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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

#741

Post by brownvshemmin »

oceanplexian wrote: post #732
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…

> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise? The problem is that government doesn’t have a line, that line is defined by the resistance it faces. Today it might be people sharing MP3s, tomorrow they will come after you for hosting a parody of mickey mouse. 10 years from now they’ll be busting down doors for sharing illegal memes (Seems to already be the ca…

[flagged]

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

#742

Post by lll-o-lll »

duped wrote: post #576
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #218

The US seems to have this knack of sliding itself into this narrow gap between individuals they're idealistically pursuing and something worse. "If I could just slip in there, ooh, that's tight, yes, thank you, aah comfy, this feels like where I belong". In their desperate attempt to not lose a fight that's been going on for, what, 10 years? 15 years? They're increasingly looking like a child that cannot move on from…

You're looking at this through too narrow a lens, I think. The Government has a duty to protect domestic industry from foreign threats, and throughout history, that isn't reserved to state actors. Megaupload was a severe threat(*) to major American industries, and Kim Dotcom flagrantly ignored pressure from America to stop what it was doing. When that happens the Government gets to pick which of its heavy hammers to…

I think this is a good take. Much of the commentary here has been on the morality or otherwise of copyright infringement, proportional legal response and extraterritorial reach. All topics of interest, certainly, but clouding the real story here.

This is foreign policy, and the US has pursued control of copyright distribution, globally, for a very long time. Being from Australia, I remember the sense of disquiet as our copyright laws were modified as part of trade deals with the US. Many other nations (perhaps most?) have done the same (whether the law changes were pushed via the US directly or through UN related bodies is largely irrelevant). You combine that with the extremely tight coupling of large corporate bodies and the US government, and US foreign policy looks like authoritarianism.

So I agree that what we see with these extreme examples of “Kim dotcom” and “Assange” extraditions are part of a broader foreign policy strategy. Where I disagree with your post is the statement “American interests”. To me, the interests served are the conglomerate of political and corporate powers, which may be at odds with the average US citizen.

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

#743

Post by akira2501 »

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.

I'd go with "Anarcho-capitalist."

Which of course explains their allure and the desire to retroactively improve their origin stories. They stand precisely in the face of what the OP himself retroactively considers.

> "I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved."

Which is the mantra of the bullied. As if we aren't the government. When precisely did we all decide that copyright should exist for a term of life PLUS 70 years? The government does not seek our permission when applying these laws to us yet we have to implicitly sacrifice our freedoms in order to blithely comply with it?

And we all know that the problems with these individuals is not that they committed these crimes, it's that they explicitly called into question this very authority in the first place. That the government then uses this as further justification to destroy these individuals lives, permanently destroy their liberty, and broadcast a chilling effect over anyone who would ever attempt to improve these policies is what inspires people to lionize these figures.

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

#744

Post by [deleted] »

brownvshemmin wrote: post #741
oceanplexian wrote: post #732

Earlier 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? The problem is that government doesn’t have a line, that line is defined by the resistance it faces. Today it might be people sharing MP3s, tomorrow they will come after you for hosting a parody of mickey mouse. 10 years from now they’ll be busting down doors for sharing illegal memes (Seems to already be the ca…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#745

Post by jrflowers »

gliiics wrote: post #483
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…

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?

Snowden quit working for the NSA and left the country, and Assange does not appear to be operating Wikileaks anymore. I would imagine that they would both agree that there comes a point where it makes sense to factor consequences into your choices and quit what you are doing.

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

#746

Post by blandpiper »

kstenerud wrote: post #480
treprinum wrote: post #207

Didn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.

Kim was a maverick, and his political connections were weak and easy to break. If you don't have the connections, you shouldn't be playing such a dangerous game.

he was swedish and thats enough sometimes. the government thinks ahead instead of acting like mobsters after the fact

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

#747

Post by fasbass »

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…

So what? if someone wants to block the pipes with all their might, they deserve a greasy fat kick. These thousands of people deserve to be available on all media and paid fairly. Not blocked by some fat cow. Kim Dotcom made a proto version of sharepoint and dropbox and he was some of the grease to loosen these constipations. We still have a way to go to get artists paid, but we are getting there.

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

#748

Post by nottommo »

sergiogjr wrote: post #715
nottommo wrote: post #707

Probably Kim Dotcom has done wrong, but I don't think he deserves to go to court and or prison in a country he has never resided in.

I'm not sure that can be applied consistently. Would you say the same about heads of drug cartels or human trafficking rings (not equating these to Kim, as I'm sure you understand)?

No because they have committed serious violent crimes. Human trafficking is not the same as enabling and profiting from internet piracy.

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

#749

Post by hnisoss »

SideQuark wrote: post #684
chgs wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ju…

If I steal loaf of bread from bakery to make bread statue what does the guy who delivered bread have to do with my act of thievery? Is he also a thief just because bread was transported in his van to the bakery?

What the heck are you going on about with isp, router, screen etc? Btw, have you heard about HTTPS and what it does, while we are at it?

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

#750

Post by sensanaty »

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…

I'm probably going to hit 1000 games this year on steam, around 960 currently

I pirated every single game I have ever bought first, with the exception of games that had Demos. If it's a Denuvo game, I refuse to ever buy it (especially since the pirated version is guaranteed to be a better experience).

What leads to lost sales in the video game world (at least if we look at people like myself) is making bad games, whether it be horrible optimization issues, bloated spyware like Denuvo, broken/buggy games etc.

Like Gaben said, people have no problems with paying for stuff, it just has to be high quality and reliable, and most modern games are neither for the most part.

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