14 ms·

Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why

260 points by cleverjake 15y ago

parfe 15y ago
No surprise about the weakness of the charges. The goal has already been accomplished. Megaupload has been destroyed without a single valid argument being upheld.
- cdr 15y ago
  Entertainment companies are also taking the opportunity to sue: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/valcom-sues-megaupload-for-millions-over-copyright-infringement/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/valcom-sues-megaupload-for...
  - pyre 15y ago
    > “These are revenues that belong to ValCom, and we’re > securing them for the benefit of the company and to > increase value for our shareholders,” ValCom president > Vince Vellardita said in a statement. This is like an MBA madlibs statement, all he had to do was fill in the company name.
- kokey 15y ago
  This tactic is not new, and has worked in the past. I'm thinking of a piracy crackdown about 20 years ago. Back then it was a network of dial-up bulletin boards, and people who would commit phone fraud to upload and download data, operating as couriers, in groups. The boards would often fun their hardware through credit card fraud, and many of them made money selling tapes full of pirated material. The crackdown involved raiding the boards, getting the user details, tracking their phone numbers, and getting various people raided in the various countries. A lot of the time the cases would collapse in court on various technicalities, but it would be a year before people would get their seized computer equipment back.
- talmand 15y ago
  Don't forget they've also tried to prevent his ability to defend himself by seizing every bit of property and/or assets they could get their hands on. Kind of hard to defend yourself against a prosecutor that has an unlimited budget and you have no means to fund your defense.
  - eli 15y ago
    Just to play devil's advocate, would you permit an accused pick pocket to use funds from stolen wallets to pay for his defense?
    - Xurinos 15y ago
      Guilty until proven innocent? Surely it is not unreasonable that if found guilty, the criminal would be required to produce that money or work to pay off debts.
    - Zarkonnen 15y ago
      Yes, due to presumption of innocence. Because they may not actually have acquired these funds from picking pockets after all.
    - tmh88j 15y ago
      Megaupload made money through premium accounts which "many" were used for 100% legal purposes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but people paid for the service, not the files.
      - powertower 15y ago
        > which "many" were used for 100% legal purposes. How many? 1/10 of 1%? If MU was legitimate, you can be sure these figures would not be hidden, and would be instead the #1 bulletin point of their defense. Instead, DotKim is now claiming a conspiracy theory. MU made more profits than DropBox had revenue. Take away those accounts that signed up (tricked into) to download illegal content, and what do you have left?
      - TylerE 15y ago
- Zirro 15y ago
  This raises the interesting question: What would happen if Megaupload actually managed to win in court? Would any part on the other side be responsible to pay for the damages caused to uptime and reputation? Considering how profitable Megaupload was pre-takedown, we're talking enormous sums.
  - geoffw8 15y ago
    Yeah, I think the interesting thing here is the flip-side of them (Mega) not being a US entity in anyway. I read a while ago (no links I'm afraid) that essentially a US agency/regulator has to give permission for a US based entity to sue an agency like the FBI. I'd be very interested to see how it plays out for someone like Mega, or their web hosts if in fact they did win. There'd be no protection in place. They'd have to battle. I'd be interested to know if any HN'ers have anything more solid to add?
    - mokus 15y ago
      "I read a while ago (no links I'm afraid) that essentially a US agency/regulator has to give permission for a US based entity to sue an agency like the FBI." Is "sovereign immunity"[1] perhaps the concept you are referring to? It was mentioned in an HN comment thread a while ago, but I don't remember the exact context. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...
      - geoffw8 15y ago
        Ahh yes that indeed was what I was referring too. Interestingly it is in fact (if I'm reading this right) mentioned as being exempt: "certain claims of monetary damages against the United States are exempt from sovereign immunity" [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States#Certain_contracts_with_the_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...
        mokus 15y ago
- ovi256 15y ago
  So this is pretty much extra-judiciary punishment, then ?
- richardlblair 15y ago
  "Megaupload has been destroyed..." I don't think it's destroyed at all. It is hurt, and hurt bad, but I think they could make a come back if he can get it back online after this disaster is over.
- brazzy 15y ago
  Defendants now get to decide whether charges are "weak"?
nextparadigms 15y ago
Maybe Dotcom should run for New Zealand's Senate, too.
- gassit 15y ago
  They don't have an upper house. Haven't for quite a while.
- spoiledtechie 15y ago
  Bump, President. Cough, cough.
- RowanH 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand
mml 15y ago
Hopefully the DOJ will eventually abandon ship. They won't forget how bad the RIAA et. al. made them look any time soon if this happens.
- fl3tch 15y ago
  Like the politicians who kept the Vietnam War going long after victory was impossible, they don't understand sunk costs. They are all in at this point. No prosecutor of a case this big will accept the embarrassment of merely dropping the charges. They have to win, so this will go to court.
  - sp332 15y ago
    There's more than one way to win. They could declare that they "settled for undisclosed terms", declare victory, and walk away.
- luriel 15y ago
  Many of the people Obama has appointed to top positions in the DoJ are ex RIAA/MPAA folks.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- Karunamon 15y ago
  Pretty sure the FBI doesn't get to pick and choose what laws to enforce, nor are its employees elected via democratic process. Votes don't have anything to do with anything, as far as corporate influence in politics goes.
  - monsterix 15y ago
    I totally agree with you. But that doesn't mean NOT to opine on a story that's as sensitive as this. And probably look the other way when an individual (Kim, in this instance) has to undergo suffrage (and a completely unproductive period in life) simply because of a TRIAL? Reminds me of The Trial by Roger Waters, Pink Floyd.
  - dynamichype 15y ago
    You are correct regarding the impotence of votes, but I'd say the situation is even worse than you describe. Pragmatically, the FBI and your local police do get the choice of which laws to enforce by choosing their allocation of resources and by the "on the street" decisions of their staff. Further, their allocation of enforcement is also dictated by their competencies. Corporations and lobbyist get to influence these decisions (and hence enforcement) as well. This is a major flaw in how we are governed and is one of the reasons a common political trope is "we don't need a new law, we just need to enforce the existing law". Morally and legally fraud and theft are pretty much equivalent, but theft is de facto "more illegal" in terms of your expected legal retribution due to a number of factors (the poor are more likely to commit theft than fraud, theft is easier to catch, etc.). Enforcement oversight is a good example of a governance issue that only engineers seem to latch onto. This is likely because we live in a world where the "intention" of statements is so meaningless. The average person (or even lawmaker) seems to regard law as some kind of magic, rather than as code that runs on an enforcement arm. As evidence of this I present the many Internet bills asking for technically impossible things or related Internet bills that require massive spying but don't dictate whose responsibility it is to do or pay for the spying. Think of the healthcare law. There have been vague movements that the IRS would be responsible for tracking compliance and fines, but no one seems to know how it's (if not overturned) actually going to shake out.
naner 15y ago
This begs the question of why Mega was so aggressively targeted. I think it's pretty clear. This was one of the largest and easiest to use file-locker services. I used it tons of times because it was so convenient and the free service was much better than any of the other file-locker services. If you had an ad-blocker installed, the site was almost too good to be true. You could download huge files after a 30 second wait, at reasonably high speeds, no captcha or any other hoops to jump through, and you could download another file from the site immediately afterwards without wait (most sites make free users wait between downloads). Files would stay up on the site seemingly indefinitely, while other file-locker services would delete a file after it was not accessed for a specific number of days. Also Kim was a larger-than-life target. He was living extravagantly. Right after he was arrested there was a huge Ars article about how ridiculous his lifestyle and persona was. So now the government could say: "Hey look at this asshole, he's getting rich off of piracy and stealing American jobs." They couldn't have hoped for a better target. Unfortunately, Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law and he thought he was untouchable because of his location. That might be a workable strategy for someone keeping a lower-profile but if you piss off enough powerful people they will find a way to get at you, legal or not. (As we are seeing here.) That being said, since the guy had a family he really should have found a more respectable way to make a living. This was pretty reckless and selfish on his part.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  >Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law I don't think providing a DMCA takedown process which was removing tens of thousands of files a day counts as "thumbing his nose at US copyright law"
  - naner 15y ago
    The site still appears to have been hosting mostly infringing content. Not a business I'd consider getting into if I had a wife/kid.
    - droithomme 15y ago
      YouTube has now and has had far more infringing content than Megaupload ever did. But Megaupload isn't owned by a corporation with Al Gore and other rich politically connected Americans as senior advisors and/or on the board of directors.
badclient 15y ago
Don't forget the MPAA CEO is none other than former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd. Also, Obama's copyright czar received a strong endorsement from the RIAA/MPAA. It seems like Obama/White House should create another position that "competes" with the copyright czar and takes the other extreme position. (Obama voter here so don't really mean to make a political statement with this post)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - badclient 15y ago
    Corrected. Thanks!
- jbooth 15y ago
  My cynical guess is this was the price to keep the money flowing after they opposed SOPA/PIPA publicly.
sequoia 15y ago
I never used megaupload so I apologize if I'm way off, but I'm really confused: After this "bust" it seems the received wisdom is that MegaUpload was not some shady illegal file sharing site; whereas beforehand (if memory serves), it was common knowledge that that was exactly what it was. Some friends who engage in such sharing tell me they "don't use bittorrent anymore, DD [direct download] is easier." Have I gone crazy? Do most BT tracker sites that feature "illegal" content not advertise direct download sites as an alternative way to download stuff illegally? I'm really confused because I thought that "DD sites are a competitor to BT for downloading stuff illegally" was common knowledge, now we're shocked-SHOCKED that such unseemly allegations would be leveled at such respectable Netizens as Megaupload. I am not commenting on whether copyright is broken, merely "was this not a popular site to d/l illegal stuff?"
- ori_b 15y ago
  The question isn't whether it was popular to use them to host infringing material -- I think everyone agrees that it was. The question is whether they acted as they were legally required when it came to takedown requests. That's what determines if they are liable for other people putting infringing content on their servers.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Yes, it was a popular site to download stuff without a proper license. That doesn't mean they were an "illegal file sharing site". Youtube is also a popular site to view illegally shared videos, but they're not an "illegal video sharing site".
  - powertower 15y ago
    MU made its profits from tricking people into paying for the privilege of downloading that pirated content. That's the difference.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      How did MU trick people? You could download any file for free. You paid for faster and concurrent downloads. That was very explicit.
orenmazor 15y ago
Now that you think about it, they probably chose the wrong guy to make an example out of. A rich nerd who likes attention? of course he's going to make this into a big deal (whether he's right or not)
billpatrianakos 15y ago
Am I the only one who noticed how ridiculously flimsy this article was? Let me sum it up: Kim Dotcom says he did nothing wrong. Legal documents say one thing but they're wrong because Kim says that they're wrong. Kim Dotcom would never lie, right? So he must really have never done anything wrong. There's also this weird backtracking that goes on in the article. First the article claims that Mega is in the clear pretty much based on what Kim Dotcom says and nothing more but then goes on to imply that even if Mega did do something wrong it's totally cool because there are some people using it to share photos and videos of themselves. And those people are US soldiers so the Feds just have to forgive Mega because after all, we can never imply a US soldier would do anything unethical! Then the 50 Cent thing... "Well, yeah I uploaded the 50 Cent song but I totally bought it first and it was random and the the link was private! Just take me at my word TorrentFreak". And TorrentFreak does take him at his word. Then, because some big media companies wanted to do business with Mega it somehow absolves them of any sin related to hosting and facilitating the piracy of those same companies' works. Really? And it just goes on... Basically as long as what you say supports the TorrentFreak agenda they'll just take you at your word and report what you say as truth. This is 5th grade expository writing, not a news story. The sad thing is that people will read this garbage and take it as truth because it sounds bad like you should be outraged and it kind of sort of includes some semblance of fact. I can't say if MegaUpload did anything wrong or not based on this story because it's such a terribly written one. Lots of topic sentences, little to no supporting details, and no one seemed to check if what Dotcom was saying is really accurate.
- lftl 15y ago
  I think it's pretty clear from the introduction that this would just be a one-sided response to some of the government's weakest claims. It's essentially just reading one side's legal brief and ignoring the other. Particularly Dotcom completely ignored a number of the accusations the government has made (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds...). Namely, he didn't address at all that they paid users who were popular uploaders with known infringing content. He also cherry picked some instances of his own use of the system without addressing any of the instances of employee abuses cited above.
Porter_423 15y ago
“We did nothing wrong. Watch out for our first motion in response to the MPAA-sponsored Department of Justice indictment. It will be enlightening and maybe entertaining,” Is there any necessary for these nonsense statement?
chris123 15y ago
Glad to see someone fight back against the the corruption that is American politics and status quo and it's growing inquality and accelerating movement towards dystopia. Maybe Dotcom committed crimes, maybe he didn't. I really don't know. But I do know that people are bullied and/or fear- and/or debt-slaved into submission every day and that the only to have a chance to change anything is to stand up for other people and yourself and not go down without a fight.

260 points by cleverjake 15y ago

parfe 15y ago

No surprise about the weakness of the charges. The goal has already been accomplished. Megaupload has been destroyed without a single valid argument being upheld.

cdr 15y ago
Entertainment companies are also taking the opportunity to sue: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/valcom-sues-megaupload-for-millions-over-copyright-infringement/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/valcom-sues-megaupload-for...
- pyre 15y ago
  > “These are revenues that belong to ValCom, and we’re > securing them for the benefit of the company and to > increase value for our shareholders,” ValCom president > Vince Vellardita said in a statement. This is like an MBA madlibs statement, all he had to do was fill in the company name.
kokey 15y ago
This tactic is not new, and has worked in the past. I'm thinking of a piracy crackdown about 20 years ago. Back then it was a network of dial-up bulletin boards, and people who would commit phone fraud to upload and download data, operating as couriers, in groups. The boards would often fun their hardware through credit card fraud, and many of them made money selling tapes full of pirated material. The crackdown involved raiding the boards, getting the user details, tracking their phone numbers, and getting various people raided in the various countries. A lot of the time the cases would collapse in court on various technicalities, but it would be a year before people would get their seized computer equipment back.
talmand 15y ago
Don't forget they've also tried to prevent his ability to defend himself by seizing every bit of property and/or assets they could get their hands on. Kind of hard to defend yourself against a prosecutor that has an unlimited budget and you have no means to fund your defense.
- eli 15y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate, would you permit an accused pick pocket to use funds from stolen wallets to pay for his defense?
  - Xurinos 15y ago
    Guilty until proven innocent? Surely it is not unreasonable that if found guilty, the criminal would be required to produce that money or work to pay off debts.
  - Zarkonnen 15y ago
    Yes, due to presumption of innocence. Because they may not actually have acquired these funds from picking pockets after all.
  - tmh88j 15y ago
    Megaupload made money through premium accounts which "many" were used for 100% legal purposes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but people paid for the service, not the files.
    - powertower 15y ago
      > which "many" were used for 100% legal purposes. How many? 1/10 of 1%? If MU was legitimate, you can be sure these figures would not be hidden, and would be instead the #1 bulletin point of their defense. Instead, DotKim is now claiming a conspiracy theory. MU made more profits than DropBox had revenue. Take away those accounts that signed up (tricked into) to download illegal content, and what do you have left?
    - TylerE 15y ago
Zirro 15y ago
This raises the interesting question: What would happen if Megaupload actually managed to win in court? Would any part on the other side be responsible to pay for the damages caused to uptime and reputation? Considering how profitable Megaupload was pre-takedown, we're talking enormous sums.
- geoffw8 15y ago
  Yeah, I think the interesting thing here is the flip-side of them (Mega) not being a US entity in anyway. I read a while ago (no links I'm afraid) that essentially a US agency/regulator has to give permission for a US based entity to sue an agency like the FBI. I'd be very interested to see how it plays out for someone like Mega, or their web hosts if in fact they did win. There'd be no protection in place. They'd have to battle. I'd be interested to know if any HN'ers have anything more solid to add?
  - mokus 15y ago
    "I read a while ago (no links I'm afraid) that essentially a US agency/regulator has to give permission for a US based entity to sue an agency like the FBI." Is "sovereign immunity"[1] perhaps the concept you are referring to? It was mentioned in an HN comment thread a while ago, but I don't remember the exact context. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...
    - geoffw8 15y ago
      Ahh yes that indeed was what I was referring too. Interestingly it is in fact (if I'm reading this right) mentioned as being exempt: "certain claims of monetary damages against the United States are exempt from sovereign immunity" [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States#Certain_contracts_with_the_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...
      - mokus 15y ago
ovi256 15y ago
So this is pretty much extra-judiciary punishment, then ?
richardlblair 15y ago
"Megaupload has been destroyed..." I don't think it's destroyed at all. It is hurt, and hurt bad, but I think they could make a come back if he can get it back online after this disaster is over.
brazzy 15y ago
Defendants now get to decide whether charges are "weak"?

nextparadigms 15y ago

Maybe Dotcom should run for New Zealand's Senate, too.

gassit 15y ago
They don't have an upper house. Haven't for quite a while.
spoiledtechie 15y ago
Bump, President. Cough, cough.
RowanH 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand

mml 15y ago

Hopefully the DOJ will eventually abandon ship. They won't forget how bad the RIAA et. al. made them look any time soon if this happens.

fl3tch 15y ago
Like the politicians who kept the Vietnam War going long after victory was impossible, they don't understand sunk costs. They are all in at this point. No prosecutor of a case this big will accept the embarrassment of merely dropping the charges. They have to win, so this will go to court.
- sp332 15y ago
  There's more than one way to win. They could declare that they "settled for undisclosed terms", declare victory, and walk away.
luriel 15y ago
Many of the people Obama has appointed to top positions in the DoJ are ex RIAA/MPAA folks.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Karunamon 15y ago
Pretty sure the FBI doesn't get to pick and choose what laws to enforce, nor are its employees elected via democratic process. Votes don't have anything to do with anything, as far as corporate influence in politics goes.
- monsterix 15y ago
  I totally agree with you. But that doesn't mean NOT to opine on a story that's as sensitive as this. And probably look the other way when an individual (Kim, in this instance) has to undergo suffrage (and a completely unproductive period in life) simply because of a TRIAL? Reminds me of The Trial by Roger Waters, Pink Floyd.
- dynamichype 15y ago
  You are correct regarding the impotence of votes, but I'd say the situation is even worse than you describe. Pragmatically, the FBI and your local police do get the choice of which laws to enforce by choosing their allocation of resources and by the "on the street" decisions of their staff. Further, their allocation of enforcement is also dictated by their competencies. Corporations and lobbyist get to influence these decisions (and hence enforcement) as well. This is a major flaw in how we are governed and is one of the reasons a common political trope is "we don't need a new law, we just need to enforce the existing law". Morally and legally fraud and theft are pretty much equivalent, but theft is de facto "more illegal" in terms of your expected legal retribution due to a number of factors (the poor are more likely to commit theft than fraud, theft is easier to catch, etc.). Enforcement oversight is a good example of a governance issue that only engineers seem to latch onto. This is likely because we live in a world where the "intention" of statements is so meaningless. The average person (or even lawmaker) seems to regard law as some kind of magic, rather than as code that runs on an enforcement arm. As evidence of this I present the many Internet bills asking for technically impossible things or related Internet bills that require massive spying but don't dictate whose responsibility it is to do or pay for the spying. Think of the healthcare law. There have been vague movements that the IRS would be responsible for tracking compliance and fines, but no one seems to know how it's (if not overturned) actually going to shake out.

naner 15y ago

This begs the question of why Mega was so aggressively targeted. I think it's pretty clear. This was one of the largest and easiest to use file-locker services. I used it tons of times because it was so convenient and the free service was much better than any of the other file-locker services. If you had an ad-blocker installed, the site was almost too good to be true. You could download huge files after a 30 second wait, at reasonably high speeds, no captcha or any other hoops to jump through, and you could download another file from the site immediately afterwards without wait (most sites make free users wait between downloads). Files would stay up on the site seemingly indefinitely, while other file-locker services would delete a file after it was not accessed for a specific number of days. Also Kim was a larger-than-life target. He was living extravagantly. Right after he was arrested there was a huge Ars article about how ridiculous his lifestyle and persona was. So now the government could say: "Hey look at this asshole, he's getting rich off of piracy and stealing American jobs." They couldn't have hoped for a better target. Unfortunately, Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law and he thought he was untouchable because of his location. That might be a workable strategy for someone keeping a lower-profile but if you piss off enough powerful people they will find a way to get at you, legal or not. (As we are seeing here.) That being said, since the guy had a family he really should have found a more respectable way to make a living. This was pretty reckless and selfish on his part.

Karunamon 15y ago
>Kim was obviously thumbing his nose at US copyright law I don't think providing a DMCA takedown process which was removing tens of thousands of files a day counts as "thumbing his nose at US copyright law"
- naner 15y ago
  The site still appears to have been hosting mostly infringing content. Not a business I'd consider getting into if I had a wife/kid.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    YouTube has now and has had far more infringing content than Megaupload ever did. But Megaupload isn't owned by a corporation with Al Gore and other rich politically connected Americans as senior advisors and/or on the board of directors.

badclient 15y ago

Don't forget the MPAA CEO is none other than former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd. Also, Obama's copyright czar received a strong endorsement from the RIAA/MPAA. It seems like Obama/White House should create another position that "competes" with the copyright czar and takes the other extreme position. (Obama voter here so don't really mean to make a political statement with this post)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- badclient 15y ago
  Corrected. Thanks!
jbooth 15y ago
My cynical guess is this was the price to keep the money flowing after they opposed SOPA/PIPA publicly.

sequoia 15y ago

I never used megaupload so I apologize if I'm way off, but I'm really confused: After this "bust" it seems the received wisdom is that MegaUpload was not some shady illegal file sharing site; whereas beforehand (if memory serves), it was common knowledge that that was exactly what it was. Some friends who engage in such sharing tell me they "don't use bittorrent anymore, DD [direct download] is easier." Have I gone crazy? Do most BT tracker sites that feature "illegal" content not advertise direct download sites as an alternative way to download stuff illegally? I'm really confused because I thought that "DD sites are a competitor to BT for downloading stuff illegally" was common knowledge, now we're shocked-SHOCKED that such unseemly allegations would be leveled at such respectable Netizens as Megaupload. I am not commenting on whether copyright is broken, merely "was this not a popular site to d/l illegal stuff?"

ori_b 15y ago
The question isn't whether it was popular to use them to host infringing material -- I think everyone agrees that it was. The question is whether they acted as they were legally required when it came to takedown requests. That's what determines if they are liable for other people putting infringing content on their servers.
icebraining 15y ago
Yes, it was a popular site to download stuff without a proper license. That doesn't mean they were an "illegal file sharing site". Youtube is also a popular site to view illegally shared videos, but they're not an "illegal video sharing site".
- powertower 15y ago
  MU made its profits from tricking people into paying for the privilege of downloading that pirated content. That's the difference.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    How did MU trick people? You could download any file for free. You paid for faster and concurrent downloads. That was very explicit.

orenmazor 15y ago

Now that you think about it, they probably chose the wrong guy to make an example out of. A rich nerd who likes attention? of course he's going to make this into a big deal (whether he's right or not)

billpatrianakos 15y ago

Am I the only one who noticed how ridiculously flimsy this article was? Let me sum it up: Kim Dotcom says he did nothing wrong. Legal documents say one thing but they're wrong because Kim says that they're wrong. Kim Dotcom would never lie, right? So he must really have never done anything wrong. There's also this weird backtracking that goes on in the article. First the article claims that Mega is in the clear pretty much based on what Kim Dotcom says and nothing more but then goes on to imply that even if Mega did do something wrong it's totally cool because there are some people using it to share photos and videos of themselves. And those people are US soldiers so the Feds just have to forgive Mega because after all, we can never imply a US soldier would do anything unethical! Then the 50 Cent thing... "Well, yeah I uploaded the 50 Cent song but I totally bought it first and it was random and the the link was private! Just take me at my word TorrentFreak". And TorrentFreak does take him at his word. Then, because some big media companies wanted to do business with Mega it somehow absolves them of any sin related to hosting and facilitating the piracy of those same companies' works. Really? And it just goes on... Basically as long as what you say supports the TorrentFreak agenda they'll just take you at your word and report what you say as truth. This is 5th grade expository writing, not a news story. The sad thing is that people will read this garbage and take it as truth because it sounds bad like you should be outraged and it kind of sort of includes some semblance of fact. I can't say if MegaUpload did anything wrong or not based on this story because it's such a terribly written one. Lots of topic sentences, little to no supporting details, and no one seemed to check if what Dotcom was saying is really accurate.

lftl 15y ago
I think it's pretty clear from the introduction that this would just be a one-sided response to some of the government's weakest claims. It's essentially just reading one side's legal brief and ignoring the other. Particularly Dotcom completely ignored a number of the accusations the government has made (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds...). Namely, he didn't address at all that they paid users who were popular uploaders with known infringing content. He also cherry picked some instances of his own use of the system without addressing any of the instances of employee abuses cited above.

Porter_423 15y ago

“We did nothing wrong. Watch out for our first motion in response to the MPAA-sponsored Department of Justice indictment. It will be enlightening and maybe entertaining,” Is there any necessary for these nonsense statement?

chris123 15y ago

Glad to see someone fight back against the the corruption that is American politics and status quo and it's growing inquality and accelerating movement towards dystopia. Maybe Dotcom committed crimes, maybe he didn't. I really don't know. But I do know that people are bullied and/or fear- and/or debt-slaved into submission every day and that the only to have a chance to change anything is to stand up for other people and yourself and not go down without a fight.