Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think

You drove to the Ghetto and threw your only copy into a crack house. That crack house got raided, shut down, sealed off.

You took that copy away from yourself. It's your problem. Not mine. Cry to someone else about your rights.

In the USA at least, much of our government could function nearly the same regardless of if our market system is completely laissez-faire capitalism, or hardcore communist. In fact, you could argue that government and its' systems, like the judicial system should be completely devoid of any possibility for profit motives. Since, as saucetenuto states, those undermine the system.

Now, I don't want to get into an argument about whether good lawyers deserve to get paid better than bad lawyers, etc. But I don't think I'd want to meet the person who sees the justice inequality between rich and poor defendants and thinks "All is as it should be."

All of this is crazy, and the point in the article is very much valid in my opinion, on the other hand if the copyright holder allegedly affected were to sue Megaupload in a civil case in the country that Megaupload operates from then that would be perfectly fine in my opinion. I don't agree with the copyright laws that exist at the moment, but everyone should have the right to try to protect their rights in court, even if I don't personally agree with the law.

The reason I asked about what steps Megaupload made to comply with DMCA complaints, and what the law says about DMCA take downs, was out of curiosity about the legal landscape and the chances of Megaupload in this case, even though it shouldn't be a criminal case.

You're claiming that 8 character ids are inherently public. Why is the "publicness" of 7 numeral ids an unrelated analogy? After all, the universe of 7 numeral ids is significantly smaller than the set of 8 character ids, so if the former is private (by obscurity) then surely the latter is as well, absent some other factor.

So, what are some of these other factors?

The law is US Title 17

§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Of the other sections from 107 through 122,

§ 108 allows libraries to reproduce "no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work".

§ 109 allows the owner of a physical copy to sell it, but forbids renting or lending software media (CDs etc) without a license.

§ 110 allows schools and churches to hold plays.

§ 111 allows the local loop of a network to repeat the network signal without obtaining an extra license for every single retransmission.

§ 112 allows TV stations to save a single copy of their transmission.

§ 113 prevents reproduction of a "pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work"

§ 114 regulates music streaming services.

§ 115 forces the RIAA to allow anyone to license copies of "non-dramatic" music (ringtones) at royalty rates set in law.

§ 116 allows jukebox owners to form a union to negotiate licensing fees.

§ 117 allows you to let your computer make a copy of software from disk to ram to run programs.

§ 118 gives PBS extra powers in negotiating license fees.

§ 119 allows satellite TV to convert the satellite signal to a TV signal.

§ 120 allows people to photograph buildings.

§ 121 allows the government and nonprofits to make Braille copies of copyrighted works.

§ 122 forces the satellite TV networks to obtain an extra license again.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sup_01_1...