Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand • Hacker News Board

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#261

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

ineedaj0b wrote: post #210

bee_rider wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White collar crimes should be punished with the same vigor as blue collar ones. White collar crimes mostly steal money, at scale. Insufficient money is a huge cause of suffering—people don’t get to retire at early, they and their kids don’t get the opportunities they would have had otherwise. You can be a drug dealer that doesn’t hurt anybody.

No. Drug dealers always hurt people - we have the word Pharmacist for good drug dispensers.

Do you actually believe that or is this some sort of rhetorical point? This stretches my suspension of disbelief to be honest.

People can buy very addictive drugs from pharmacists (legal drugs are a huge contributor to the opioid epidemic), and there were doctors in some areas that were known for being extremely lax about that sort of thing.

Lots of the illegal drug dealers do sell really harmful stuff. But before it was legalized they sold weed…

We should not pretend our laws are perfect, they are always undergoing refinement.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#262

Post by Aerroon » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

BowBun wrote: post #176

agpl3141592 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that they pushed it left and right as 'dropbox' share everything platform targeting pirate groups with referral money right? He was not early or anything he was literally pushing pirated movies and TV shows

Wait until you hear how Crunchyroll got to where they did! Plex is on much the same trajectory. Heck, even Google Play Music used the strategy by letting people upload their pirated music libraries to get users. It's a tried and true strategy.

Or even YouTube.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#263

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #177

i80and wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantically: MEGA runs today as a Dropbox-alike, and has very little to do with Kim Dotcom beyond his being involved at the very beginning and then departing quickly. You're referring to Megaupload, which is entirely different despite the name similarity.

I might be misremembering things here but AFAICR, it went something like this: MegaUpload existed as a file hosting service. It was widely used by pirates, and MegaUpload earned a lot of money off of hosting pirated files because users would buy subscriptions to MegaUpload specifically because of the pirated content that they could download, without the limitations that are placed on the users of the free tier. With…

Thanks, I had no idea that's how it worked. Embedding the key in a part of the URL that's not sent to the server is a stroke of genius.

I still find it surprising that so many people use Mega (at least enough that it can stay in business) when BitTorrent can easily saturate a downlink and is free.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#264

Post by kspacewalk2 » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

enriquec wrote: post #17

nxicvyvy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like trump eh? Is everyone you don't like a Russian spy?

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. The degree to which the propaganda works is alarming. They'll turn a blind eye to Ross Ulbricht, Snowden, the Patriot Act, etc. while wasting their time foaming at the mouth at made up stories about Russia. Unreal to see in this day and age, honestly - I mean you'd think the internet + a little critical thinking would have given these people a clue.

Which stories about Russia do you find made up, exactly? When my relative had to watch his neighbour being taken to a Russian torture chamber in Kherson, not to be seen for months, and then hearing his stories about daily beatings, electrocution, pulled fingernails and the like - was that made up? Are you one of those people who consider the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Ukrainians in Bucha "made up"?

Kim Dotcom, the Critical Thinker, does. But he curiously suspends critical thinking when pandering idiotic conspiracy theories about biolabs weaponizing birds. Gotta love these selective critical thinkers.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#265

Post by BLKNSLVR » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #195

stephen_g wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political class, yes, welcome the engagement. But not most Australians!

A claim that is categorically untrue and easily disproven. It takes less than ten seconds to google up multiple surveys that show the opinions of the Australian public. The most recent broad survey was conducted less than a month ago, but before Biden dropped out when it appeared Trump was likely to win the upcoming presidential election (relevant fact because the question was asked and answered regarding whether ano…

You're correct, of course.

But that's the majority of dumb Australians, much like the majority of dumb Americans. Our two sets of dumbs have a lot of similarity.

Australia's identity has been lost in the last thirty years up it's own anus of mineral riches and the feeling of lifestyle entitlement that came with it. The USs 51st state. Yeehaaw...

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#266

Post by ric2b » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #144

Tade0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians? Oh pay no attention to him -- he is on the communist payroll. Hailing from a country that joined NATO in the 90s I wouldn't brand a person arguing this as being on communist payroll - just ignorant beyond measure. Russia has been a consistently bad neighbour for decades now and I for one am happy that in my coun…

[flagged]

Russia is not a superpower if it can't even have air superiority on its own land and struggles to push beyond 150km from its own border, it's just a very nuclear armed nation thanks to the Soviet days.

As for the NATO enlargement narrative I don't know why people still try to push this when it's clear as water that Russia wants to annex more and more territory, even their conditions for ceasefire are mostly about Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#267

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

philippejara wrote: post #223

vessenes wrote: post #103

A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective. I’d argue Kim was too successful and too unlikeable at the end of the day, and that was probably his downfall. Toward the end, MEGA had transitioned to actually partnering with hip hop artists for distribution. The US has a long history of IP rights holders criminalizing new…

> A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective. I'd say it would be a a reasonable perspective if his case was being tried where the offences actually took place and/or where he was a citizen of and not a country who refuses to give the same rights to non-citizens being tried there compared to citizens[1] and wasn't eve…

It's a mockery of jurisdiction. It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#268

Post by t-3 » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #256

vasco wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you learn over the years is that people make up everything. I can't recall the exact quote but the character Frank Underwood once said something to the effect of "the law is the law, but the law is people and I know people". Meaning he could control the situation regardless. The opposite also happens and you can see cases like this or Shkreli, Dotcom and others where they think being edgy on top of minor cr…

>> probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally. More likely because those people remain naïve about the real world. In a past career I had some interaction with IP enforcement lawyers. They were stuck in the past then and have not really evolved. Their understanding of "the internet" extends only to those things discoverable via google search. Megaupload was knocke…

> Piracy is more alive now than ever, but as it is no longer visible via Google, the likes of the MPAA and IRAA cannot see it.

How so? Google is a major distributor of most pirated material through YouTube and their search engine still makes finding stuff easy. I'd argue that p2p is nearly irrelevant nowadays and server-oriented distribution is the main model.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#269

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

EasyMark wrote: post #246

ineedaj0b wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Drug dealers always hurt people - we have the word Pharmacist for good drug dispensers.

There is a huge difference between a regulated and controlled system and your neighborhood methhead mixing up something in his kitchen to sell to the kids a couple of blocks over

Regulated and controlled systems sold a ton of opioids.

Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

#270

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #20

throwaway48540 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a human. He just shared songs on the the internet. He's treated like a war criminal.

Maybe I don't know the full story, but as far as I understand, it seems like they (Megaupload) were ignoring DMCA takedown requests for a long time, was aware there was a ton of piracy on the site and didn't give any indication whatsoever that they were even trying to react to it by banning accounts that were uploading infringing content. I don't necessarily agree you should be taken away from your home-country becau…

> it seems like they (Megaupload) were ignoring DMCA takedown requests for a long time,

"Long time" is subjective.

> I don't necessarily agree you should be taken away from your home-country because of that

New Zealand doesn't agree either, it's not on the short list of crime categories that one can be extradited for. I seem to remember a headline from a decade ago where the US charges were amended to try to sidestep that. When the exact crimes one is accused of are subject to modification to squirm around protections, maybe the people prosecuting are worse than those being prosecuted.