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From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

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Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#71

Post by coldtea »

zeveb wrote: post #7
pascalmemories wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always been reasonably confident that if I'm out of the country, the American embassy will help me. You and many Americans. Helpfully aided in that belief by TV programs like Beyond Borders where US authorities act as the World Police jumping into other countries and taking over investigations and rescuing US citizens from any and every scrape they get themselves into. Outside your own country, your local auth…

> Outside your own country, your local authorities have very little ability to do much Oh, they have the ability, c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Perdicaris#Perdicaris_inci... (threat of war if an American citizen were not released) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins'_Ear (war over abuse of an English subject) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars (wars to prevent enslavement of American s…

The most recent of those examples is from 1904.

And there were still "national interest"/"political" reasons in most of them.

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#72

Post by yardie »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #68
yardie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with Condi Rice on the board. I'm sure her appointment was strategic, but I've refused to use their services since then. My principles don't allow it.

Curious: What about Rice prevents you from using their services? (Non-American here, so please excuse what may seem like a trivial question).

She was Secretary of the State Department and National Security Advisor during GWB's presidency. It was her advocacy for the Iraq War and her support of CIA torture that I have a problem with. She's tried to downplay her role in it but moron wouldn't.

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#73

Post by curun1r »

nulagrithom wrote: post #27

> I had to be made an example of as a warning to all IT people who were intending to work in similar companies. That's scary. I'm supposed to police my employers actions? To some extent I can understand, but that puts a lot of IT people in awkward positions. Do Dropbox employees need to worry that infringing content is being taken down fast enough, lest the face prosecution? I didn't follow Megaupload too closely, so…

I'd imagine the Napster criteria of "substantial non-infringing use" would be used to differentiate between Dropbox and Megaupload, so I doubt either the company or its employees would have a problem on that front.

But there are lots of companies that break the law so blatantly that their employees cannot claim to be ignorant. For instance, if I were an employee of Uber, I would be very careful traveling and would take every opportunity to hide the identity of my employer, especially if I were going some place where Uber was particularly irreverent of the local laws when trying to enter the market.

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#75

Post by duncan_bayne »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #38
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the FBI does. I'm watching The Sopranos on Amazon Prime. Without the FBI doing this, that would have been a much shorter show. I doubt The Sopranos is reference grade, but I don't doubt that the bones of these plot elements are valid.

Some people need to be more careful about what they are offended by. It's really worth studying the history of the FBI. Hoover basically blackmailed people who got in his way long enough for the general culture to get used to the idea - it was stridently opposed for a very long time. It's a game. Hate the game, not the player.

It's fair to hate the player who chooses to play the game, when there are alternatives.

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#76

Post by jerguismi »

chris11 wrote: post #58
jondubois wrote: post #41

So basically employers/entrepreneurs get all the rewards if their companies succeed but if they fail, it's the employees who take the fall. And then, when things do work out, these 'entrepreneurs' are the ones who boast about how they overcame adversity in the face of impossible odds. Now I understand why Donald Trump is so popular in the US. People just lost all faith in the system; so they might as well get some en…

I wouldn't exactly say that the system has let Kim off at all. Sure, he hasn't spent any serious time in jail, but it's just because the U.S. hasn't been able to get him extradited. In fact they've pursued him so aggressively that it's helped his fight against extradition.

And the other employees and Kim probably didn't come voluntarily to US. The US government would be happy to have Kim thrown to prison as well, but they haven't been able to catch him.

"Like Dotcom, Nõmm next spent a significant amount of time fighting extradition. But eventually in 2015, he voluntarily traveled to the US and was arrested in Virginia."

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#77

Post by petercooper »

cm3 wrote: post #30

Some of the coders from Lovoo (dating site/app) may be next. They created fake bots for male customers which the german IT magazine c't reported on last year based on a set of Outlook mailbox dumps they were handed. Now the police raided Lovoo HQ. https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-polizei-s... http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Int... http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/…

What's the actual law/potential charge behind the Lovoo situation? Creating fake users to make a Web site popular is hardly new: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of... .. In the UK, at least, I believe what Lovoo appears to have done would be treated as false advertising which generally results in fines for the company, but not jail time for employees (at least, in my limited experience reading about such cases).

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#78

Post by cm3 »

petercooper wrote: post #77
cm3 wrote: post #30

Some of the coders from Lovoo (dating site/app) may be next. They created fake bots for male customers which the german IT magazine c't reported on last year based on a set of Outlook mailbox dumps they were handed. Now the police raided Lovoo HQ. https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-polizei-s... http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Int... http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/…

What's the actual law/potential charge behind the Lovoo situation? Creating fake users to make a Web site popular is hardly new: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of... .. In the UK, at least, I believe what Lovoo appears to have done would be treated as false advertising which generally results in fines for the company, but not jail time for employees (at least, in my limited experience readi…

IANAL, but tricking paid users to believe they're in contact with real humans, with whom they have the hope of getting into some relationship, is on another level.

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#79

Post by us0r »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #68
yardie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with Condi Rice on the board. I'm sure her appointment was strategic, but I've refused to use their services since then. My principles don't allow it.

Curious: What about Rice prevents you from using their services? (Non-American here, so please excuse what may seem like a trivial question).

She advocates NSA warrantless surveillance.

http://www.drop-dropbox.com/surveillance.html

Re: From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

#80

Post by anonbanker »

jondubois wrote: post #41

So basically employers/entrepreneurs get all the rewards if their companies succeed but if they fail, it's the employees who take the fall. And then, when things do work out, these 'entrepreneurs' are the ones who boast about how they overcame adversity in the face of impossible odds. Now I understand why Donald Trump is so popular in the US. People just lost all faith in the system; so they might as well get some en…

Anonymous (and /pol/) are backing Trump. Everything is done "for the lulz".

go check out 8chan or /r/the_donald on reddit sometime if you think I'm joking.

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