6 ms·
It really grinds me that he is portrayed by some as an unjust victim of US gov malice and a champion for internet rights issues when he is nothing more than a t
by nikcub 11y ago
It really grinds me that he is portrayed by some as an unjust victim of US gov malice and a champion for internet rights issues when he is nothing more than a thief, liar and conman.
It doesn't help that people like Snowden, Greenwald and Assange associated themselves with his cause when they appeared at his election event in Auckland where he promised a bombshell against the government but produced what were likely forged documents.
I'm all for copyright reform, online privacy rights, reform of US judicial overreach, etc. but Kim Dotcom earned $175M by commercializing misappropriated content. There was no cause here as could be argued with the pirate bay or other similar cases. There was also nothing innovative or interesting about what he did. This guy was in it for himself and knew what he was getting himself into and what the consequences could be.
That he cast himself as an internet jesus was to be expected by those who knew him, but that so many bought it up is very unfortunate and damaging to legitimate causes.
- Sven7 11y agoSo just like YouTube.
- scrollaway 11y agoYeah, people do tend to forget that most media consumption startups essentially got bootstrapped with a huge amount of copyright infringement. YouTube, Spotify, ... The difference is of course that those startups end up making their content legal. But I don't see how what MU did is not okay, but what YouTube and Spotify did is fine.
- hilbertseries 11y agoMU was paying the people that upload illegal content, specifically because they were uploading illegal content.
- scrollaway 11y agoHow is that different to having your employees scraping torrent sites for music to add to your library?
- jamespo 11y agowho did that?
- scrollaway 11y agoSpotify during their early years. This is pretty well known.
- lmm 11y agoCitation needed. Are you sure you're not thinking of Grooveshark?
- scrollaway 11y agoSorry, I can't find an actual citation - if you ask any Spotify employee though, it's pretty much an open secret that Spotify's initial collection was scraped from the pirate bay.
- ewindisch 11y agoWhat is public knowledge is that CEO Daniel Ek was the former CEO of uTorrent. He has certainly made millions from online copyright infringement, if only perhaps, less directly than Kim-dot-com.
- cballard 11y agoI didn't know uTorrent was a company! I haven't used Windows in forever, so I've been using Transmission for a long time, but I feel like that's the equivalent of foobar2000 being a company or something.
- neutronicus 11y agoI mean YouTube gives content creators a slice of ad revenue, so... I don't know if this program was implemented before the copyright crackdown, though.
- Oletros 11y ago> But I don't see how what MU did is not okay, but what YouTube and Spotify did is fine. What Spotify did?
- kuschku 11y agohttp://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/musician-david-lowery-sues-spotify-for-unlawfully-distributing-music/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/musician-david-lo...
- gcb0 11y agonot exactly. the studios and distributors sue everyone, even YouTube. then the one that becomes market leader and gets all the eyeballs usually gets a deal for the lawsuits and the studios have them on a leash for cheaper advertising (remember that a Disney film will spend more on advertising than production over the course of its international release life)
- nikcub 11y agoI actually have an unpublished draft post on my blog titled "Is Megaupload as guilty as YouTube?". The idea of the post was to compare and contrast the internal YouTube emails[1] that came out as part of Viacom vs YouTube with the internal Megaupload emails[2] [2.5]. The reason why the post remained unpublished is because after reading the relevant indictments and court rulings I found that there were clear distinctions between the cases. Namely it was that YouTube were grappling with how to deal with the situation and not sure where they stood while Megaupload knew exactly where they were and what they were doing - they were actually assisting users in locating pirated content when support was emailed. Google also implemented ContentID to help identity content, while in contrast Megaupload placed a cap on the number of takedown requests a content owner could file and internal emails show Kim Dotcom being angry at employees for taking down copyright content that wasn't explicitly cited in an DMCA request. The employees also discussed how they built their filtering system to take down child pornography but not affect copyrighted content. In the latest appeal court decision in Viacom vs YouTube the judge vacated all counts against YouTube and found that the company had no knowledge of specific infringements of copyrighted works. The judge also found that there was no evidence that YouTube induced its users to upload infringing videos, or "interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their activity." MegaUpload did exactly that. Reading the MegaUpload indictment[3] and contrasting it to the appeals court decision[4] in Viacom demonstrates the same with every count or claim (being willful, having knowledge, inducing users, etc.) [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-internal-youtube-emails-viacoms-copyright-suit http://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-intern... [2] https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-what-made-it-a-rogue-site-worthy-of-destruction-120120/ https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-what-made-it-a-rogue-sit... [2.5] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/1/9436735/megaupload-prosecution-wraps-up-kim-dotcom http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/1/9436735/megaupload-prosecu... [3] DOJ vs Megaupload: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/megaupload_indictment.pdf http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/mega... [4] Viacom vs YouTube district appeals court decision: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/New_York_Southern_District_Court/1--07-cv-02103/Viacom_International_Inc_et_al_v_Youtube_Inc_et_al/452/ https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/New_York_Southern_District...
- Sven7 11y ago
- norswap 11y agoThat's one way too look at it. The other way is that he made content available when the producers wouldn't. How long do you have to wait to get TV shows in the EU while the US merrily fills the internet with spoiler? His motivation weren't noble; but as far as thieves go, I'll take Kim Dotcom over the MPAA or the RIAA.
- evgen 11y agoDo you want to know how long you should have to wait to get US TV shows in the EU? AS LONG AS THE COPYRIGHT OWNER THINKS YOU SHOULD WAIT. This sort of entitled "I want any content that interests me and I want it for free" attitude is exactly what plays into the hands of those who want to limit copyright reform.
- msandford 11y ago> AS LONG AS THE COPYRIGHT OWNER THINKS YOU SHOULD WAIT The point of copyright was to ensure that people who made creative works could get paid and earn a living. Not to tie their cultural works up for the rest of their lives, everyone else be damned. Given that the idea of a "tragedy" has been around for a few thousand years now (the greeks wrote about it a long time ago) how is any creative work created completely in a vacuum? I believe that the answer is that it is not. Many stories have different details but there are probably only a few dozen archetypical stories. We have the idea of compulsory licensing for a bunch of different things. Why shouldn't movies and TV shows and such also be licensed that way?
- speeder 11y agoAnd people like you have some entitled thinking that you have the right to deny people like me (I am from a third world country that is mostly ignored by copyright owners) the right for culture and education. I pirated thousands of stuff, and I am proud to say it, because pirating thousands of stuff is how I educated myself, and how I got cultured in things that don't exist in my country, and now allow me to do the amazing stuff that I do (including participate in the international economy, that has more money available than local economy, and earn enough money to sometimes be able to legally buy something, instead of pirating it).
- logfromblammo 11y agoA copyright infringer, liar, and conman. In New Zealand. When I silently wish for the extradition effort to fail, I'm not backing him. I really just want to see a sovereign allied anglophone nation tell the US to see that its jurisdictional claims stop at the 12 NM limit, and to please mind its own business. I don't want to see US playing at world police, except for crimes heinous enough that every nation should be combating them wherever they may occur, like war crimes, terrorism, international financial fraud, and hijackings of international shipping vessels. Why should Dotcom get so much effort? What risk does he pose to US citizens to justify transporting him out of NZ? Whatever that may be, the risk of allowing the US to assert intellectual property jurisdiction over the whole Internet is far worse. I'd like Dotcom to eventually get comeuppance, but not in a way that establishes an undesirable precedent.
- tdyen 11y agoI concur.