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

torrentfreak.com

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

#331

Post by sandworm101 »

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…

>> tried where the offences actually took place

The general rule is that a crime takes place where the victim stands. Where the perpetrator stand is a potential secondary location. The alleged victims here were "standing" in the US and so the US is proceeding with the case.

Trials in a third location are extraordinarily rare. Only things like the ICC or some admiralty proceedings involve trials in a third location.

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

#332

Post by butlike »

bobajeff wrote: post #170
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without cutting in the existing rights holders properly. That's the killer, right there. "existing rights holders" is a big deal, and one that has been ignored by tech bros for a long time. As a [former] artist, and [former] musician, I can say that the tech industry has been cooking the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art…

>The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse). If we take that away, guess what happens? No one wants to do it, anymore. I don't know about financial success but I think losing ego building as artist incentives might not be a bad thing. Maybe it's an unhealthy focus and probably shouldn't be supported. Intuitively, I think those ki…

Being "the guy" is the moat in entertainment. The problem is if you remove that, then the throngs of folks can make content to where it becomes "if everyone's special, no one is." I get it, I just wish it wasn't the case.

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

#333

Post by pc86 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #208
tedivm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of these things is not like the other. Ross Ulbricht was part of a murder for hire scheme, and was not a whistle blower or anything close to a reporter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...

You realize that the moderators in question were Secret Service and DEA agents creating fictional scenarios to line their own pockets Their involvement and indictment was withheld during the Ross trial and they went to prison for that Ross was not charged for these scenes, the other district court is saving face by calling it redundant and dropping it but it’s really a shaky case It shouldn’t have been brought up in…

You're right that he wasn't charged, but: "For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in fact commission the murders, believing that they would be carried out." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#cite_note-46

Just because something doesn't rise to the level of provability of getting charged and sentenced for it doesn't mean that you can't say with a high level of confidence it happened.

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

#334

Post by butlike »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #209
bobajeff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse). If we take that away, guess what happens? No one wants to do it, anymore. I don't know about financial success but I think losing ego building as artist incentives might not be a bad thing. Maybe it's an unhealthy focus and probably shouldn't be supported. Intuitively, I think those ki…

The ego stuff can be sickening, but it is definitely a draw. Some of the best musicians and artists, ever, have been rather appalling personalities. I won't go into naming names.

If you get used to stepping on the shoulders of others, that cascades to other aspects of your life and sooner-or-later a paparazzi video comes out of you being a dick to wait staff or worse.

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

#335

Post by kalleboo »

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…

> when a file was taken down, the host would usually make note of the hash of the file that was taken down and not allow that file to be uploaded and shared again

One of the complaints the US case had was that MegaUpload specifically did not do this. They de-duplicated uploads by hash internally, but when one download URL was DMCA'd, they only disabled that one URL and left other URLs with the same hash accessible.

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

#336

Post by delusional »

vasco wrote: post #237
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…

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…

I've heard it articulated as "There are no rules, only consequences." which I take to refer to the Legal Realism idea that the rules are just what we bind each other to. The written rules only matter if some "powerful" entity (like the government, or a mob, or civil court) is committed to holding you to them.

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

#337

Post by yieldcrv »

pc86 wrote: post #333
yieldcrv wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the moderators in question were Secret Service and DEA agents creating fictional scenarios to line their own pockets Their involvement and indictment was withheld during the Ross trial and they went to prison for that Ross was not charged for these scenes, the other district court is saving face by calling it redundant and dropping it but it’s really a shaky case It shouldn’t have been brought up in…

You're right that he wasn't charged, but: "For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in fact commission the murders, believing that they would be carried out." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#cite_note-46 Just because something doesn't rise to the level of provability…

I didnt say it didnt happen

Corrupt, convicted ex government agents staged the murders, there is video evidence of some of them that they made for Ross to pay them. Which got them convicted.

Ross was not charged with that, wasnt charged with conspiracy to do that, wasnt put in front of a jury for that. Because the government would lose that case because of their corrupt agents and agencies (Baltimore FBI which hosted the skit) messing up the case.

This doesnt warrant a double life sentence for the crimes he was convicted of.

1 presidential candidate will commute (basically saying ~9 years is enough, ending this debate), 1 presidential candidate will pardon completely, 1 will likely do neither until the FreeRoss campaign learns how to do campaign contributions. Its only a matter of time as crypto savants gain position

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

#338

Post by butlike »

earthnail wrote: post #169
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroying commercial art culture really might not be a bad thing. The overwhelming majority of visual artists, writers and musicians don’t make money from their art, and would continue doing it even if the big corporate parasites went bankrupt.

I believe the implications are a bit different. It takes a lot of time to learn to make music. If you can’t make it as a famous artists (the odds of which are about as high as becoming a football star), you previously still had the option to use your music skills to make money with boring work: music for ads for example. That’s going away. Now it’s becoming a lot more like professional sports: either you make it, or…

For. The. Love. Of. The. Game.

Your skills are cause you wanted to do it, not because you wanted to be famous. That's the by-product.

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

#339

Post by codetrotter »

cevn wrote: post #309
fluoridation wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dunno if this is unreasonable, but I fear dling Torrents with high number of seeders in case one of them is malicious. With Mega you only had to trust one server.

Torrent files have hash check sums of the fragments. If someone sends you a bad fragment it will be discarded.

Magnet links are also hashes, so when you retrieve torrent metadata from your peers from a magnet link that data will also be verified for integrity.

However, if the original torrent itself was made from malicious data then it’s still gonna result in malicious code on your system.

Interestingly though, it is probably far more likely that a torrent with a very low number of seeders is malicious, than that a popular torrent contains malicious data in the files you download.

I suppose it could still be possible that the malicious code sent by a peer was targeting a weakness in your torrent client itself though. And that they could get remote code execution on your computer that way.

The main thing I would worry about with torrents is that your IP could be seen in the swarm by one of the companies that monitor torrent peers on behalf of rights holders and send you a nasty demand for money and threats of legal action.

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

#340

Post by klyrs »

dangus wrote: post #327
EasyMark wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kim just didn’t grease the right palm plus he was a singular face and name. Feds are relentless at getting those who the oligopolists have marked for retribution, just like Assange and Snowden

Except when you read the basis for indictment section of megaupload’s Wikipedia page, I think it’s quite clear that the service wasn’t just another YouTube or Crunchyroll that was hosting copyrighted content and not doing a great job at taking it down. They were doing a lot more than that, they were running a file storage service that actively encouraged privacy and wasn’t actually useful for storing personal files.…

I'm not sure that one can distinguish between a russian asset and a russian prisoner so easily.
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