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Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

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Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#91

Post by rtpg »

tomp wrote: post #41
blowski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could argue (though don't really agree) that Andrus Nomm was a threat in the same way as Bernie Madoff. Neither was running around shooting people or starting fires. The same could be said for elderly war criminals. There are situations in which it is right to send people to prison without them posing an active and dangerous threat. Whether this in one of those situations is more arguable.

It would be really hard to argue that. Bernie Madoff was more like someone who robs banks, or e.g. ATMs (i.e. no danger to human lives, but money stolen). Megaupload didn't steal anyone's money, and while people did get content without paying for it, it's not very clear that they would pay for it if it wasn't available for free. One undermined the public's confidence in the strength, fairness and security of financia…

Megaupload was not your plausible deniability-sort of file upload service.

There is loads of evidence of the Megaupload team getting a bunch of copyrighted content and putting it up there. The team themselves. Can't really hide behind safe harbor with that.

If I were handing out burned DVDs of movies to people, I'd probably get arrested too (even if selling DVD burning equipment would be fine).

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#92

Post by rtpg »

kaoD wrote: post #82
tzs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Neither Google nor Dropbox was set up with the intent of aiding copyright infringement. Neither Google nor Dropbox based their business model on aiding copyright infringement. The comparison is invalid. > As a developer t…

To be fair, Megaupload didn't explicitly condone copyright infringement, and if I recall correctly infringing files were removed. Are my memories flawed and Megaupload ignored the copyright infringement notices, or is Megaupload the fall guy to scare everyone else?

People at Megaupload were uploading copyrighted things onto their servers at one point to gain traction. Like, company policy to go around and get stuff to put onto their servers.

If you follow takedown notices, there's no issue, DMCA's safe harbor provisions protect you totally. The issue was that Megaupload was participating in the uploading and stuff

(for the record: not condoning the federal gov't's usage of time/money trying to get Dotcom arrested/extradited or whatever)

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#93

Post by [deleted] »

geon wrote: post #76
gambiting wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if it worked the other way around.....if one day a US court got a request from Saudi Arabia asking to jail one of US citizens because they broke Saudi law on the internet(even though they have never been to Saudi Arabia). US would politely tell them to fuck off. Yet, when US does this to another country,they comply? It's disgusting.

I wish more countries had the balls to tell the US to fuck off. I wish MY country did; then we wouldn't have had the Pirate Bay Gate, where Swedish constitution was stepped all over.

[deleted]

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#94

Post by tzs »

kaoD wrote: post #82
tzs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Neither Google nor Dropbox was set up with the intent of aiding copyright infringement. Neither Google nor Dropbox based their business model on aiding copyright infringement. The comparison is invalid. > As a developer t…

To be fair, Megaupload didn't explicitly condone copyright infringement, and if I recall correctly infringing files were removed. Are my memories flawed and Megaupload ignored the copyright infringement notices, or is Megaupload the fall guy to scare everyone else?

When Megaupload received notification of an illegal file, their action depended on the type of file. If it was child porn or terrorism propaganda, they deleted the file. If it was copyright infringement, they made the specific URL that was reported stop working, but retained the file, and all other links that referred to that file continued to work.

Even making the specific URLs stop working was a sore spot with Dotcom. He sent emails to employees telling them to not even do that when they got a mass report of infringement from an "insignificant source". An "insignificant source" meant anyone other than a major organization in the US (e.g., major Hollywood studios).

As far as explicitly condoning copyright infringement goes, sometimes users would see movie trailers, and ask Mega where they can see the full movie online, and Mega employees would answer by pointing them to third party sites that linked to the full movies on Mega. One Mega email to such a user included the explanation that you cannot find the links by directly searching Mega because "that would cause us a lot of trouble".

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#95

Post by BlueAndroid »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #87
BlueAndroid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Law Enforcement, so feel to disregard my opinion as biased , however, 75% of my work relates to child exploitation material, and an enormous amount of child abuse material disappeared from easy access when mega-upload went down. I used to find computers with lists and lists of megaupload urls. When that method died out a little beacon of happy shone for me. Now I understand that free movies trumps removing…

Your gross simplification of the issue to "free movies vs raping children" is a straw-man. That kind of patronizing condescension may work on morons, but there are those who have given careful consideration to the issue and decided that despite the negative aspects of free speech and the rule of law, that free speech is in fact more important than catching file-sharers of any kind, and that your ends-justifies-the-me…

The depressing reality is that I'm confronting the reality of the hands on abuse on a day to day basis. That's my world. If your's doesn't have that, lucky you. I don't feel good about it in the slightest. But thanks for letting me vent that :) I'm not sure why free speech IS file sharing in your argument. Maybe freedom of intellectual property? You're also making assumptions about the law I operate under. I'm not in the US or NZ. So I couldn't have any impact on the mega situation. I too am amazed by the extra-territorial nature of the proceedings. I think it's bad law. I mean, WETA is in NZ, some of their movies would have been on mega, it could have been done by New Zealand police and courts. Why not?

I am occasionally regaled by tales from investigators I have assisted with descriptions of jail sentences handed down to abusers- you would think that would be satisfying. It's not. It's just confirmation by jury and society that they were in fact evil human beings and in a couple of years they'll be back. And that's grim.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#96

Post by sumitviii »

Xylakant wrote: post #61
BlueAndroid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Law Enforcement, so feel to disregard my opinion as biased , however, 75% of my work relates to child exploitation material, and an enormous amount of child abuse material disappeared from easy access when mega-upload went down. I used to find computers with lists and lists of megaupload urls. When that method died out a little beacon of happy shone for me. Now I understand that free movies trumps removing…

I can understand your joy. However, the valid question is not "How much of the available CP material is on X" but rather "How much of the total available material on X is CP" because I can tell you with certainty, that all of the available CP material on the internet will go away if we just turn off the internet. "For the children" is a readily abused argument for about any collateral damage that incurs with about an…

This. Statistics can be used to show things in totally different light.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#97

Post by blowski »

rtpg wrote: post #91
tomp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really hard to argue that. Bernie Madoff was more like someone who robs banks, or e.g. ATMs (i.e. no danger to human lives, but money stolen). Megaupload didn't steal anyone's money, and while people did get content without paying for it, it's not very clear that they would pay for it if it wasn't available for free. One undermined the public's confidence in the strength, fairness and security of financia…

Megaupload was not your plausible deniability-sort of file upload service. There is loads of evidence of the Megaupload team getting a bunch of copyrighted content and putting it up there. The team themselves. Can't really hide behind safe harbor with that. If I were handing out burned DVDs of movies to people, I'd probably get arrested too (even if selling DVD burning equipment would be fine).

I agree. There really is no question that the folks working on MegaUpload knew that it would be used predominantly for illegally sharing copyrighted material. The questions are whether that should be illegal, what it means to do something in one country that's accessible but illegal in another, and how it should be punishable.

As I see it, employees of Megaupload must have known the risks they were running, so we can't say it's unfair to punish them. We should be actively pushing for legal framework regarding the sharing of copyrighted material, instead of just whining about the punishment meted out to those who took advantage of the current chaos.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#98

Post by kyledrake »

BlueAndroid wrote: post #23
KhalPanda wrote: post #2

This just seems ridiculous to me. I may well get downvoted, but it needs saying. Why do 99% of the world's governments seem completely retarded when it comes to copyright laws? How many tens of millions in legal resources were expended in bringing 'justice' here? And what does the outcome even matter? Good job, tens of millions down the drain for one year of an Estonian's time? The system would surely be better serve…

I work in Law Enforcement, so feel to disregard my opinion as biased , however, 75% of my work relates to child exploitation material, and an enormous amount of child abuse material disappeared from easy access when mega-upload went down. I used to find computers with lists and lists of megaupload urls. When that method died out a little beacon of happy shone for me. Now I understand that free movies trumps removing…

As the host of free web hosting services, I can't begin to describe how terrifying it is to read this.

I reached out to the ncmec people and spent SIX. MONTHS. trying to get access to PhotoDNA, and have got the runaround for six months. They sent me a garbage URL block list (amazingly dumb idea, by the way.. that thing is so fucking dangerous I won't even touch it) and gave me access to their fancy report tool, but no PhotoDNA. I finally just gave up because I don't have time to fight with them, I need access to photodna and if they won't give it to me, fine.

Until you finally provide the technology to detect child pornography in a reasonably accessible way, it is not the host's fault, it's yours. You are fucking up, and you are fucking up bad.

If you actually give a shit about dealing with this problem, go into NCMEC and start throwing bricks, seriously. Until then, expect pretty much every host ever to have child porn on it, because we can't stop it because we're prevented from using the tech by nonprofits that don't function and industry partnerships we can't afford. contact@neocities.org if anyone wants to be a hero and actually cares, I'm not expecting an email.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#99

Post by fafner »

jepper wrote: post #15
jackjeff wrote: post #9

I really dislike the extra-territorial aspect of it. From what I understand the Netherlands copyright law is more lenient than the US law. For instance downloading copyrighted material was legal until very recently. So downloading something from Megaupload was hardly a crime there... http://www.zdnet.com/article/downloading-pirate-material-fin... So you could do something which is legal, or illegal but not criminal o…

The United States can request an extradition for crimes committed by an individual(as argued under the US law). However this does not mean that the Netherlands has to comply. If a Dutch person committed a crime in the Netherlands according to the US, but its legal here, he/she will NOT be extradited. The same is true if the punishment is unreasonably severe according to Dutch law (death penalty.). For the latter ther…

The Netherlands doesn't has to comply and she might offer special protection to her citizens. But as soon as the person leaves the Netherlands the protection is gone. E.g., making a shopping trip to Belgium or Germany and suddenly getting arrested there.

Re: Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year

#100

Post by tomp »

rtpg wrote: post #91
tomp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really hard to argue that. Bernie Madoff was more like someone who robs banks, or e.g. ATMs (i.e. no danger to human lives, but money stolen). Megaupload didn't steal anyone's money, and while people did get content without paying for it, it's not very clear that they would pay for it if it wasn't available for free. One undermined the public's confidence in the strength, fairness and security of financia…

Megaupload was not your plausible deniability-sort of file upload service. There is loads of evidence of the Megaupload team getting a bunch of copyrighted content and putting it up there. The team themselves. Can't really hide behind safe harbor with that. If I were handing out burned DVDs of movies to people, I'd probably get arrested too (even if selling DVD burning equipment would be fine).

That has nothing to do with my post. I just said that the damage Madoff did was an order of magnitude worse than what Mega did.
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