…

I'm not holding up the guy as a saint, but what happened to him was heinous. Whether you agree with his behavior or not, the fact men with guns were used to take enforcement action about US copyright law in New Zealand is a problem. If I was going to write about someone I think is a much more admirable martyr for the insanity of US copyright laws I'd point to Aaron Schwartz, not Kim DotCom. But that's not what this c…

> I'm not holding up the guy as a saint, but what happened to him was expected.

He showed his ass to the feds for YEARS, not even in like a dignified and well articulated way like Snowden, in an open, flagrant "Fuck you and your laws" way.

And frankly, as broken as the US IP laws are, this whole "you can't enforce X country's law in Y country" is BS. In our ultra-connected global economy, especially in terms of tech companies, if you can skirt the laws of a nation by simply moving to another one, then we might as well have Anarchy and skip a few steps.

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