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Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

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Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#91

Post by shmerl »

pvg wrote: post #85
shmerl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He cooperated with warrants targeted at specific suspects. That's rather normal. He refused to cooperate with request to give them access to all users. They couldn't possibly have such warrant by considering them all suspects at once. They just told him, hand us over the keys or else. I'm not aware that he refused a targeted warrant on Snowden alone specifically. Or may be I missed that being reported somewhere.

Not somewhere, pretty much everywhere. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/how-l... I think your idea of how the case developed is fairly inaccurate.

This article doesn't explain why he refused what they called

> The order, issued under the Stored Communications Act, required Lavabit to turn over to the F.B.I. retrospective information about one account, widely presumed to be that of Snowden.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#92

Post by krick »

krasin wrote: post #89
krick wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide some proof links please? Because that thing sounds really unbelievable, and given the date… That's why I hate that stupid 'holiday' so much!

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2443179 (in Russian, but it's more-or-less respectable newspaper)

Thanks. I speak russian and that actually seams to be true (regardless the newspaper, I just didn't know that he sold his part a long time ago already). In fact I hoped that stating that "it was long time coming" can be confirmed by related non-01.04-dated posts. But that selling stocks, etc. — yeah, it doesn't sound like a joke anymore.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#93

Post by tptacek »

beagle3 wrote: post #77
tptacek wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be a little careful with these rankings, because they're subjective. Forbes, for instance, drastically prioritizes taxes for its rankings. The corporate tax rate in the US is higher than that of Ireland, and (as Forbes summary straightforwardly admits) that pushes the US down in the rankings. For a startup, there are significantly more important factors to consider than the corporate tax rate, not least b…

I agree with most of your points, but: > A tax system that is reasonably simple, not disastrously onerous, and in many ways optimized for entrepreneurs (for instance, the differing taxation schemes offered for salary versus distributions, or the ease of deducting business expenses). Is objectively wrong. The US tax code was over 71,000 pages last I checked (in 2009 or so), and that's just the federal part. I have dea…

Consider businesses with a run rate of between 2-10MM USD as a group, first in the US and then in, say, Denmark or (to make it even simpler) Ireland.

Does the Danish or Ireland cohort tend to operate without the advice of tax accountants? My impression is that they do in fact tend to retain tax advisors.

The argument that the US tax system is particularly onerous is, I think, compelling only if you can demonstrate that it creates a de facto requirement for outside advisors that doesn't exist in other locales.

Otherwise, the complexity of the system (which is not what I was talking about) isn't much of an issue.

I have some experience with tax advisors, obviously, and they are not one of my big business expenditures. :)

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#94

Post by shmerl »

tptacek wrote: post #90
shmerl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He cooperated with warrants targeted at specific suspects. That's rather normal. He refused to cooperate with request to give them access to all users. They couldn't possibly have such warrant by considering them all suspects at once. They just told him, hand us over the keys or else. I'm not aware that he refused a targeted warrant on Snowden alone specifically. Or may be I missed that being reported somewhere.

I don't think that's accurate. My understanding is that Levison was confronted with a pen/trap (metadata-only) order for mail related to the Snowden account , refused it, and was then subjected to an escalating series of demands once the DOJ had "lost faith" in his cooperation. Orin Kerr, who is one of Andrew Aurenheimer's attorneys in his appeal of felony CFAA charges, has a good starting point for what happened in…

So why did he refuse the targeted request first? His reasons given later applied to his refusal to bulk data collection not to the targeted one.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#95

Post by danmaz74 »

paulbaumgart wrote: post #4
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

This kind of thing seems to be one reason America is still the best place to start a business. I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? It seems very similar to what happened in the middle ages. Before the rise of the merchant class, specifically the ability to def…

Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar sy…

"30% of the planet's GDP" more like 20% actually, 25% tops

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#96

Post by caractacus »

pgt wrote: post #8

For those who don't know what VKontakte is (I didn't), it is the biggest social network after Facebook with "over 100 million active users" according to vk.com, which they own. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network)

And it has an immense selection of music and video. I mean, positively incredible. Before Spotify swept up just about every single artist ever known to man, VK was the place to find recordings of even that obscure 80s band you saw down the New Cross tavern on a Tuesday night with seven other people and a dog. Better selection than Oink in its heyday. And if you're Russian, there's no reason to ever go anywhere else for film or television.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#97

Post by paulbaumgart »

danmaz74 wrote: post #95
paulbaumgart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar sy…

"30% of the planet's GDP" more like 20% actually, 25% tops

You're right, apologies. My number is outdated.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#98

Post by [deleted] »

korzun wrote: post #83
at-fates-hands wrote: post #81

This was in the related article that talked about how Putin muscled his way into the company before Durov sold off his shares: "It essentially means that there's a glass ceiling to how big you can grow your company, and how influential your company can be in the Russian internet space before the government begins to take interest in it," http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies... Isn't this how i…

Isn't this how it's always been in US? We all know that Facebook does not work with government. Right?

[deleted]

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#99

Post by ThomPete »

tptacek wrote: post #93
beagle3 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of your points, but: > A tax system that is reasonably simple, not disastrously onerous, and in many ways optimized for entrepreneurs (for instance, the differing taxation schemes offered for salary versus distributions, or the ease of deducting business expenses). Is objectively wrong. The US tax code was over 71,000 pages last I checked (in 2009 or so), and that's just the federal part. I have dea…

Consider businesses with a run rate of between 2-10MM USD as a group, first in the US and then in, say, Denmark or (to make it even simpler) Ireland. Does the Danish or Ireland cohort tend to operate without the advice of tax accountants? My impression is that they do in fact tend to retain tax advisors. The argument that the US tax system is particularly onerous is, I think, compelling only if you can demonstrate th…

No accountants are very important also in Denmark. Danish company tax system is very very complicated. So you are correct.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#100

Post by pvg »

shmerl wrote: post #91
pvg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not somewhere, pretty much everywhere. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/how-l... I think your idea of how the case developed is fairly inaccurate.

This article doesn't explain why he refused what they called > The order, issued under the Stored Communications Act, required Lavabit to turn over to the F.B.I. retrospective information about one account, widely presumed to be that of Snowden.

Sure, but you can make some reasonable guesses from other available sources, including his own statements. But his motivation is not really the issue we were discussing - it was whether the government just up and destroyed Lavabit on a whim. You said "it doesn't change the fact that US killed it since the government wanted to have access to all users' data without any restrictions and warrants." It doesn't change the fact because the fact is not a fact.

However you want to interpret his actions, there's little doubt that Lavabit's grief was entirely self-inflicted.

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