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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

#581

Post by ghnws »

umvi wrote: post #578
pembrook wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty far fetched benefits

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

#582

Post by older »

DSingularity wrote: post #144
Tade0 wrote: post #104

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 Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians?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…

[flagged]

> Russia has always made it clear that Ukraine was a red line for what it sees as NATO encroachment on its borders.

You are just parroting lies manufactured by russian propaganda. Here you go, read it from the source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21598

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

#583

Post by aestetix »

deaddodo wrote: post #571
aestetix wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

I'm not trying to move goalposts, I was simply looking for clarification.

A couple points.

First, wasn't there a huge issue where the data centers had money problems because the FBI (or some agency) was forcing them to retain all the data, as they didn't actually know for sure what was there? Or am I wrong and they had a list of specific files hosted on specific servers and were able to use that to demonstrate wrongdoing? Just because I say I'm going to hack the Gibson, doesn't mean I actually do it.

Second, there is a real jurisdiction issue here. Kim Dotcom is a German citizen based in New Zealand. The servers themselves are (or were) hosted in the US. Did Kim Dotcom himself upload anything to them? I can absolutely see the case for shutting down servers that might contain illegal data. I don't see the case for extraditing someone to the US for allegedly breaking a law that applies neither to his country of origin nor residence.

Also, I'm not sure why you're being so angry with me, I'm just looking at the facts. I do have a bias, but I'm not moving any goalposts, just making sure we discuss the actual issues at hand.

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

#585

Post by rtsil »

fluoridation wrote: post #267
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…

It's a mockery of jurisdiction. It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.

> It's a joke that NZ would sell out its own citizens like that.

DotCom is not a NZ citizen, he's a resident.

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

#586

Post by sensanaty »

FredPret wrote: post #486
sensanaty wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catering to trillion dollar media companies is not exactly my idea of freedom.

Does their size make the moral situation any different? Many of these are public companies that anyone can buy shares in. Tons of people have part of their life savings in US stocks - these people all own a slice of the rights to various works of art. Are you saying if they own a large enough amount of it, it's OK to ignore their rights? As an aside, here's a list of public companies [0]. 7-8 of them are "trillion do…

> Are you saying if they own a large enough amount of it, it's OK to ignore their rights?

Let's not pretend these companies give the slightest hint of a shit about morality. They'd destroy the world next year if it meant they could earn a penny more of profit this quarter.

As long as companies like Disney are pulling moves like this [1], I'm not going to sit here and pretend as if these companies are in the right.

The only reason Dotcom (a non-US individual with 0 ties to the US in any way that should matter) is being extradited is because US politicians are pathetically cheap and easy to buy off, and Disney and all the other big media companies have infinite coffers with which to do so, not because of some vague bullshit about morality or property rights.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go

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

#587

Post by shadowgovt »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #247
EasyMark wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we just realized people who pirate likely aren’t going to buy it anyway, you can’t claim lost profits for ~$0.

I wouldn't say that, myself. In the case of software (a creative product that many, here, have a vested interest in), pirating can actually lead to future sales. I think one of the most pirated programs out there, used to be Adobe Photoshop. This resulted in a huge number of folks that became expert Photoshop users, and that drove sales of the app, in their careers. The same probably cannot be said for games. I suspe…

Anecdotally, when I was in a grad-level design class as an undergrad, 100% of my classmates first learned to use their tools via a jailbroken copy of professional software. At that level of competition for opportunity, it just wasn't good enough to have waited until you got to college to learn these tools; you needed to have been playing with them in high school to be fluent enough to look good on a college application form (or a grad application form four years later).

AutoCAD, in particular, used to be[1] super smart about this and went out of their way to get their toolchain in front of high-schoolers (even back when that involved pricy copy-protection solutions like physical dongles).

[1] Not to imply they are no longer super-smart about it; I just no longer have clear signal.

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

#588

Post by sizzle »

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…

Who is running mega.co.nz? It looks like a superior offering compared to mega upload with sophisticated encryption and decoding.

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

#589

Post by burningChrome »

halyconWays wrote: post #429
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…

There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates. Moving heaven and earth to extract a citizen from another country using the power of the state, and drag him before their feet is tyrannical.

>> There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates.

Not sure if you know this, but there are tens of thousands of people involved in making a movie or TV series. Many making minimum wage and many who own businesses that are employed by the studios like catering companies. Or transportation companies, or even all the companies who tech they use like the camera's they use to film said movies.

ALL of those people? Their employment DEPENDS on movie studio's and the work they do to keep them gainfully employed. When you pirate movies you're not taking money out of the faceless multi-trillion entertainment companies, you're taking money out of the people's pocket who are integral part of creating the movies and shows you watch and who's livelihood depends on their continued employment by those companies.

Take a studio like New Line who put out the Lord of the Rings movies and was wildly successful until a series of flops effectively closed the studio:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/featu...

From 'Nightmare on Elm Street' to 'Lord of the Rings', New Line Cinema created some of Hollywood's most influential blockbusters. But now its 40-year history is in tatters following a string of big-budget box-office flops.

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

#590

Post by pgraf »

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, 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 […]

While it may be true that they are the only ones able to do it effectively, there are some other countries with citizenship-based taxation. According to Wikipedia[0] these currently are: Hungary, Eritrea, Myanmar and Tajikistan

Some other countries have similar policies for tax heavens.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizen...

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