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its 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

its 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Can’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.
  - slg 6y ago
    >Can’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? IANAL so maybe the plausible deniability here is enough legal protection, but this is an argument that rings hollow to me from a technical perspective. Usually content ripped from physical media is not stored in its original format, especially during the timeline of MegaUpload's existence. The data is going to be encoded in a different format and therefore could have a variety of different potential hashes. A bunch of people having exactly the same version of this media indicates that it is a single encoding being repeatedly shared.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Media encoders are generally deterministic. If you use two different encoders or two different configurations you'll get two different outputs, but two people using a given popular encoder with its default settings on the same input are generally going to get identical output.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    two things. > 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. this right here is (sadly) already a DMCA violation for the person who rips the DVD. I'm not sure whether or not that makes it a different situation for megaupload vs. a person uploading a rip of a DVD they didn't own in the first place. second, the lawyers can probably argue that megaupload knew (or should have known) how widely each upload was being distributed. it's hard to argue you don't know that infringement is going on if you see hundreds/thousands of downloads through a link to a file whose hash matches a known illicit copy. maybe they were at least smart enough not to keep these kinds of logs, I dunno.
markvdb 6y ago
Two words unfortunately: parallel construction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- Sargos 6y ago
  This seems so evil yet it's an accepted part of law?
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    It might be applied for good and evil. Sometimes, a government does not want to give details because they want to reuse the method. Consider, for example, the FBI found a vulnerability in Tor, and does not want to disclose it yet does want to prosecute the perpetrator behind Silk Road.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Tor and end-to-end encryption recently made their public shit list I think I missed this news. Can you please elaborate?

CommieBobDole 6y ago

The 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 ago
Can’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.
- slg 6y ago
  >Can’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? IANAL so maybe the plausible deniability here is enough legal protection, but this is an argument that rings hollow to me from a technical perspective. Usually content ripped from physical media is not stored in its original format, especially during the timeline of MegaUpload's existence. The data is going to be encoded in a different format and therefore could have a variety of different potential hashes. A bunch of people having exactly the same version of this media indicates that it is a single encoding being repeatedly shared.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Media encoders are generally deterministic. If you use two different encoders or two different configurations you'll get two different outputs, but two people using a given popular encoder with its default settings on the same input are generally going to get identical output.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  two things. > 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. this right here is (sadly) already a DMCA violation for the person who rips the DVD. I'm not sure whether or not that makes it a different situation for megaupload vs. a person uploading a rip of a DVD they didn't own in the first place. second, the lawyers can probably argue that megaupload knew (or should have known) how widely each upload was being distributed. it's hard to argue you don't know that infringement is going on if you see hundreds/thousands of downloads through a link to a file whose hash matches a known illicit copy. maybe they were at least smart enough not to keep these kinds of logs, I dunno.

markvdb 6y ago

Two words unfortunately: parallel construction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Sargos 6y ago
This seems so evil yet it's an accepted part of law?
- Fnoord 6y ago
  It might be applied for good and evil. Sometimes, a government does not want to give details because they want to reuse the method. Consider, for example, the FBI found a vulnerability in Tor, and does not want to disclose it yet does want to prosecute the perpetrator behind Silk Road.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> Tor and end-to-end encryption recently made their public shit list I think I missed this news. Can you please elaborate?