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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

#501

Post by treflop »

kube-system wrote: post #463
mise_en_place wrote: post #452

Much like Napster, his only real crime was success. If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble. He paved the way for streaming and digital distribution of media. Megavideo in particular had the highest encoding rates possible at the time, even superior to YouTube.

YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.

As someone who used to run an illegal video index, this is not true at all.

YouTube had virtually zero enforcement. You could upload whole shows and movies and they were never taken down.

Other sites like Google Video or Vimeo did go above and beyond to comply and they lost badly.

YouTube started getting heat at some point and that’s only when they started enforcing, but by then, they already won.

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

#502

Post by MacsHeadroom »

FredPret wrote: post #494
scarmig wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanism arose during the Renaissance, when scholars and artists gleefully cribbed from each other's work without attribution and copyright didn't even exist. It's perfectly fine to copy someone else's work. The immorality comes in when you start using physical force to punish people thinking thoughts you feel entitled to.

I'm 1000% in favor of free ideas and free speech. Copying scientific ideas (with attribution!) is completely OK and good. Having heterodox ideas is vital for society. Forcing people to think certain thoughts (or trying to) is the worst evil. But making a movie is a commercial enterprise that involves risking a bunch of capital. It rarely pans out to make a profit. Copying it without payment is a very minor form of th…

Depriving someone of their liberty over interference with a revenue model based on copyright protections is not 1000% in favor of free ideas and free speech.

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

#503

Post by kube-system »

londons_explore wrote: post #478
kube-system wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.

With the right third party search engines, you can find almost any full movie on YouTube. They don't have to stop pirates, just keep them in the shadows.

The DMCA doesn't give anyone a score based on how many movies they have, or don't have. What is relevant is that YouTube provides tools that comply with the DMCA.

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

#504

Post by trueismywork »

ProofHouse wrote: post #451
slashtab wrote: post #445

Meanwhile nothing for mega corporation pirating data to train AI.

It’s not pirating. It’s transformative and fair use. Derivative even in some cases. Each piece of content is but a grain of sand on an island. It’s called the open internet.

Training is not pirating, but generating copyrighted data is.

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

#505

Post by kube-system »

treflop wrote: post #501
kube-system wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.

As someone who used to run an illegal video index, this is not true at all. YouTube had virtually zero enforcement. You could upload whole shows and movies and they were never taken down. Other sites like Google Video or Vimeo did go above and beyond to comply and they lost badly. YouTube started getting heat at some point and that’s only when they started enforcing, but by then, they already won.

They didn't, but then they did, to the satisfaction of the Viacom case. Napster and Megaupload never built the tools to comply to the degree that YouTube did. Maybe if they had, they would still exist.

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

#506

Post by geor9e »

donatj wrote: post #129

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.

It feels like a decade ago, but I remember the issue being with how they dealt with abuse reports. To save storage space, they matched similar files. So if two people ripped a DVD and compressed it, they would just keep one source file, and generate 2 different metadata files, to avoid wasting space. So they'd have different filenames and creation dates, but only take up half the space. Then, when one got an abuse report, they would delete that metadata, but as long as one still existed, the source data never got deleted. Law enforcement called it a conspiracy to commit crime, megaupload called it smart database deduping. It was usually much more than 2 copies, so content owners were playing endless whack—a-mole while megaupload was barely shuffling a few kilobytes around.

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

#508

Post by __loam »

scarmig wrote: post #479
FredPret wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a clear-cut case of humanism vs something else. Humanist values include right to property ownership, and the right to get the benefits of your work. Artists deserve that, and can sell their rights to big studios if they want. Just because it's easy to copy something, or just because studio execs were idiots who wouldn't get on board with streaming, or whatever else, doesn't mean it's morally right to copy…

Humanism arose during the Renaissance, when scholars and artists gleefully cribbed from each other's work without attribution and copyright didn't even exist. It's perfectly fine to copy someone else's work. The immorality comes in when you start using physical force to punish people thinking thoughts you feel entitled to.

Creative work costs money to make. People who make it should have the right to make a living off it. It's not hard. Most of the people on this site make their money creating intellectual property. How many piracy activists here would be willing to leak the source code their company relies on?

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

#509

Post by petre »

skullone wrote: post #459
mise_en_place wrote: post #452

Much like Napster, his only real crime was success. If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble. He paved the way for streaming and digital distribution of media. Megavideo in particular had the highest encoding rates possible at the time, even superior to YouTube.

Except, he paid people for, and promoted the upload of copywrited works. He knowingly participated and basically tailored his products to pirating. Some people love him, but he will see his day in court apparently, but no one wants to even deal with him because he's gone crazy.

Sure, pirating means comandeering of a ship, not distribtion of copyrighted works.

He probably has a plan in a nearby Pacific jurisdiction like Vanuatu. Best of luck!

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

#510

Post by arresin »

aestetix wrote: post #500

I wonder if people have forgotten the legal grounds on which the US claimed jurisdiction. I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it. I guess one lesson from this is that running out of .COM domain names is not a bad thing, because it reduces the grip…

That tracks with the fact that they use a .nz now.
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