371–380 of 1001 posts
It is rumoured (by locals) that Kim Dotcom has been allowed to reside in New Zealand (being a German/Finish) on the basis that he spent his money in New Zealand. I don't think they are in a rush to extradite him to the US, and the US will not come after NZ for the money spent.
Orders of magnitude are a thing.
Didn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.
For the first 5 years videos were limited to 10 minutes. Clips of things were popular and there were things split between many videos, but that's not what I remember the people around me using youtube for.
It is rumoured (by locals) that Kim Dotcom has been allowed to reside in New Zealand (being a German/Finish) on the basis that he spent his money in New Zealand. I don't think they are in a rush to extradite him to the US, and the US will not come after NZ for the money spent.
Didn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.
Kim dotcom didn't go to Stanford and have layers of contacts within the DoJ
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 Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians?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…
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This is completely false. "NATO encroachment" is a VERY recent talking point which is part of the neo-fascist narrative that Russia developed attempting to excuse its own inadequacies. You should google Foundations of Geopolitics which is basically a Russian version of Mein Kampf. This book is required reading for majority of Russian politicians, diplomats and high ranking military officials. Before Russia decided that it wanted to pursue a fascist state, NATO was not on its agenda at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
YouTube didn't bribe congress. They built significant tooling that gave the rights holders what they wanted, even beyond what the law required them to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y... . To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.
Google has had a massive lobbying effort for a long time, and donating to Congress is a part of it. If not for it, how is it that a takedown process wasn't sufficient for Mega, but it is sufficient for Google? How is it that the rights-holders didn't engage Mega into having such tooling?
The indictment explicitly answers your questions about why Megaupload was different from other file sharing services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. I'm far more concerned with the stuff that governments get away with, including infringement of the freedom to share information.
Totally fair point, but what can you do? This is how the world works. Fighting such beasts is pointless. You might tame them with lobby money, but no billionaire is interested. And we're now talking about the human spirit that cannot be chained, as also seen in Pirate Bay or Snowden. Sure, people do need heroes and hope from time to time. But I have become less romantic over the years, and more careful.
The US seems to have this knack of sliding itself into this narrow gap between individuals they're idealistically pursuing and something worse. "If I could just slip in there, ooh, that's tight, yes, thank you, aah comfy, this feels like where I belong". In their desperate attempt to not lose a fight that's been going on for, what, 10 years? 15 years? They're increasingly looking like a child that cannot move on from…
Source for the final claim? Is this still the case? Shit Man I distributed a dataset via megaupload for a paper awhile ago. Am I now a target of the glowies?
Re: source. Hopefully I'm consistent, you can go back through my comment history. I was raided by the police a bit over two years ago. When I got my stuff back (8 months later, no charges) the lead detective said that there was evidence I'd downloaded things from Mega, and that this was "suspicious", amongst a couple of other things.
I got the feeling she thought I was still guilty and had somehow managed to get away with the distribution of which I was suspected (or it was some kind of retro justification for gross violation of my rights and she was taking a front foot stance to minimise the chances I'd see what legal avenues are available in such situations - turns out very few to none).
She specifically mentioned as suspicious:
- history of downloading from MEGA
- using virtual machines
- having "tor" installed.
Interesting combination of cluelessness (wait until they're introduced to containers!). MEGA somewhat stands out in that bunch, in that there are lots of similar services as far as I know. Makes me wonder if it's a honeypot (but maybe not, because then they'd know the only thing I downloaded from MEGA was android ROMs).
Other than being outspoken on certain topics online, my browsing history is as boring as the next guy's. So I really think they put some weight behind MEGA activity.
I appreciate Kim Dotcom for running MegaUpload and later Mega, in a time when the internet was younger and wilder. Also for his pirate spirit and "stick it to the man" attitude. But everything has a limit, specifically his resistance against the law, even if he hid it behind virtues. I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. Isn't it wiser to sto…
not really, his website was based on hong kong, this is a fight against america playing world police, which i'm on board with they have no business going after just a single man so fervently, he's a foreign national and the websites weren't based in the US
That is how Dotcom wants it characterized. Everyone else sees a fly-by-night website run by an eccentric millionaire making money by playing fast and loose with the law. It is one thing to be an outlaw subverting oppression by distributing free bread to poor people. It is another to be a bootlegger selling vodka under the table and then throwing huge invite-only parties with the profits.
What exactly has Mega done that Dropbox hasn't? In my eyes they're basically the same product, the only difference being Mega's edgier tone.