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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

#671

Post by pishpash »

bandyaboot wrote: post #626
NamTaf wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s the point the poster is making. They are not the same despite being united by the fact that in both cases the government got involved and said “stop that, it’s wrong”. They explicitly stated their point that there’s a moral spectrum of positions which means it’s not always right to just roll over and find something else to do when the authorities get involved.

I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, but I’ve been seeing this so much lately. People reflexively responding that thing A is totally different than thing B, completely missing that the point is not to suggest similarity between A and B, but to challenge the reasoning being applied to A by noting that it would also apply to B (in most cases where applying it to B leads to a clearly wrong outcome).

It's standard trolling technique, or maybe rhetorical art to win an argument, your call.

Now you have a pointless thread five deep.

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

#672

Post by noah_buddy »

burningChrome wrote: post #589
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.

>> 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 us…

Actually, if you’re not buying movies and TV, the money comes out of producers pockets, not the tradespeople. They never get residuals. The case you point to is about box office flops, which, again, come far after tradespeople have cashed their last check from a production. People made stinkers every year even before pirating and past performance does not guarantee future success.

Also, I would consider pirating a perfectly valid protest of what producers have done over the last two years, dragging their feet to break the backs of unions in advance of negotiations. Hollywood, Atlanta, New Orleans, NY, all filming far less over the last two years due to producer’s greed and hope that they can enjoy these pesky trades entirely by automation and AI. This has done more damage to tradespeople than pirating ever did.

Fortunately, it’s pretty clear that it will not be feasible to make a coherent movie or TV show via AI in the near term. Hopefully consumers vote with their wallets too and don’t buy or stream any content that is made without trades.

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

#673

Post by vlovich123 »

LouisSayers wrote: post #600
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is for all practical purposes a USA protectorate. If you want to break USA law don't do it in a country that is dependent on the USA.

It's really not though. Although NZ has agreements with Aus and the US, you'll find on the ground that kiwis are actually not super fond of the US. We won't let US nuclear ships into our waters, and we actually have quite a good relationship with China. NZ is also quite self sufficient in many ways and so far from other countries that it's fairly sheltered from potential conflict.

> so far from other countries that it's fairly sheltered from potential conflict

I suspect the small size of the economy, the small number of people in it, and lack of strategic importance in military matters are what keep it protected from potential conflict more than it's self sufficiency and distance. In fact, if anything was to create conflict would be someone trying to capture that self-sufficiency to support their own population.

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

#674

Post by serial_dev »

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.

Which kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

I expect different treatment for Pablo Escobar / Chapo level drug dealers vs a guy who gave some of his weed to a buddy of his for some cash and later bought a pizza with it.

They are both technically drug dealers, just one a bit more successful than the other.

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

#675

Post by toolz »

scotty79 wrote: post #644
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?

> > 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? Or maybe even more generally to people like Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Buffet? Because maybe at some point enough should be enough?

I find this mentality is always directed at rich people, but never applied consistently in anyone's life, so I have a hard time taking this opinion seriously. Hopefully, you can convince me otherwise, but I've never heard anyone suggest the best sports teams should stop competing when they've won enough, or that the best inventors should stop, or the best artists, and so on. Money isn't zero sum. We're constantly creating insanely large quantities of money. If the people at the top are accumulating that money from individual consumers making their own free choices, then would you suggest that the people at the end of the line be given things for free? Or maybe they should be disallowed from making the purchases? Or maybe you're suggesting the rich keep selling but they're forced to give the profits away? and who would they give it away too? The federal government controls more money than any entire private business, so obviously it controls orders of magnitude more than any individual. Should these wealthy individuals be forced to give their money to the largest money holders in the world? What value system would that make sense in?

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

#676

Post by dangus »

zamubafoo wrote: post #667
dangus wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Streaming is not piracy though?

No, but piracy didn't stop being the #1 way to obtain digital music until streaming offered a convenient alternative. Streaming was essentially forced into existence by the wild rampancy and ease of music piracy.

You really think if Spotify came along in 1998 that all the major record labels would agree to give them their entire catalog for $10 a month? Back then they were selling a single CD for around $20.

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

#677

Post by WheatMillington »

xdennis wrote: post #536
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.

> He was predominantly stealing US intellectual property, films, TV shows and music and the like. But they have no jurisdiction as he was not doing that IN the US. When the Pirate Bay guys were persecuted, the US got Sweden to convict them. They weren't extradited to the US.

He has US victims though. Fraudsters aren't absolved of responsibility in the USA just because they operate outside the border, and the same can be true of other crimes.

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

#678

Post by TheKarateKid »

lenerdenator wrote: post #488
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?

Whistleblowing is not the same as hosting pirated material.

Back in the day, piracy was seen as a symbol of free speech and censorship much like how abortion is still a symbol for women's rights today.

The premise was that these services didn't actually perform the piracy, its users did. Kim Dotcom played both sides of the field, much like how social media platforms are right now with the whole "we're not a media company" but wanting all the profits of providing services that those companies do.

I'm not saying I agree, but it provides context as to why people felt Kim Dotcom was a hero.

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

#679

Post by WheatMillington »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #497
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

New Zealand is for all practical purposes a USA protectorate. If you want to break USA law don't do it in a country that is dependent on the USA.

That is just not true, where do you get your ideas?

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

#680

Post by threeio »

dangus wrote: post #676
zamubafoo wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming is not piracy though?

No, but piracy didn't stop being the #1 way to obtain digital music until streaming offered a convenient alternative. Streaming was essentially forced into existence by the wild rampancy and ease of music piracy. You really think if Spotify came along in 1998 that all the major record labels would agree to give them their entire catalog for $10 a month? Back then they were selling a single CD for around $20.

I mean... they did (basically) give access to their entire catalog to radio stations for even less than that.. but I almost sound like a troll mentioning it.
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