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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

#571

Post by deaddodo »

aestetix wrote: post #566
deaddodo wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You are definitely misremembering and spreading FUD backed by your biases. He was hosting illegal material on servers geolocated inside the US. I'm sure if someone were producing and distributing illegal m…

Was he hosting illegal material, or simply creating a platform where such material could be held? If you post child porn on Facebook, I assume you would get sent to jail, not Mark Zuckerberg. It seems that Kim Dotcom is in a similar position.

Facebook wasn't created with the primary intention of hosting illicit material (Kim Dotcom actively made statements along those lines) and doesn't facilitate + protect the hosting of such materials. You can be damn sure that if Facebook refused removal requests for copyrighted videos, that they (and Zuckerberg) would be in hot water.

You can try to pettyfog the case and move goalposts all you like, each time one of your points/misunderstandings is debunked, however it's pretty clear what he was doing. And, more importantly to the original point, the laws/extradition would apply similarly to any nations with the same IP laws; "empire" or not.

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

#572

Post by doctorpangloss »

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.

It did. YouTube has paid the piper here and continues to do so. It pays a lot of money to record labels right now. TV networks choose to run their own streaming, and YouTube enforces what networks ask for.

Consider what things look like when you can't pirate. Many services now, like Claude, do not let you create password accounts, to make it less practicable to share a subscription. Apple News and Apple Arcade is totally impracticable to pirate.

Enforcing copyright violations is as much about how you feel about IP as it is about, whom do we permit to make money? It's a big part of why Apple is so fucking rich. Should only Apple be permitted to make real money? I don't think so.

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

#573

Post by slg »

sandworm101 wrote: post #557
next_xibalba wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't his mistake have been hosting pirated content?

>> hosting pirated content? If you run a service that allows people to upload data, you are hosting pirated content. The DMCA was specifically designed to address this, to create a system whereby those who host data are not on the hook for every violation. The issue is not that you host pirated content but whether you are following all the rules necessary to enjoy safe harbor protection.

If you look into the case, this wasn't a situation in which they accidentally hosted pirated content as a byproduct of hosting legitimate content. There are records of internal communication of the business discussing how to encourage piracy on the platform. This wasn't early Youtube turning a blind eye to piracy with plausible deniability. This was a business consciously and intentionally using piracy as a growth strategy.

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

#574

Post by fluoridation »

sandworm101 wrote: post #331
philippejara wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So if someone robs your house while you're out of the country, the crime would have taken place in whatever country you happened to be in at that time, right? That's how that would play out. Because if that's not the case it would imply that the house itself would be the victim.

I also think it's odd to talk about this being the "general rule" when there's plenty of crimes/infractions with no victim.

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

#576

Post by duped »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #218

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…

You're looking at this through too narrow a lens, I think.

The Government has a duty to protect domestic industry from foreign threats, and throughout history, that isn't reserved to state actors.

Megaupload was a severe threat(*) to major American industries, and Kim Dotcom flagrantly ignored pressure from America to stop what it was doing. When that happens the Government gets to pick which of its heavy hammers to drop, and KDC is lucky it was just lawyers.

You have to look at this through the eyes of the government and how it conducts foreign policy, often over long spans of time, with the goals of expanding and defending American interests - which includes protecting industries.

(* was it? we'll never really know)

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

#577

Post by afh1 »

pembrook wrote: post #567
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…

It doesn't really matter because, as the dominant world power and arbiter of the world's currency, the US can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone. The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country. The US treasury will withhold the a…

>The US government is so powerful [...] can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone

Sounds like what a totalitarian king would do.

"In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude." - Edmund Burke, 1756.

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

#578

Post by umvi »

pembrook wrote: post #567
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…

It doesn't really matter because, as the dominant world power and arbiter of the world's currency, the US can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone. The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country. The US treasury will withhold the a…

USA can't tax non-citizens. Revoke citizenship if you really don't want to pay. That comes with a lot of downsides though (no more US passport, no getting rescued by the US if you wander into North Korea, etc), which implies the taxes aren't for nothing just because you live out-of-country.

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

#579

Post by mjhay »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #541
trueismywork wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training is not pirating, but generating copyrighted data is.

If generating copyrighted data pirating, then so is being served literal images that are shared across the internet. Should a corporation be able to sue you for simply sharing an image of Micky?

There's a difference between a fair-use reproduction of Mickey and reproducing an image of Mickey that you claim is your own original creation (or there was until the copyright ran out recently).

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

#580

Post by bdcravens »

preaching5271 wrote: post #24

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…

Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself off of content that people were already sharing? There's a lot of retcon-ing those like him, Ross Ulbricht, etc as freedom fighters, when the truth is they were simply capitalists.
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