9 ms·

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

176 points by nols 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
It's a little sad specifically his own government didn't provide him much help. Numerous other issues with the US aside, I've always been reasonably confident that if I'm out of the country, the American embassy will help me. And going after the IT staff is pretty awful. Generally speaking, we're just there to make it work. While I make a point to work jobs and clients I think do good work and are moral entities, the reality is, IT doesn't generally decide what a company does or what messes they get themselves involved with.
- pascalmemories 10y ago
  > 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 authorities have very little ability to do much and certainly won't help you in any relatively minor scrapes (nor in most major ones either). Although the US exerts more external influence than it really should, that's limited to guarding US interests (like copyright protection or drug related things). Unless you happen to be key to US national interest, you'll be on your own, apart from a visit in prison from the embassy staff to let you know that they know you're there - just like the citizens of every other country, as Andrew Nõmm found out.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > 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_incident 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins'_Ear (war over abuse of an English subject) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars (wars to prevent enslavement of American sailors). 'Release our citizen or we start shelling' can be a very effective diplomatic tool. It's just that they normally don't bother.
    - hydrogen18 10y ago
      The Barbary wars were conducted because of the economic impact of taking American sailors as slaves. Free-ing the enslaved sailors was just a value-added benefit.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      The most recent of those examples is from 1904. And there were still "national interest"/"political" reasons in most of them.
- Kristine1975 10y ago
  >IT doesn't generally decide what a company does But IT helps the company do what it decided to do (not that I think Megaupload did something bad).
  - _audakel 10y ago
    On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other Stewart Brand
- lisivka 10y ago
  See case of John Demjanjuk[1] . USA citizen was extradited twice: to Israel and to Germany as "nazi". After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that he is innocent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk
  - Xylakant 10y ago
    > After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that he is innocent. Nitpick: The FBI confirmed that according to their opinion one piece of evidence was a fake.
    - lisivka 10y ago
      Major evidence is fake. Do you know any other evidences? Throughout three decades of US hearings, an extradition, a death sentence followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and now a trial in Munich, the arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that indicates Demjanjuk was sent to Sobibor. Claims that the card and other evidence against Demjanjuk are Soviet forgeries have repeatedly been made by Demjanjuk's defense attorneys. However, the FBI report provides the first known confirmation that American investigators had similar doubts. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    The link says he was deported for concealing his involvement with a Nazi death camp on his immigration forms. Where did the FBI confirm his innocence?
    - lisivka 10y ago
      Quote from Wikipedia: In 2011 the Associated Press had uncovered a secret 1985 FBI report which indicated that a Nazi ID card showing that Demjanjuk had served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.
      - 10y ago
- rhino369 10y ago
  "Just following orders" is a bad defense when you have the option to just refuse and find another job. The terrible part is that Kim Dotcom has been able to avoid jail for the same crime this guy committed just because he has the money to fight.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    The gross procedural violations and disgusting behaviour of our (New Zealand) government have helped his case at this point. The judiciary have taken a pretty dim view of John Key's teams' antics.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    ...except when those orders are to build something innocuous. If someone told me to build some filesharing software and give it to them, making me responsible for the content is absurd. Its basically the legal equivalent of holding Dropbox developers responsible for piracy. The only difference is Megaupload was public and blatant enough in English-speaking media (of which the programmer was not a native speaker) for Americans to say "Yes, he should have known what it is for."
    - rhino369 10y ago
      What got him in hot water was the fact that Megaupload clearly knew about specific instances of copyright infringement and still went ahead anyway. And this guy knew about it and kept working there helping them do it. > I also had to sign my name to all of the evidence that had already been collected—for example, to the fact that Megaupload ignored complaints from time to time and did not remove illegal content fast enough. If anyone had any doubts about a file, Kim always calmed them down and said there was nothing to worry about.
      - fweespeech 10y ago
        > What got him in hot water was the fact that Megaupload clearly knew about specific instances of copyright infringement and still went ahead anyway. And this guy knew about it and kept working there helping them do it. Do we know it was actually illegal in the country he resided? As far as I'm aware, the reason he had to be brought to the US was he was within the law in his home country.
- yardie 10y ago
  the American embassy will help me. They will send a consular to make sure you aren't being mistreated while being detained. They will give you a list of english speaking attorneys you can retain for your trial. They may even call your family back home to wire money to your english speaking trial lawyer. That is about all the help you will get. For this "service" you are expected to file taxes to the US no matter where you work. During the Yemen civil war while every other country was frantically evacuating their citizens the US did nothing. They did issue a warning saying you should probably leave. A lot of US Citizens, working in foreign aid, found out exactly how far the US was willing to go, not very far at all. Not like how the movies portrays it at all.
anc84 10y ago
I was hoping this would have some more detail about the actual allegations against him and his testimony and verdict.
gcb0 10y ago
why not a interview with fbi or the DA? the "reporter" dont even mention if they were reached for comment. yeah the little guy was screwed. we got that from the tittle.
- jontas 10y ago
  This was an interview telling one person's side of the story, and it was presented that way I am all in favor of fair, honest and balanced reporting, but in this case I don't think anything was done incorrectly. This was not a "straight facts" piece, it was a subjective interview and clearly labeled as such.
coldcode 10y ago
Clearly our prison system in the US is terrible. Of course most other countries are even worse but you'd think we would be more civilized. It's also embarrassing that the only person they were able to put in jail was a simple programmer.
- grecy 10y ago
  > Of course most other countries are even worse I've never understood why people say things like this. The USA is supposed to be a developed country, and supposed to be at or near the very best. What do you have to gain by comparing it to undeveloped countries that are clearly not in the same league? For example, you just said: Sure, my pro baseball team finishes bottom of the ladder every year, but it's clearly better than all the highschool teams out there. - I sure as hell hope so! Compare the USA to all the developed countries, aspire for better, and work towards improvement.
  - HemanHeartYou 10y ago
    You've misinterpreted what he is saying. He's saying that for a developed country our prison system is bad, but he's also trying not to give the impression that it's worse than other countries, it would be bigoted to do so. This was an attempt at being humble.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I don't know if it's available any more but there was a series on The History Channel ( from back when it had, y'know, history on it ) called "The Big House" with Paul Sorvino narrating that covers how this came to be. I realized a massive high school being built in my (then) home town had an architecture based on prison design. Not only were prisons a political innovation, but they had a lot to do with how architecture developed.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Have you more info on this? That is a pretty amazing observation. Did you mention it to anyone?
Steeeve 10y ago
I have heard about the "Diesel Tour" before. It's a little disturbing.
ensiferum 10y ago
Crazy how the FBI has become the biatch of the american copyright mafia even to a degree of tromping and violating people's rights in other continents. GO USA! What exactly was the claim against this software eng? By this article it almost sounds like the FBI (guided by the copyright mafia) fabricated a case against some defenseless software dev just to gain more leverage on dotcom.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  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.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    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.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      It's fair to hate the player who chooses to play the game, when there are alternatives.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Remember when GS got the FBI to arrest and prosecute a programmer who did nothing wrong? The arresting agents couldn't even articulate why they were arresting the programmer.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
k__ 10y ago
So this guy is in prison, but Dotcom is free?!
- webkike 10y ago
  They're both free now.
hrbrtglm 10y ago
So this guy was jailed because he coded an advertising platform and a video hosting service. I know Mega was on a thin shady line, but what has he done wrong to be jailed in USA ?
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  The UK has a law called "Joint Criminal Enterprise" which is oft critiqued[0]. In America, this same concept is a de-facto legal and social standard to apply "Guilty by Association" wherever it can. So, in the USA, it can be (incorrectly) argued - by very, very high powered RIAA legal team - that this was aiding and abetting.[1] It's absolutely wrong, but this is the legal world we live in as developers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hrbrtglm 10y ago
    All right, in fact, I think the law you explained is even fair and needed to prosecute some "Joint Criminal Enterprise". But in this specific case, how could it be "incorrectly" argued, "absolutely wrong" and not dismissed by a judge. I mean, how can you trust the justice if only the poor chap is the one going to jail. Yeah, I'm naive, I know.
nulagrithom 10y ago
> 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 hope I'm blowing this out of proportion...
- cm3 10y ago
  > Do Dropbox employees need to worry that infringing content is being taken down fast enough, lest the face prosecution? Not as long a Dropbox doesn't offend the wrong people.
  - TobbenTM 10y ago
    Not as long Condoleezza Rice is on the board.
    - cm3 10y ago
      Good point.
    - letitleak 10y ago
      If saying an employee acted without authorization and/or tampering with the papertrail will save a few million in fines then you better hope no one like that is on your board. But your stock options will be safe.. though you probably wont be entitled to them.
    - 2close4comfort 10y ago
      This is why Google is on such good terms with the State Dept, friends in high places will ensure that no matter what happens you will not run into issues of "law".
- yardie 10y ago
  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.
aaronchall 10y ago
> I don’t believe the US will help Estonia in any war. They also promised to help Ukraine, but did they really? No. No we have not, and it is to our shame.
cm3 10y ago
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-stuermt-firmenzentrale-von-lovoo-69557 https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-polizei-s... http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Interne-Mails-bekraeftigen-Abzock-Verdacht-gegen-Dating-Plattform-Lovoo/The-LOVOO-SCAM-BEWARE/posting-24557526/show/ http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Int... http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-with-fake-profiles-police-raid-on.html http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-wi... What's the thought process behind documenting the illegal activities in email threads? It makes you wonder if they honestly thought they were just developing test bots for QA purposes.
- petercooper 10y ago
  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-fake-accounts--2 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).
  - cm3 10y ago
    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.
jondubois 10y ago
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 entertainment out of it.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  You can expand the scope and say that generally, the rich and powerful can get away with crimes while the poor and powerless (and less-connected) take the fall.
- chris11 10y ago
  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.
  - jerguismi 10y ago
    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."
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > 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 entertainment out of it. That's my theory too, and US is not the only Western country where this seems to be happening. Voter turnout is falling across the whole Western world, and a big part of it is probably people realizing politics is a circus, and not wanting to touch it with a ten-foot pole. When every choice is equally bad, and you'll have to find your way around the problems by yourself anyway, what's the point of even caring about the political scene? Getting some laugh at its expense is about the best use one can find.
eel 10y ago
I do not understand how the US can charge someone with copyright infringement if that person is not a US citizen and has never been to the US. Is there an international agreement on how to handle infringement? Can Americans be extradited for infringing upon copyrights from other countries?
- type0 10y ago
  Apparently US thinks their laws apply in the whole world. Team America world police is not a joke.
- waynecochran 10y ago
  I assume if you are involved in stealing property from folks in the US (I assume many of the owners of the stolen material are American companies), the US has the right to extradite you. Seems reasonable to me.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Sure. Is that reciprocal? Would the US extradite a US citizen from the US to eg France to face prosecution for copyright infringement?
    - icebraining 10y ago
      The man in the article was an Estonian living in the Netherlands, so probably not a Dutch citizen.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Haha, thanks for the good laugh!
- icebraining 10y ago
  IANAL but I believe that, Any country can charge anyone as long as its laws say it has standing to do so. Having your citizens harmed is a common reason. Yes, there are international agreements regarding copyright infringement and regarding extraditions in general. In general (and again, IANAL) I think it's common for a country to accept to extradite someone if the alleged crime is also considered a crime locally. I have no idea regarding the latter question :)
moyok 10y ago
As someone working on a side project that allows people to upload data publically (think something like codepen), what can I do to stay away from trouble like this?
superobserver 10y ago
"All Kim ever cared about was how to promote himself on Twitter." In sum, he's a total scumbag. I thought he was a cool guy, but now I think otherwise.

176 points by nols 10y ago

It's a little sad specifically his own government didn't provide him much help. Numerous other issues with the US aside, I've always been reasonably confident that if I'm out of the country, the American embassy will help me. And going after the IT staff is pretty awful. Generally speaking, we're just there to make it work. While I make a point to work jobs and clients I think do good work and are moral entities, the reality is, IT doesn't generally decide what a company does or what messes they get themselves involved with.

pascalmemories 10y ago
> 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 authorities have very little ability to do much and certainly won't help you in any relatively minor scrapes (nor in most major ones either). Although the US exerts more external influence than it really should, that's limited to guarding US interests (like copyright protection or drug related things). Unless you happen to be key to US national interest, you'll be on your own, apart from a visit in prison from the embassy staff to let you know that they know you're there - just like the citizens of every other country, as Andrew Nõmm found out.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > 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_incident 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins'_Ear (war over abuse of an English subject) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars (wars to prevent enslavement of American sailors). 'Release our citizen or we start shelling' can be a very effective diplomatic tool. It's just that they normally don't bother.
  - hydrogen18 10y ago
    The Barbary wars were conducted because of the economic impact of taking American sailors as slaves. Free-ing the enslaved sailors was just a value-added benefit.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    The most recent of those examples is from 1904. And there were still "national interest"/"political" reasons in most of them.
Kristine1975 10y ago
>IT doesn't generally decide what a company does But IT helps the company do what it decided to do (not that I think Megaupload did something bad).
- _audakel 10y ago
  On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other Stewart Brand
lisivka 10y ago
See case of John Demjanjuk[1] . USA citizen was extradited twice: to Israel and to Germany as "nazi". After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that he is innocent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk
- Xylakant 10y ago
  > After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that he is innocent. Nitpick: The FBI confirmed that according to their opinion one piece of evidence was a fake.
  - lisivka 10y ago
    Major evidence is fake. Do you know any other evidences? Throughout three decades of US hearings, an extradition, a death sentence followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and now a trial in Munich, the arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that indicates Demjanjuk was sent to Sobibor. Claims that the card and other evidence against Demjanjuk are Soviet forgeries have repeatedly been made by Demjanjuk's defense attorneys. However, the FBI report provides the first known confirmation that American investigators had similar doubts. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  The link says he was deported for concealing his involvement with a Nazi death camp on his immigration forms. Where did the FBI confirm his innocence?
  - lisivka 10y ago
    Quote from Wikipedia: In 2011 the Associated Press had uncovered a secret 1985 FBI report which indicated that a Nazi ID card showing that Demjanjuk had served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.
    - 10y ago
rhino369 10y ago
"Just following orders" is a bad defense when you have the option to just refuse and find another job. The terrible part is that Kim Dotcom has been able to avoid jail for the same crime this guy committed just because he has the money to fight.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  The gross procedural violations and disgusting behaviour of our (New Zealand) government have helped his case at this point. The judiciary have taken a pretty dim view of John Key's teams' antics.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  ...except when those orders are to build something innocuous. If someone told me to build some filesharing software and give it to them, making me responsible for the content is absurd. Its basically the legal equivalent of holding Dropbox developers responsible for piracy. The only difference is Megaupload was public and blatant enough in English-speaking media (of which the programmer was not a native speaker) for Americans to say "Yes, he should have known what it is for."
  - rhino369 10y ago
    What got him in hot water was the fact that Megaupload clearly knew about specific instances of copyright infringement and still went ahead anyway. And this guy knew about it and kept working there helping them do it. > I also had to sign my name to all of the evidence that had already been collected—for example, to the fact that Megaupload ignored complaints from time to time and did not remove illegal content fast enough. If anyone had any doubts about a file, Kim always calmed them down and said there was nothing to worry about.
    - fweespeech 10y ago
      > What got him in hot water was the fact that Megaupload clearly knew about specific instances of copyright infringement and still went ahead anyway. And this guy knew about it and kept working there helping them do it. Do we know it was actually illegal in the country he resided? As far as I'm aware, the reason he had to be brought to the US was he was within the law in his home country.
yardie 10y ago
the American embassy will help me. They will send a consular to make sure you aren't being mistreated while being detained. They will give you a list of english speaking attorneys you can retain for your trial. They may even call your family back home to wire money to your english speaking trial lawyer. That is about all the help you will get. For this "service" you are expected to file taxes to the US no matter where you work. During the Yemen civil war while every other country was frantically evacuating their citizens the US did nothing. They did issue a warning saying you should probably leave. A lot of US Citizens, working in foreign aid, found out exactly how far the US was willing to go, not very far at all. Not like how the movies portrays it at all.

anc84 10y ago

I was hoping this would have some more detail about the actual allegations against him and his testimony and verdict.

gcb0 10y ago

why not a interview with fbi or the DA? the "reporter" dont even mention if they were reached for comment. yeah the little guy was screwed. we got that from the tittle.

jontas 10y ago
This was an interview telling one person's side of the story, and it was presented that way I am all in favor of fair, honest and balanced reporting, but in this case I don't think anything was done incorrectly. This was not a "straight facts" piece, it was a subjective interview and clearly labeled as such.

coldcode 10y ago

Clearly our prison system in the US is terrible. Of course most other countries are even worse but you'd think we would be more civilized. It's also embarrassing that the only person they were able to put in jail was a simple programmer.

grecy 10y ago
> Of course most other countries are even worse I've never understood why people say things like this. The USA is supposed to be a developed country, and supposed to be at or near the very best. What do you have to gain by comparing it to undeveloped countries that are clearly not in the same league? For example, you just said: Sure, my pro baseball team finishes bottom of the ladder every year, but it's clearly better than all the highschool teams out there. - I sure as hell hope so! Compare the USA to all the developed countries, aspire for better, and work towards improvement.
- HemanHeartYou 10y ago
  You've misinterpreted what he is saying. He's saying that for a developed country our prison system is bad, but he's also trying not to give the impression that it's worse than other countries, it would be bigoted to do so. This was an attempt at being humble.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I don't know if it's available any more but there was a series on The History Channel ( from back when it had, y'know, history on it ) called "The Big House" with Paul Sorvino narrating that covers how this came to be. I realized a massive high school being built in my (then) home town had an architecture based on prison design. Not only were prisons a political innovation, but they had a lot to do with how architecture developed.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Have you more info on this? That is a pretty amazing observation. Did you mention it to anyone?

Steeeve 10y ago

I have heard about the "Diesel Tour" before. It's a little disturbing.

ensiferum 10y ago

Crazy how the FBI has become the biatch of the american copyright mafia even to a degree of tromping and violating people's rights in other continents. GO USA! What exactly was the claim against this software eng? By this article it almost sounds like the FBI (guided by the copyright mafia) fabricated a case against some defenseless software dev just to gain more leverage on dotcom.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
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.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  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.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    It's fair to hate the player who chooses to play the game, when there are alternatives.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Remember when GS got the FBI to arrest and prosecute a programmer who did nothing wrong? The arresting agents couldn't even articulate why they were arresting the programmer.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

k__ 10y ago

So this guy is in prison, but Dotcom is free?!

webkike 10y ago
They're both free now.

hrbrtglm 10y ago

So this guy was jailed because he coded an advertising platform and a video hosting service. I know Mega was on a thin shady line, but what has he done wrong to be jailed in USA ?

FilterSweep 10y ago
The UK has a law called "Joint Criminal Enterprise" which is oft critiqued[0]. In America, this same concept is a de-facto legal and social standard to apply "Guilty by Association" wherever it can. So, in the USA, it can be (incorrectly) argued - by very, very high powered RIAA legal team - that this was aiding and abetting.[1] It's absolutely wrong, but this is the legal world we live in as developers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hrbrtglm 10y ago
  All right, in fact, I think the law you explained is even fair and needed to prosecute some "Joint Criminal Enterprise". But in this specific case, how could it be "incorrectly" argued, "absolutely wrong" and not dismissed by a judge. I mean, how can you trust the justice if only the poor chap is the one going to jail. Yeah, I'm naive, I know.

nulagrithom 10y ago

> 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 hope I'm blowing this out of proportion...

cm3 10y ago
> Do Dropbox employees need to worry that infringing content is being taken down fast enough, lest the face prosecution? Not as long a Dropbox doesn't offend the wrong people.
- TobbenTM 10y ago
  Not as long Condoleezza Rice is on the board.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Good point.
  - letitleak 10y ago
    If saying an employee acted without authorization and/or tampering with the papertrail will save a few million in fines then you better hope no one like that is on your board. But your stock options will be safe.. though you probably wont be entitled to them.
  - 2close4comfort 10y ago
    This is why Google is on such good terms with the State Dept, friends in high places will ensure that no matter what happens you will not run into issues of "law".
yardie 10y ago
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.

aaronchall 10y ago

> I don’t believe the US will help Estonia in any war. They also promised to help Ukraine, but did they really? No. No we have not, and it is to our shame.

cm3 10y ago

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-stuermt-firmenzentrale-von-lovoo-69557 https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-polizei-s... http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Interne-Mails-bekraeftigen-Abzock-Verdacht-gegen-Dating-Plattform-Lovoo/The-LOVOO-SCAM-BEWARE/posting-24557526/show/ http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-Artikeln/Int... http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-with-fake-profiles-police-raid-on.html http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-wi... What's the thought process behind documenting the illegal activities in email threads? It makes you wonder if they honestly thought they were just developing test bots for QA purposes.

petercooper 10y ago
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-fake-accounts--2 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).
- cm3 10y ago
  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.

jondubois 10y ago

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 entertainment out of it.

hkmurakami 10y ago
You can expand the scope and say that generally, the rich and powerful can get away with crimes while the poor and powerless (and less-connected) take the fall.
chris11 10y ago
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.
- jerguismi 10y ago
  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."
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> 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 entertainment out of it. That's my theory too, and US is not the only Western country where this seems to be happening. Voter turnout is falling across the whole Western world, and a big part of it is probably people realizing politics is a circus, and not wanting to touch it with a ten-foot pole. When every choice is equally bad, and you'll have to find your way around the problems by yourself anyway, what's the point of even caring about the political scene? Getting some laugh at its expense is about the best use one can find.

eel 10y ago

I do not understand how the US can charge someone with copyright infringement if that person is not a US citizen and has never been to the US. Is there an international agreement on how to handle infringement? Can Americans be extradited for infringing upon copyrights from other countries?

type0 10y ago
Apparently US thinks their laws apply in the whole world. Team America world police is not a joke.
waynecochran 10y ago
I assume if you are involved in stealing property from folks in the US (I assume many of the owners of the stolen material are American companies), the US has the right to extradite you. Seems reasonable to me.
- DanBC 10y ago
  Sure. Is that reciprocal? Would the US extradite a US citizen from the US to eg France to face prosecution for copyright infringement?
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The man in the article was an Estonian living in the Netherlands, so probably not a Dutch citizen.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Haha, thanks for the good laugh!
icebraining 10y ago
IANAL but I believe that, Any country can charge anyone as long as its laws say it has standing to do so. Having your citizens harmed is a common reason. Yes, there are international agreements regarding copyright infringement and regarding extraditions in general. In general (and again, IANAL) I think it's common for a country to accept to extradite someone if the alleged crime is also considered a crime locally. I have no idea regarding the latter question :)

moyok 10y ago

As someone working on a side project that allows people to upload data publically (think something like codepen), what can I do to stay away from trouble like this?

superobserver 10y ago

"All Kim ever cared about was how to promote himself on Twitter." In sum, he's a total scumbag. I thought he was a cool guy, but now I think otherwise.