Didn't like the guy when he was in the news, but this is too long ago, give it a rest. Why does NZ even play ball on this, just tell the US to f off.
Because the US and NZ have an extradition treaty.
Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#682Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Getting a DMCA for one user's copy of a file doesn't mean every other user's copy is violating copyright. And that's not a theoretical concern, I remember a recent tweet about google drive having false positives in that exact way.
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#683Earlier 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.
"Comparing X to Y feels gross [therefore don't do it]" is a gross argument. This type of argument never yields insight, and only serves to draw attention away from the interesting and relevant question being asked, which in this case is:
The top-level poster appears to be proposing a general rule for how people should behave. But how suitable is it really?
The way to explore that is to test it out by trying other inputs, as the GP did here.
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Solely making a copy isn't copyright infringement, otherwise your ISP, your browser cache, the CDNs providing data caching on the internet, your screen, your router, and about a million other components in the stream would need a license for each piece of data.
Infringing copyright requires far more than this.
And if the output is transformative, then they can read whatever public facing information they can find, just as you can.
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#685Earlier 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…
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Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#686I 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…
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?
I think there's a significant difference between someone who does the right thing despite personal risk (because it's that important), and someone who does the profitable thing despite personal risk (because they can't imagine the rules actually applying to them).
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#687Earlier 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.
Also, no nuclear ships but part of five eyes. I think it's more complicated.
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#688Earlier 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.
On the internet, questions like your first comment are statistically likely to be smug gotchas. It'd be nice if it was different, but it's not. So if that's not your intention, it's worthwhile to say so in the first place rather than assume people will understand.
Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > 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 cre…
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Re: Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
#690Anyone know why this is prioritised? Wasn't this copyright stuff from like 2 decades ago? Just genuinely curious.
He's a popular voice of dissent on Twitter and someone must be cracking down right now. Scott Ritter is another--he had his passport seized recently and his house raided by the FBI a week ago.
And Tulsi Gabbard recently was placed on a terror watch list.
All the Federal agencies have been weaponized. SEC only went after companies like LBRY, Inc because their founders and platform share information they don't like. The real fraudsters on Wallstreet get away with anything.