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

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

#431

Post by jajko »

epolanski wrote: post #386
sandworm101 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> this is a fight against america playing world police 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…

I don't think your point stands. How would US citizens would feel if another country, say China, wanted to extradite a US citizen because he allegedly violated Chinese copyright law? Dotcom is absolutely right in saying that US is playing world police.

Countries extradite criminals all the time for crimes done here or there or anywhere, its just that US stands above literally everybody else, or at least wants to, so its not an equal situation and never was.

This is underlined by other US excesses, ie [1] or the fact that US prisons are have many citizens of other states, but there are very few US citizens detained elsewhere (in democratic systems, not used for some political deals).

[1] "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody. The antithesis of fairness and basic human equality rights.

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

#432

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

treprinum wrote: post #207

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.

Ehh... I'd say Youtube initially wasn't a super popular pirating option. The 10 minute limits meant you had to put everything up in chunks and at the time there weren't many super user friendly options to download them as a batch. You'd often enough have things where one part would eventually be missing and that'd ruin the whole thing. For tv shows it could be okay but for films once you're dealing with 10+ parts, often without knowledge of playlists, it'd get grating fast.

Youtube first broke through for me as the main form of sharing embedded music videos on forums and myspace so I always assume that's how most encountered it. A lot of these were probably pirated content too but pirated promotional content so a bit blurrier imo than Megaupload/megavideo

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

#433

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

treprinum wrote: post #207

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.

One big (alleged) difference that many folks skip over when mentioning YouTube is that Kim actively and not very secretly recruited pirates to upload known pirated stuff. YouTube may have done a crap job at preventing privacy but they weren't actively soliciting pirates and paying them.

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

#434

Post by FireBeyond »

enriquec wrote: post #105
DSingularity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the classic. Everybody who opposes american foreign policy is labeled. Tweet about opposing the genocide in gaza? Oh dont listen to him -- he is pro khamas. 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. I understand when leaders in politics or industry make these character-assasination atta…

tribalism. Probably on the democrat side and probably because Kim has been active on X. propaganda and its effects are literally that dumb and predictable (thus the NPC label).

Huh. Really. It's leftists who are demonizing him? Not the right, which has traditionally been the far far more corporate-friendly political wing?

And "because he tweeted on X"?

I think you're going to need something a bit more substantive than that.

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

#436

Post by OutOfHere »

kube-system wrote: post #413
OutOfHere wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quite simple really. Merely having a takedown process isn't enough to comply with the law. It must actually be complied with. YouTube went above and beyond in this, not only complying with DMCA requests, but not even requiring them. Megaupload's takedown process was a sham. Yes, they had a page where DMCA requests could be submitted, but actual compliance was poor, and intentionally so. Compliance is a critical part…

> how do you think lobbying Congress would even hypothetically help YouTube in court

With regard to Megaupload, this much is simple. The Justice Department can freeze an investigation under pressure from Congress. Whether an investigation comes to its conclusion or not is strongly under the influence of Congress.

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

#438

Post by kube-system »

sam2426679 wrote: post #411
kube-system wrote: post #346

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.

This quote from Kim, in the op, indicates the same: > “[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload, unsolicited, and what copyright holders were able to remove with direct delete access instantly and without question.”

Yes, like many criminal defendants, he always claimed to be compliant with the law.

They did have an "Abuse Tool" available. The problem was, it was intentionally flawed. It was a sham, intended to make it appear like they were compliant, when they were not. It didn't remove infringing content. It just removed the link. Also, Kim intentionally limited content holders in the number of requests they could send. So, pirates using the system just created more links to the same infringing content.

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

#439

Post by insane_dreamer »

sandworm101 wrote: post #379
stainablesteel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>> this is a fight against america playing world police 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…

Agreed. I don’t at all see Mega in the same light as SciHub for example.

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

#440

Post by gameman144 »

localfirst wrote: post #426
tim333 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was predominantly stealing US intellectual property, films, TV shows and music and the like. And unlike say normal use of bittorrent, making a lot of money off it. And being the largest player doing that. I'm not sure about the morals but you can certainly understand financially why they've gone after him.

is US intellectual property a national security issue? I don't understand why they went to such extent pursuing a man for simply running a piracy site meanwhile US is losing influence and trust on geopolitical stage, shouldn't that be the bigger issue edit: im being rate limited so heres my response to comment below: I didn't say anybody was replacing US, merely they are losing credibility and prestige on world stage…

One of the reasons the US is viewed as such a good place to start a business is that the country will go to bat for their (favored) businesses internationally.

National security is very far from the only scenario where the government will intervene in geopolitics, for better or worse.

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