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The disproportionate response against Kim Dotcom is such a joke, and the joke is increasingly on us U.S. taxpayers I’d wager. I think separation of church and
by jchw 6y ago
The disproportionate response against Kim Dotcom is such a joke, and the joke is increasingly on us U.S. taxpayers I’d wager.
I think separation of church and state was a good ideal, but now more than ever it feels like we need separation of corporation and state.
- lumberjack 6y agoLawyers saw that he was very rich so they predicted a decades long legal battle and made it happen. That's my guess.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI sometimes wonder if US prosecution of these "crimes" is more about attempting to drain the defendant of money through legal fees rather than trying to get any sort of conviction.
- manquer 6y agoIt is also a show of force intended to deter others from trying .
- AniseAbyss 6y agoIts like the drug war- after the US went after Escobar and Noriega nothing changed. Someone will always step in to fill the void.
- _jal 6y agoThe way the US legal system works, a conviction is frequently only possible if a rich defendant is first drained of money. This has nothing to do with innocence or guilt.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bmitc 6y agoThe unfortunate thing is they’re all coupled and non-separated: church, corporation, and state.
- CivBase 6y agoHow are the church and state coupled? A corporation can bribe politicians with money, but what can a religious institution do? People vote based on their opinions. Their opinions can be influenced by many things. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by their religious affiliation. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by comments on HN. But HN has no actual leverage over the state and neither does the church.
- djsumdog 6y agoThis is a little tricky. A church cannot voice a political opinion, if they want to keep their 501 tax exemption. They can voice their opinions (1st amendment) but they'd give up those specific tax exemptions and would need to move to a different charity type. (This is why the ACLU has two organizations, one you can donate to with tax exemption and the other you cannot because they lobby the government).
- CivBase 6y agoIs there anything wrong with a church abandoning their 501 tax exemption and voicing a political opinion?
- tssva 6y agoThere isn't but unfortunately what has been happening lately is churches have been voicing political opinion and not losing their 501 tax exemption because the politicians they have been speaking in favor of protect them from losing their tax status.
- triceratops 6y agoNothing wrong. They'd have to pay taxes. That would be a bummer for most organizations.
- nimbius 6y agoits less of a trial these days and more about biblical retribution. In regard to Megaupload, Dotcom says he believes the company had actively tried to prevent copyright infringement – its terms of service forced users to agree they would not post copyrighted material to the website. Companies or individuals with concerns that their copyright material was being posted on Megaupload were given direct access to the website to delete infringing links. If it went to trial, im doubtful the RIAA has a slam-dunk case at all considering the bulk of their evidence was illegally collected. Justice Winkelmann ruled that the handing of hard drives seized by New Zealand police in the raid to the FBI was in breach of extradition legislation, and the FBI's removal from New Zealand of cloned data from them was unlawful. in the past decade the RIAA/MPAA have increasingly gone after the idea of piracy instead of actual piracy. Tor and end-to-end encryption recently made their public shit list but theyve been wardrumming against any and all pushback against the DMCA for a long time.
- CommieBobDole 6y agoThe issue, as I remember it, was that Megaupload consolidated files with the same hash that were uploaded by multiple people, so that they only kept one copy with multiple links pointing to it. When they received a copyright notice, they would immediately remove only the link that was referenced in the notice, but would leave the file with all the other links still pointing to it. Which was the difference between "running a file-hosting service" and "knowingly hosting copyrighted material".
- marcosdumay 6y ago> Which was the difference between "running a file-hosting service" and "knowingly hosting copyrighted material". Every digital file is copyrighted (in practice). Some people are allowed to distribute some files, others aren't. You are claiming it's up to him to know who were allowed and who were not, but I don't thing that's clear in any way.
- Nextgrid 6y agoCan’t you argue that they have no way to know whether the other links are also infringing or whether those other users have a legitimate license for the content? Let’s say I buy and losslessly rip a DVD and upload it to Megaupload as a backup or to have access to it on the go. I don’t share the link with anyone and thus don’t infringe on the copyright by redistributing the content publicly. Now someone else buys the same DVD, rips it the same way and ends up with the exact same file (so their link actually points to my file because of deduplication), however they then decide to infringe on the copyright by distributing the link publicly. Their link should indeed be disabled, but the original file should stay (with its other links) as there is no way to tell whether those other links are used legitimately.
- learnstats2 6y ago>now more than ever it feels like we need separation of corporation and state What a weird meme to appear twice on this page. Corporations don't exist as an entity except via the authorisation from government. Separating corporation and state really means giving corporations autonomous powers. That's not the conclusion that you are hoping for.
- nathias 6y agoOf course corporations can exist without a government, they predate the current system and the current type of governments.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoIn many ways they can't as it is the state that created the markets they operate in and it is the state who helps them maintain their monopolies.
- primrose 6y agoMarkets form naturally from consensual interactions of goods and services for money. I suppose you could argue the government creating the money allowed the market but alternatives currencies would be created like gold or now crypto.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoMarkets with particular rules that help keep monopolies in place don't form naturally. They require a state entity to enforce the rules.
- primrose 6y agoGuess this means we should remove as many rules as possible to avoid monopolies.
- nathias 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]