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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

#651

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

nkmnz wrote: post #464
halyconWays wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's your evidence: I would have bought House on DVD 15 years ago if there hadn't been the option to stream it illegally. You might object this evidence by telling me that you bought all seasons of House only because you had been streaming it illegally before, and that you wouldn't have done so without previously streaming it – but in most jurisdictions, this kind of "business procurement" does not cancel out the h…

> Anyways, the burden to disprove the harm done through me not buying it is on you.

Is that legally how it works?

This sounds a lot like being guilty until proven innocent...

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

#652

Post by chgs »

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.

I my country making a copy of copyrighted works is illegal unless you have permission from the copyright holder.

It’s impossible to use a copyrighted work to train without making a copy of it.

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

#653

Post by TeeMassive »

bdcravens wrote: post #580
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.

> Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself

Why not both?

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

#654

Post by calmbonsai »

throwup238 wrote: post #493
gliiics wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always black and white; let's be honest, yes, Kim Dotcom was probably more about piracy than freedom of whatever simply because that's where his money was. But: > Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise? Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general? Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

Truth. I'll go further. He was a scam artist. Back in the day, I remember using MegaCar.com as an example of all the evils of Flash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9RIkwvFjfw

Also Data Protect was a fraud masquerading as an information security company. I was living in Germany then and it was a joke in the infosec space.

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

#655

Post by [deleted] »

gliiics wrote: post #513
throwup238 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general? Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

I agree, and in fact I did not compare them. I asked an entirely different question. You can re-read the first line of my comment if you think I'm putting those two things on the same level, and you will see that I agree with: > He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

[deleted]

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

#657

Post by Tade0 »

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]

The way you speak about Russia is akin to the way an abuse victim would speak about their abuser - it's everyone's fault but Russia's that they invaded.

Also don't you dare make them lose their temper.

Russia isn't under threat from NATO, as it's a defensive alliance. They seem to understand that as well, as they pulled their air defense systems from the region bordering Finland.

> I think people dont realize that the Russians are a super power.

The soviet union was a super power. If anything people realised that Russia's supposed power is mainly posturing.

And it was high time for that. In the past some western governments attempted a policy of appeasement - all it achieved was emboldening Russia.

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

#658

Post by causal »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #378
Der_Einzige wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

See reply to antai below. MEGA, not Megaupload. 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…

Seems like a terrible experience, especially the "use of virtual machines" being flagged as suspicious considering what a benign and widespread tool that is.

Are you based in the US or?

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

#659

Post by joshcryer »

bdcravens wrote: post #580
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.

So I remember sharing a file to my brother and "uploading" it over very slow DSL at the time (I think I was getting 100kbps a second or something). The file was copyrighted, a TV show, Supernatural, or something like that. Anyway, the upload was instant. Apparently Megaupload would do a quick hash of the file (not sure if it was in browser or probably more likely the first 100k bits or something of the file), and if it was a file that was already on their servers, they would just make a new download link for it, and the "upload" would finish. Links would be taken down by DMCA notices from forums and other file sharing sites (back then you could get good money making affiliate links and such, so people did a lot of their own uploading). But your private links and links you didn't share would remain. The files remained.

The fact that they did the hashing thing and kept the files locally really, incontrovertibly, proved they weren't deleting the files themselves when a notice went out. And that they were aware the hashed file was given a DMCA notice. This one little thing, probably to save bandwidth (and convivence for the end user of course; though outside of Linux ISOs there's little question what kind of files people are sharing), screwed him.

Anyway, #freeRossUlbricht (Yes I know he tried to make a hit out and a lot of people died from drugs he enabled to be sold, but the hit never happened and the drug users were consenting adults.) A life sentence is insane. 20 years? OK. Life? Heck he rejected a plea deal that would've given him 10... bet he regrets that now.

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

#660

Post by dangus »

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 is a ton of evidence. Ask Snoop Dogg how much money he gets from streaming compared to CD sales. Look at how badly industry revenue has collapsed. It literally never recovered fully since Napster.

https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...

It is an industry that employs real people from artists to studio engineers to musical instrument and equipment companies to the bartenders at the venues. Those people are sharing a smaller pie than they used to before Internet piracy devalued their music.

In your opinion it's tyrannical. Sure, most certainly a non-violent crime against a wealthy corporation isn't on the same level as murder or assault. At the same time, copyright infringement is conceptually not that different from property crime.

You would want the police to arrest someone who broke into your home and stole your movie collection.

You wouldn't want to spend a year writing code for your micro-SaaS product and then have a hacker breach your infrastructure, steal your work and sell it on their own website.

It's really a grand piece of irony for software engineers that depend on enforceable copyright law to put food on their table to call this arrest tyranny. If nobody can go to jail or be fined for copyright infringement then I hate to say it but you are going to need to quit your job writing software and start driving a city bus or something.

Don't forget that Megaupload was specifically designed to enable piracy and discourage other uses of the technology. It wasn't a file storage service that could be used for legitimate personal use because unpopular downloads would be deleted. The company actually paid people via an incentive program to upload popular files that were copyright infringing. This wasn't just "YouTube is bad at playing whack-a-mole with DMCA claims," this was a company that was responsible for something like 4% of all Internet piracy all by itself and actively encouraged it.

It's not like they were a company that didn't have access to lawyers who could warn them not to do what they did. Kim deserves his fate because his own hubris invited it.

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