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Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand
- popcalc 2y agoOne-way flight to Russia? His Twitter feed for the last decade does give merit to the idea that he's been on the payroll.
- snapcaster 2y agoWhat other options does he have? I really wish people wouldn't cheer when smallfolk like us get crushed by the state. Not saying he's perfect, but what him and others have to suffer seems vastly out of proportion to what they did
- wepple 2y agoI do not categorize him as “small folk like us”
- popcalc 2y agoAgree. "Two weeks later on 20 January, Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were arrested in Coatesville, New Zealand by the New Zealand Police, in an armed raid on Dotcom's house involving 76 officers and two helicopters. Seized assets included eighteen luxury cars, large TVs, works of art and US$175 million in cash. Dotcom's bank accounts were frozen, denying him access to 64 bank accounts world-wide[...]" No one legit has 175MM in cash sitting around. That's the realm of dictators and drug lords.
- herendin2 2y ago$175M quickly becomes meaningless in this context, believe me. It's already much more than you need.
- finikytou 2y agohow old are you? did you live through the megaupload era? for a few years it was ubiquitous and def a cashcow machine
- actionfromafar 2y agoYes, but converting that cashcow to a hundred million dollars in actual bills, is something special.
- Gormo 2y agoIf someone's a weirdo and wants to stuff their millions into a mattress, that by itself should not be sufficient to presume them guilty of any illegal activity, or justify seizing their money.
- queuebert 2y agoWait til you hear about this new startup called Google. They are going to launch yet another search engine. I doubt there's much money in it, though. They'll be lucky to make a few million.
- diggan 2y agoHow much physical cash (actual notes/bills) do you think Google founders have in their home? Close to $175 million? Not that that justifies anything, people should be free to keep as much physical cash as they want.
- echoangle 2y agoAre you missing the point on purpose? The suspicious thing isn’t that he has money, it’s that he’s storing the money physically as cash in his home. You think Google has a safe at the HQ filled with dollar notes?
- dmantis 2y agoSounds pretty logical in a world where banking secrecy doesn't exist and most banks are compliant with a single jurisdiction which doesn't respects other ones. Don't see what's wrong to preserve your property outside of the modern banking system if you are against the US.
- rout39574 2y agoIf that logic sounds sketch when the police take $10K from a man going to buy a car, it should also be sketch when you add zeros somewhere else. In general "That's really unusual behavior" shouldn't be enough to forfeit a fortune.
- popcalc 2y agoHe hasn't been sentenced, let alone seen court yet. You don't have a right to flee a warrant for your arrest?
- woodruffw 2y agoI don’t think the money in question was forfeited in the sense that the US uses, only seized pending an investigation. The lack of a corrupting incentive alone makes the seizure less suspicious in my eyes.
- newswasboring 2y agoI don't know about you, but where I come from this looks like punishment through process. Not even trying to defend this Kim dude, just pointing out just because the process is "fair" doesn't mean its fair. Yes that is not a very well articulated point, but this is something which many people should have a feeling for in their bones.
- woodruffw 2y agoI agree that process can be used as punishment. But I don't see any evidence that Dotcom has been uniquely or unfaithfully subjected to processes, or that his treatment is unusual given the charges he's facing. Remember: he's not being charged just for copyright infringement. If he was, then freezing his assets would be unusual. He's being charged with money laundering and racketeering, two crimes that involve illegal flows of money.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoA man's labor and intelligence can eventually earn him $10k to buy a car. Over a long career, one might eventually amass a fortune on the order of $1M. Kim might (hypothetically) have an IQ of 150 and be willing to work punishingly long hours where our analogous car buyer went home to be with his family. But it's completely farcical to state that he's 10,000 times smarter or harder-working than a baseline human, that's absurd - it's far more reasonable to assume that he assigned the value of the efforts of others to himself, stole, manipulated, scammed, or otherwise acquired that $175M illegitimately. And that's ignoring that it was $175M in cash, as if it was pocket change to him; there's no good explanation for him to have that much in investments much less in physical money lying around. I feel the same about Musk's or Bezos' mind-boggling fortunes; Jeff isn't making $2M per hour while his exhausted employees make $16/hr (while peeing in bottles on a breakneck pace through the warehouse) because he's foregoing all human needs and limits, packing boxes at hypersonic speeds for 60 hours per day without rest. Obviously, he makes $2M/hr because their labor is worth $25/hr or more and he diverts the excess for himself.
- earnesti 2y agoThe guy has a lot of money, so therefore he is more guilty than normal men?
- criddell 2y agoI think they were just backing up the "he's not small folk like us" statement.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoThe thing about that word "smallfolk", is that there is a very heavy connotation that someone remains smallfolk no matter how positively fortune smiles upon them. No matter how wealthy they might become, not even if they can ride a dragon, do they suddenly become nobles. The people using the word to say that Kimmy D isn't smallfolk don't even understand the vocabulary they favor.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoThe guy has a lot of money, so therefore it’s very tedious when people characterize him as a smol bean who just wanted to help people share their data. It’s a smokescreen for the real position (which I recognize some people do legitimately hold) that copying and selling movies without compensating the people who made them is a legitimate business model and it’s OK to make lots of money doing it.
- karmonhardan 2y ago[flagged]
- echoangle 2y agoHow is Hollywood not compensating the people making the movies? Don’t they have contracts managing the payment? Taking a finished movie and just distributing it without consent is something different than making contracts with the creators. Or are you talking about something else?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoAssuming $100 bills, that's nearly two tons of cash. (3800 pounds.) Definitely not "small folk like us".
- DSingularity 2y agoPlease. It fits his personality perfectly to do something like keep all his money in cash. If he was a drug lord or if he was even remotely connected to malicious security services he would have been long taken by force. New Zealand is a close US ally.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago> It fits his personality perfectly to do something like keep all his money in cash How do you explain this part then: > Dotcom's bank accounts were frozen, denying him access to 64 bank accounts world-wide
- DSingularity 2y agoWhy is it so odd that an anti authoritarian individual would keep large sums of money in cash and distribute whatever cash he does keep in as many bank accounts as possible? Can you explain why we should be fixated with how much money he has or how he stores his money wrt the criminal case being prosecuted? If there was something there wouldnt they have revealed it in their accusations years ago?
- manuelmoreale 2y agoI’m not interested in arguing for or against him because I don’t care about him or this case. I was just pointing out the irony in your comment where you just assert that it was perfect in line with is character to have ALL is money in cash while literally the next line says he has 64 bank accounts scattered all over the globe.
- DSingularity 2y agoI’m just saying that this guy distrusts authority so it’s not surprising that he was caught with a lot of cash or that he has a web of accounts. My larger point is about the fact that these insinuations should be dismissed because it’s reasonable to assume that if there was major wrong doing in his finances (eg drug lord) they would have included the evidence in the extradition request. Feels like we are being a bit pedantic.
- phyalow 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TXAaqmj0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TXAaqmj0E This video of Kim is a classic (I think it came out origianlly c. 2009). The last shot of his table with a stack of Gold Bars in the middle is very revealing (or maybe moreso is his Rolls Royce with the plate "GOD")....
- swozey 2y agoI feel like I'm watching satire of what a 2000s mega rich nerd would be like but it's really him. He even has a basket/hanger on the wall for all of his ... canes. Didn't see the fedoras nearby, though. "At only 1.5 years of age, (kims kid) is already at the top of most xbox leaderboards." What?? His bodyguards are picked out by a Kung Fu master?? This is so ridiculously cliche. Nobody serious about their security would hire Kung Fu martial artists to train their team. I train a bunch of martial arts (boxing, muay thai, bjj, hapkido) and I would never use something like kung fu in a tussle. I've got 16yo junior amateur boxers that could probably knock that kung fu master out in a single hit. Gold bricks are here https://youtu.be/A4TXAaqmj0E?t=365 https://youtu.be/A4TXAaqmj0E?t=365
- karmonhardan 2y agoI think it's purposely meant to be camp.
- phyalow 2y agoAbsolutely.
- biztos 2y agoLarge TVs? I wonder what the threshold is for assets worth seizing. Anything under about 100” is going to cost more to seize than it’s worth. If the kitchen is full of AllClad do they seize the cookware?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoAt least with local departments, yes police will seize kitchen appliances if they are high dollar. Then it all goes up for auction. Maybe a cop likes the look of it, picks it up for pennies on the dollar at the auction. Maybe no one bids and it all gets junked. While the primary purpose of civil forfeiture is to seize valuables, there are sometimes secondary concerns... the cops like to fuck with certain people, and if they can just make them paupers by taking their belongings then that alone can be enough motivation. Paperwork's pretty light because jewelry or cash never has lawyers to defend itself. Feds seem to be a bit more discriminating, tending towards larger amounts of cash, bullion, vehicles, and real estate. But I've seen more than a few news articles over the years where they seized property you might call petty.
- biztos 2y agoThese are the New Zealand police, right? I get that there’s a lot of corruption, but “nice GameBoy, my kid’ll love it after auction” seems like a stretch even for the US. If nothing else, it has a paper trail, right?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoThey are. I suppose. I guess to know which police they are, one might have to see who they get their marching orders from. TVs were seized of course, and while an extraditing authority might request/demand evidence to be seized too, what were they hoping to find in the televisions do you think? > I get that there’s a lot of corruption, but “nice GameBoy, my kid’ll love it after auction” seems like a stretch even for the US. Choose to believe or not, matters not to me. But I would point you at the many mainstream news articles of places that make road trips through where the local police shake people down for valuables, and the many corvettes and sports cars painted in black and white that cops drive as squad cars. Are these confiscating those because they make such good vehicles for hauling people away to the holding cell?
- throwaway48540 2y agoIt's still a human. He just shared songs on the the internet. He's treated like a war criminal.
- diggan 2y agoMaybe I don't know the full story, but as far as I understand, it seems like they (Megaupload) were ignoring DMCA takedown requests for a long time, was aware there was a ton of piracy on the site and didn't give any indication whatsoever that they were even trying to react to it by banning accounts that were uploading infringing content. I don't necessarily agree you should be taken away from your home-country because of that, seems relatively minor in the grand scale of things, but he was hardly "just sharing songs on the internet".
- throwaway48540 2y agoHe shared a lot of them. Still absolutely not something that should lead to this multiple-state sanctioned response.
- diggan 2y agoAgree, disproportionate response for sure. Still, flagrantly ignoring the law will get you in trouble.
- abdulobdul 2y ago[flagged]
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoGetting in the way of powerful people getting more power is always punished more harshly than anything else, including murder. In this case, he annoyed powerful IP owners, and those people in our current society are as powerful as they get.
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- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoWhile I don't disagree with the idea behind the post, Kim is not exactly small fry. He is not as big as he once was, but he seems to be doing well money-wise.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI wish people wouldn't cheer when criminals evade accountability.
- GrumpyNl 2y agoFirst we have to agree on whats a criminal.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoSure. I propose...a trial.
- immibis 2y agoKangaroo court it is. We say you're a movie pirate, so you are one. Life in prison for you. ...that is a summary of Kim's trial. Movie companies own the government.
- philippejara 2y agoIs that going to be a trial by the laws of the land he resides in and not to a foreign country that the defendant is not a citizen nor a resident nor operates out of and that refuses to guarantee the same protections under the law to a non-citizen compared to a citizen[1]? This same foreign country who passed laws for invading the hague if they came under trial for crimes in the ICC. [1]: See assange's bid for first amendment's guarantees when the same foreign country was trying to extradite and "trial" him
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoHe moved to New Zealand after much of the alleged criminal conduct, in a deal where he was pretty explicitly buying residency to the point that immigration authorities tried to keep it a secret. (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6547471/Secrecy-over-Dotcoms-residency-application https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6547471/Secrecy-over-...)
- preisschild 2y ago"the state" is made up by normal people. And in this case the state is just protecting normal people from criminals like Dotcom.
- BeFlatXIII 2y agoHow exactly are they protecting me?
- nxicvyvy 2y agoJust like trump eh? Is everyone you don't like a Russian spy?
- EB-Barrington 2y ago[dead]
- dubcanada 2y agoLet's not read past the words written on the screen now. No reason to bring Trump into the conversation at all.
- enriquec 2y ago[flagged]
- blooalien 2y ago[flagged]
- dubcanada 2y agoWhere in the article is Trump mentioned? The article is about extraditing a person, who could just fly to a USA country that doesn't have a extradition pact, such as Russia or China. Dotcom has been saying pro Russia war things on twitter, which is easy to read. So OPs comment is consistent with the theme of the article. Equating it to possible Trump Russia connections however has nothing to do with the article.
- enriquec 2y agowhat a bad stretch. You have no intellectual honesty. Kim has also said Trump things on twitter and we've spent literal billions on fake Russia-Trump in the last few years. And here is someone baselessly pushing Kim-Russia. Anyways, good luck on your weird mission to police any mentioning of Trump. Pretty dumb IMO
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- colpabar 2y ago[flagged]
- finikytou 2y agosad to see that kind of comments in HN. I feel that 10 years ago there was more room for accepting that a political opponent should be free to speak up. now our educated masses are pushing for prison and extradition because they don't belong to the axis of good.... you def cannot be for opensource and its values and say things like that
- herculity275 2y agoThe comment you're responding to just speculates that he will escape to Russia based on his (very consistent) views and activism, there's no suggestion that he should go to prison because of them.
- finikytou 2y ago[flagged]
- herculity275 2y ago> there is definitly a suggestion and I would even say more than that. the OP comment literaly says he is on the payroll of russia lol Being on Russian payroll is not a criminal offense, there are plenty of RT-affiliated journalists who still operate in the West.
- retinaros 2y agolol. please stop. we know what being on a russian payroll means. just like we knew irak didnt have weapons of mass destruction. you tell yourself the lies because you know once the truth will come out there will be other matters to tend
- philippejara 2y agoThe comment he's responding to speculates that he is being paid by russia to post on twitter, as if people couldn't come to their own conclusions based on their own views and their own biases, which are very very strong against the US if you're Kim Dotcom with good reason.
- cactusplant7374 2y agoI'm not a fan but do you have real proof of this conspiracy theory? It's very popular to accuse people of being on Russia's payroll now. Rather unfortunately it dumbs down the movement to hold Russia responsible for invading Ukraine.
- DSingularity 2y agoAh yes, the classic. Everybody who opposes american foreign policy is labeled. Tweet about opposing the genocide in gaza? Oh dont listen to him -- he is pro khamas. Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians? Oh pay no attention to him -- he is on the communist payroll. I understand when leaders in politics or industry make these character-assasination attacks as they do it for their own interests (political or economical) but why do you do it? Why would normal people throw baseless accusations like this? What is your motivation? What skin do you have in this game? Is your argument really "Kim Dotcom is an agent because he is opposing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and he is against a forever war in Ukraine"? He is presumably some guy that youve never met that happens to be fighting against the US government and its copyright laws so why are you making these comments? Are you so passionate about copyrights because you are an artist that has lost money because of mega? What motivates you?
- snapcaster 2y ago>I understand when leaders in politics or industry make these character-assasination attacks as they do it for their own interests (political or economical) but why do you do it? Thanks for articulating this, similar idea behind my sibling comment. Sadly i think the conclusion is that the vast majority of people are small minded, spiteful, and more or less accept whatever narrative the empire feeds them. Wish it wasn't like this
- kspacewalk2 2y agoI agree that Kim Dotcom is not likely to be on Russia's payroll, but, as you said, he's simply small minded, spiteful, and more or less accept whatever narrative that empire feeds them.
- SXX 2y agoMost likely he just hate US for a good reason and gonna support anything anti-US. In his particular case he probably just needs a country that not gonna extradite him to US no matter how bad the country is. I just seriously doubt that likes of Dotcom, Musk or Trump need to be on Putin payroll. They just all have their own agenda to sell "strong russia, good putin" narrative.
- rammer 2y ago[flagged]
- awesomeMilou 2y ago[flagged]
- wepple 2y agoThere’s a substantial ongoing debate about how much responsibility a platform as for what users do on that platform. Nearly everyone in tech is affected by that. The theatrics and drama of it is a silly distraction, but the fundamental questions seem worth following and discussing. I’m not German; what an odd thing to comment.
- finikytou 2y agoyeah I guess you just need to fund political campaigns for democrats to be in the good part of "the platform is responsible for what users do on here". seeing what Google and FB got away with its pretty obvious that USA is bending the law to remove political oponnents here with KDotCom and soon with Musk
- neilv 2y agoInteresting. I thought the appeal of piracy-related stories on HN was that there's a lot of piracy going on, as private individuals. And also because some subset of those consider piracy a hobby, mission, or right, not only a pragmatic way to get the content they want. But I guess some people could be interested in the platform responsibility angle. However, when discussing obviously entirely piracy platforms, isn't the interest and dialogue different, than it is for general-purpose platforms with only a fraction of the user contributions being problematic, and good-faith efforts to mitigate those?
- wepple 2y agoI bet that too is a ton of what drives interest, the platform angle was just the primary thing that came to mind now that that’s more the world I think about The piracy discussion is also hugely fascinating; I’m sure a good portion of HN remember Napster and friends, and the endless discussions had about that. We don’t seem to talk about it a lot.
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- _the_inflator 2y agoThis Kim dude. Neverending story. Amiga (never heard of him during my scene time), then his alleged mobile ISDN service, MEGA. He seemed like the shady poster child for every trend who got stopped before jumping once more publicly on Crypto.
- localfirst 2y agoHe has done some shady stuff in Germany with stocks then used those proceeds to launch his other businesses I really enjoyed Megaupload & rapidshare those were almost as good as the WaReZ days if not better: direct links to any digital content without waiting for seeders It's a shame. Arresting Dotcom won't do anything to curb piracy in fact it would raise the stakes even higher and more untraceable leading to more uncensored content that would be deemed "harmful" Dotcom should've chosen Russia or China instead of NZ but obviously the quality of life isn't quite up to par with NZ. Russia dacha outside moscow would've been great for him without worries of US extradition.
- HeadlessChild 2y agoHe were at the top of the leader boards in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 too. [0] https://venturebeat.com/games/kim-dotcom-modern-warfare-3/ https://venturebeat.com/games/kim-dotcom-modern-warfare-3/
- ionwake 2y agoAnyone know why this is prioritised? Wasn't this copyright stuff from like 2 decades ago? Just genuinely curious.
- Taniwha 2y agoHe fought it all the way and ran out of options, we have a more right leaning government now who want to suck up to the US
- blooalien 2y ago[flagged]
- _djo_ 2y agoWhat did the government have to do with this? Sounds like he ran out of appeals through the court system, which is independent of the government of the day.
- Taniwha 2y agoThere's a minister who still has to approve/deny it
- halyconWays 2y ago>ran out of options He'd have one more option to fight tyranny, if your government didn't disarm the populace. Imagine being yanked out of your home country by a foreign power and their corporate overlords with the prospect of living the rest of your life in third-world prison conditions, for the crime of allegedly reducing their balance sheets from $550B per year to $545B per year.
- Taniwha 2y agoOur populace is pretty heavily armed, hunting is pretty ingrained in the national psyche. No one's arguing for getting rid of hunting rifles. Pistols and semiautomatics, things designed to kill people are illegal and most of us are quite happy with that, especially after we had a foreign terrorist kill 100 innocent people in a mosque.
- tedk-42 2y agoAs an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region. With some 'diplomacy', Julian Assange was brought home after near 15 years fighting for BS extradition charges. The news and politicians in Australia follow almost lock step with whatever our US overlords allow us to say. It's been more of a thing lately with them trying to secure the pacific away from China's sphere of influence and the biggest 'dumb' thing from our government is that silly submarine deal (under something called AUKUS) which is about as good as our F-35 jets purchased (totally useless IMO). There's probably some bootlickers in NZ trying to gain political favour / power by brown-nosing with the US of A.
- josefresco 2y agoIn your opinion why is the submarine deal/F-35 program "totally useless" for Australia? Are you saying it's the wrong equipment? Too expensive? Not needed?
- dools 2y agoThe F35s we have are pretty sweet but we are paying a shit tonne for like 5 submarines that we are going to receive in the 2040s. China already had 10x that many attack submarines. The subs deal stinks.
- tedk-42 2y agoNot needed. It's tax payer money down the toilet. But hey I'm a pacifist and will be told that I'm a weak man who will lead to the downfall of civilisation so oh well.
- scrapcode 2y agoWell, ya know - it could be. Not needed until they are... risk management. Most should hope that their weapons are never "needed."
- defrost 2y agoWe already had an order in for convential working subs from the French .. now we're on the hook for more money and less of a guarantee they'll ever arrive.
- preaching5271 2y agoI appreciate Kim Dotcom for running MegaUpload and later Mega, in a time when the internet was younger and wilder. Also for his pirate spirit and "stick it to the man" attitude. But everything has a limit, specifically his resistance against the law, even if he hid it behind virtues. I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise? But people are superficial and tend to develop an "i'm the main character" personality, pushing them into recklessness, like persisting doing certain things or publicly talking shit. Hope he and his family will be ok.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago> I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. I'm far more concerned with the stuff that governments get away with, including infringement of the freedom to share information.
- preaching5271 2y agoTotally fair point, but what can you do? This is how the world works. Fighting such beasts is pointless. You might tame them with lobby money, but no billionaire is interested. And we're now talking about the human spirit that cannot be chained, as also seen in Pirate Bay or Snowden. Sure, people do need heroes and hope from time to time. But I have become less romantic over the years, and more careful.
- DaleNeumann 2y agoI know little about this case but remember the wild show Kim put on before his arrest. The way I saw it then was his colleagues pleaded guilty and where never extradited so my assumption was new Zealand would bend to his favour but I guess interpretation of rule of law is above precedence... I wish I could say I know what Im talking about.
- moralestapia 2y agoSad news. I don't really know if there's more than the file sharing thing behind this, but the US is cracking down too hard on this guy. Seems unfair, tbh. The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO. I do not think he's a criminal. A big (massive, maybe) fine should have been more than enough.
- phyalow 2y agoI disagree, he has engaged in a deliberate media/public personality building campaign over the last 12 years to make the public sympathetic to him and his plight. >>I do not think he's a criminal "He was arrested in 1994 for trafficking in stolen phone calling card numbers. He was convicted on eleven charges of computer fraud, ten charges of data espionage and various other charges in 1998 that he served a two-year suspended sentence for.[7] In 2003, he was deported to Germany where he pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and after five months in jail awaiting trial he received another 20 months suspended sentence" (From Wiki) >>The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO. Yeah it was over the top, but he had firearms on the property and bodygaurds.... I'm with you that he should have just been fined, but he made a tremendous amount of money very deliberately (despite his protestations) trafficking illeagaly in Warez, I geniunely think the US is right to go after and nail him. As a New Zealander, our government should be far more judicous about who it grants visa's to - he should have prima facae been refused his original visa on the basis of his prior convictions (I am sure there is a good story about why this was (incorrectly) overlooked by NZ officials). This ultimately is not a problem of New Zealands government/judicial system making, they have very fairly given Kim every chance to appeal and hear his side of the story - whilst he engages in games of attempted political manipulation for his own aim. The chickens must come home to roost at some point. IMO I dont think Kim deserves the publics sympathy, the shield of New Zealand residency or that he is a good faith operator.
- moralestapia 2y ago>I do not think he's a criminal. I should have added "in the context of this lawsuit". An edit now would be disingenuous.
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- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago[flagged]
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoNew Zealand source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253465
- pizza234 2y agoThe context is more nuanced that how presented by K.D.: the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload" See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of_indictment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of...
- vessenes 2y agoA fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective. I’d argue Kim was too successful and too unlikeable at the end of the day, and that was probably his downfall. Toward the end, MEGA had transitioned to actually partnering with hip hop artists for distribution. The US has a long history of IP rights holders criminalizing new business models / protecting current models in law, and then a fair amount shaking down and sorting out happening as new technology hits the scene, going back to radio. Each of these waves has led to push / pull between distributors, retailers, artists and song writers, and whether or not you like it, that’s the system we have today. MEGA was too early and too tainted (and run by an aggressively weird / antagonistic dude) to become Spotify. But, it wasn’t the wrong model using tech of the time. It was too early, and too successful, without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoMy favorite part of this was SOPA was being discussed on the same exact day they arrested Kim Dotcom, and they argued they needed SOPA to do what they did to Kim Dotcom. Kind of a useless bill.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago> without cutting in the existing rights holders properly. That's the killer, right there. "existing rights holders" is a big deal, and one that has been ignored by tech bros for a long time. As a [former] artist, and [former] musician, I can say that the tech industry has been cooking the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse). If we take that away, guess what happens? No one wants to do it, anymore. This may be an issue, with AI-generated creative content. Unless the AI is truly better than human talent (and "better" is in the eye of the beholder), it has the very real prospect of turning the commercial creative industry into gray goo. [EDITED TO ADD] Watching the karma count on this post, yo-yoing up and down, has been fascinating. This seems to be an issue that people have very strong feelings about.
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- curiousObject 2y agoKim DC is not a likeable or admirable person, but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse. It appears very similar to the treatment of Ross Ulbricht, Assange, maybe even Snowden? These are the equivalent of white collar crimes (typical massive frauds from the finance sector, etc) but they are getting a blue collar punishment of decades in jail that a successful and persistent street drug dealer could receive, NOT the few years in comfort camp prison that white collar frauds usually get.
- moomin 2y agoI remain unconvinced that the relative punishments of the two categories is either pragmatic or fair, mind you.
- SkyBelow 2y agoOne of the things worse than a bad law is an inconsistently applied bad law, as that allows for it to be tolerated for longer and effectively enshrines the basis for the inconsistency as the true law of the land.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y agoI'd go along with unfair, but it does seem pragmatic to keep criminals who would harm anyone in striking distance away from the public, while only keeping criminals who would harm corporate and investor interests away from executive positions and boardrooms.
- tedivm 2y agoOne of these things is not like the other. Ross Ulbricht was part of a murder for hire scheme, and was not a whistle blower or anything close to a reporter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI understand what you are saying, but I wonder if that is the right type of defense here. Each of those individuals could be separated from otherwise sympathetic audience by diving the audience( 'he is x$ and therefore bad' approach ). Same here. Murder for hire is bad, but his prosecution was about just as bad[1] and one could argue that (edit) by using warrantless spying without any probable cause undermined US constitutional rights. In a grand scheme of things, it is better to have one criminal get away than trample on everyone's rights. What they do have in common, however, is an inordinate amount of resources expended to punish them by the state.. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...
- flohofwoe 2y ago[flagged]
- boo-ga-ga 2y ago[flagged]
- juujian 2y agoYou know how it is. You search someone's home, you set aside the evidence, and you promptly forget about it for 12 years. I dislike Kim Dotcom as much as the next gal or guy, maybe even more, but this is weird.
- ein0p 2y ago[flagged]
- Xunjin 2y agoI'm sorry, but what is your point with this comment? I don't see a link at all with the topic.
- 0x9127831 2y agoAccording to others in this thread, Kim posted pro Russian Twitter messages. Another pro-Russian commentator, Scott Ritter, had his house searched this week and had his UN Iraq WMD documents taken. None of us has the necessary information. Ritter clearly overshoots massively in his Russia commentary and I disagree with almost all things he says about Russia. On the other hand, you can find associations of both him and DotCom with LaRouche. And LaRouche is a mystery: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/larouche/larou1.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult...
- ein0p 2y agoThe point is I highly doubt this sudden interest in Kim’s person is caused by a 12 years old copyright infringement case.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoDon't forget they helicopter-dropped a heavily-armed swat team onto his property to execute the search of his home. Illegally, extra-judicially. Although it was mainly NZ authorities who overstepped their bounds by allowing it.
- stefan_ 2y ago
- donatj 2y agoWhat exactly has Mega done that Dropbox hasn't? In my eyes they're basically the same product, the only difference being Mega's edgier tone.
- cma 2y agoWasn't the allegation that Mega uploaded copywritten content to themselves to kick things off with something people wanted?
- popcalc 2y agoThis is about Megaupload, completely different business.
- moralestapia 2y agoNot completely different, actually, they're pretty much the same. The only difference is the "we encrypt everything so we don't know what users upload" trick, which seems to have worked so far (and branding and stuff).
- tzs 2y agoNo, it was not "pretty much the same" as Dropbox. Megaupload took steps to specifically support piracy. When a movie studio would report a pirated copy of one of their movies, Megaupload would tell the studio they removed it but in reality they would only make it so the specific link the studio new about would stop working. They would not delete the underlying file and any other links would continue to work. This failure to remove the underlying file was not a technical limitation. When child porn was reported they were able to kill the reported link and the underlying file, thus breaking all links to it.
- tyingq 2y agoI'm mostly curious about the timing. Wasn't the raid on his house in 2012? 12 years ago?
- sgt 2y agoEver watched that show Monk with that villain Dale the Whale who had to go to prison? That's pretty much how I see Kim Schmitz rotting in jail: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMb6zUTVwAAQwPn.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMb6zUTVwAAQwPn.jpg
- yellow_lead 2y agoHaha wow, this brings back memories.
- Jedd 2y ago> ... cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million ... This bit is standard, trope-style make-believe. However: > ... paying users [...], which generated more than $175 million in revenue for the [Kim Dotcom's Megaupload] website. .. if they can prove that bit, it's a much more damning case. Not the usual hand-wavey 'We were banking on several thousand dollars of revenue from each of the 12yo's we're going after' claims, but actual, demonstrable, revenue that was misdirected.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt is unconscionable that governments in both countries are spending time on this or chasing Assange or Snowden instead of the criminality of things like government warrantless surveillance, megacorp anti competitive actions, civil forfeiture, etc. Or the cartel of organizations behind this extradition that abuse copyright laws to keep things out of public domain. Or companies all exchanging our private information with each other, which inevitably gets released in a hack, which is far worse than a storage platform being used by some people to share songs or whatever. Are any candidates actually against this farce? Or are they all simply working for the companies behind this?
- kmeisthax 2y agoIt's complicated. Most career politicians like all those things you hate because it lets them outsource the state's dirty work. The state made constitutional commitments it can't quite keep and has worked around them. On the other hand, those workarounds are themselves becoming threats to the state in ways that have made some politicians willing to rebalance power. On the other hand, I do not want to name specific names of people to vote for, because few Congresspeople are actually hacking at the root of power. Remember when Obama was a Marxist and then turned out to just be another neoliberal? To explain why, we must keep in mind that all states are in a perpetual crisis of legibility. They have more force than anyone knows what to do with, while having no idea of what happens in their territory or whom to use that force on. To make matters worse, most democratic states - and nearly all states in the Anglosphere - have been constitutionally handcuffed to restrict their investigatory powers. This is an existential threat to the state, and so the state will take any chance it can get to impose legibility upon the people by force, lest the state be replaced with something worse. I've worded the above like some kind of conspiracy theory, so let's remember exactly who we're talking about: the "I'm-just-doing-my-job" types. If your job is to investigate crime, then the 4th Amendment is an annoying hurdle you have to think about constantly. But it's not a high hurdle to jump over because most criminals are profoundly stupid. Drug kingpins are more of a problem, however. Organized crime is the criminal equivalent of an MLM, so you can pick off a bunch of idiots at the exterior, but not people running the organization. This is where law enforcement gets creative, weaponizing things like tax law and - yes, civil forfeiture - to cut at the root. The pattern of how democratic states deal with limitations on their power that prove inconvenient is simple: they cheat. Or at least, they cheat the spirit of the law, if not the letter. For example, if your job is to investigate foreign threats to the country, you're not fighting criminals. You're fighting the Borg[0] - an existential threat that learns from and adapts to everything you do, even the successes. For the CIA/NSA, having to get a warrant is like running a marathon while having both hands tied around your back and wearing a pair of cement shoes. Data brokers are the perfect workaround. They built the perfect panopticon and used social engineering to get people to consent to it. The CIA and NSA buys shittons of their data and mines it to find threats to the state because it's significantly easier and less complicated than getting specific warrants to collect specific data. Those abusive copyright laws that keep shit out of the public domain? Those were payments made to Hollywood in exchange for positive propaganda. Here, we're working around the 1st Amendment, not the 4th. The US government can't legally compel Hollywood to make propaganda, nor can they prohibit Hollywood from making movies that denigrate US actions. But they can still pay Hollywood to make propaganda[1], they'll downplay the critical movies to save face, and even if they don't, it'll make America look like they're aware of and fixing problems they have no interest in fixing. So when the US government treats a storage platform for stolen songs as an existential threat, it is specifically because they are fulfilling their end of a deal with Hollywood. But there's a catch. Those constitutional restrictions were put in there for a reason. If the CIA can buy data from data brokers, than so can China's MSS. American lawmakers are so irrationally afraid of TikTok because China figured out how to use the CIA's own weapons against it. The government's defense of the TikTok ban is page after page of redactions. They can't publicly say they know TikTok is a Chinese intelligence asset without telling the judge enough information to blow the cover of every CIA agent in China, but the black highlighter[2] itself is an admission. Same with the anticompetitive actions. The late 90s saw the US government bring the hammer down hard on the tech industry[3], and then suddenly stop. Why? Simple - the tech oligopoly became useful to American interests and so was given a pass, to the chagrin of America's other sweetheart, Hollywood. Politicians only realized how much power had been actually ceded to big tech by accident. Social media made the mistake of ceding power to Donald Trump, who used it to run for president legitimately, lost a re-election campaign, and then attempted a feeble self-coup. Twitter and every other tech company rightfully shut him down, but this exposed how much power they really had been given in the political process. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter in a vain attempt to restore Donald Trump's influence[4], ensuring that the concern over Big Tech would be bipartisan. I still can't point you to a politician to vote for, but I can at least point you to an ideology and a person who talks about it: the New Brandeis movement[5] and Cory Doctorow specifically. Louis Rossmann is also a good option if Cory is too left-wing for your taste. Lina Khan is a huge figure in neo-Brandeis and she runs the FTC now, which is why the FTC has been trying to do its job again[6]. I single out antitrust here as it is the enabler of all the other abuses I've detailed above. You need economic centralization in order to get perfectly funded propaganda machines or privatized spying and censorship. [0] I hope Star Trek is still culturally relevant enough for this reference to land correctly. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y [2] https://www.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-highlighters-all-thes-1819568147 https://www.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-h... [3] Examples include the antitrust actions against Microsoft, the copyright actions against Napster and Grokster, and various legislative attempts to either force computer manufacturers to include copy protection hardware or force online services to have upload filters for copyright. [4] This is an after-the-fact justification; at the time Musk was high off Tesla's stock price and bought Twitter basically in the same way one buys a bunch of shit they don't need off Amazon at 3 in the morning. [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brandeis_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brandeis_movement [6] And let us hope to $DEITY that she succeeds, lest we find ourselves living in South Korea.
- treprinum 2y agoDidn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.
- tim333 2y agoI think youtube cooperated with taking pirated content down while Kim was a bit like screw you, I'm offshore, you can't get me.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoMore than taking it down, YouTube pretty much gave the media companies a new revenue source, already built-out.
- glzone1 2y agoMore than that. They gave the media basically a tool to identify music that they owned, then either remove it or take all the money from it. I don't think Kim ever paid content creators. Youtube is pushing probably $5 - $10 billion a year to them in cash plus serves as a promo / branding / ad vehicle (all the sponsored content or product placement stuff in music videos).
- colechristensen 2y agoFor the first 5 years videos were limited to 10 minutes. Clips of things were popular and there were things split between many videos, but that's not what I remember the people around me using youtube for.
- jahnu 2y agoIt was filled with music uploads.
- emursebrian 2y agoIt still is.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThe US seems to have this knack of sliding itself into this narrow gap between individuals they're idealistically pursuing and something worse. "If I could just slip in there, ooh, that's tight, yes, thank you, aah comfy, this feels like where I belong". In their desperate attempt to not lose a fight that's been going on for, what, 10 years? 15 years? They're increasingly looking like a child that cannot move on from a primary school sleight. The US look like an ass because the law they're seemingly-autistically pursuing, is an ass. Pragmatism has no place here, it would seem. Also, downloading from Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement.
- andai 2y ago>Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement. I think this would flag my entire generation, at least back in the 2000s.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoMega (sorry: MEGA), not Megaupload, in this specific case. (the opposite to the case this article is about)
- andai 2y agoAh, so it's not because of the piracy but because of the privacy? I remember a quote (from close to 20 years ago?) that anyone who uses GPG lights up on NSA's radar "like Christmas lights". This seems to be the same thing.
- Der_Einzige 2y agoSource for the final claim? Is this still the case? Shit Man I distributed a dataset via megaupload for a paper awhile ago. Am I now a target of the glowies?
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoSee reply to antai below. MEGA, not Megaupload. Re: source. Hopefully I'm consistent, you can go back through my comment history. I was raided by the police a bit over two years ago. When I got my stuff back (8 months later, no charges) the lead detective said that there was evidence I'd downloaded things from Mega, and that this was "suspicious", amongst a couple of other things. I got the feeling she thought I was still guilty and had somehow managed to get away with the distribution of which I was suspected (or it was some kind of retro justification for gross violation of my rights and she was taking a front foot stance to minimise the chances I'd see what legal avenues are available in such situations - turns out very few to none). She specifically mentioned as suspicious: - history of downloading from MEGA - using virtual machines - having "tor" installed. Interesting combination of cluelessness (wait until they're introduced to containers!). MEGA somewhat stands out in that bunch, in that there are lots of similar services as far as I know. Makes me wonder if it's a honeypot (but maybe not, because then they'd know the only thing I downloaded from MEGA was android ROMs). Other than being outspoken on certain topics online, my browsing history is as boring as the next guy's. So I really think they put some weight behind MEGA activity.
- anonzzzies 2y agoDidn't like the guy when he was in the news, but this is too long ago, give it a rest. Why does NZ even play ball on this, just tell the US to f off.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- itsyaboi 2y agoBecause NZ is a vassal state.
- charonn0 2y agoBecause the US and NZ have an extradition treaty.
- crtified 2y agoNZ elected a business-centric government last year. Since then, all government decisions involving individuals-vs-business have taken a distinct lean towards the business side.
- throwadobe 2y agoFuck the MPAA/RIAA
- madelensvehaug 2y ago[dead]
- swozey 2y agoAre any of the people who were arrested for RIAA/MPAA violations still imprisoned? That was such a weird time to be a kid. Scared if I downloaded a Greenday mp3 my parents would get arrested for piracy and I'd never be able to work in computers.
- aa_is_op 2y ago[flagged]
- popcalc 2y agoProbably bought with stolen credit cards too right? Chargebacks are real fun.
- einpoklum 2y agoI am not particularly sympathetic to Kim Dotcom personally; but: Intellectual Property is illegitimate, anti-social, immoral. We should oppose its enforcement, both within states and in international contexts. I am reminded of Eban Moglen's "dot-communist manifesto" of 2003, worth a read: https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html There's also the matter of the USA being able to enforce its legal norms on people living in other countries, via instruments like extradition but also sanctions for less-friendly world states.
- know-how 2y ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 2y agoYouTube has a thousand to a million times more copyrighted content than Megaupload ever had. And no, not all of it is via partnerships with the copyright holders. Kim's problem apparently was that he didn't bribe Congress.
- laweijfmvo 2y agoyou could argue that YouTube is "trying" to not have illegal content. i don't think Mega was "trying" very hard.
- devrand 2y agoViacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
- kube-system 2y agoYouTube didn't bribe congress. They built significant tooling that gave the rights holders what they wanted, even beyond what the law required them to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y.... To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.
- OutOfHere 2y agoGoogle has had a massive lobbying effort for a long time, and donating to Congress is a part of it. If not for it, how is it that a takedown process wasn't sufficient for Mega, but it is sufficient for Google? How is it that the rights-holders didn't engage Mega into having such tooling?
- devrand 2y agoI suggest you read the indictment for Megaupload (Wikipedia summarizes it, but they cite the actual document you can view): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of_indictment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of... The indictment explicitly answers your questions about why Megaupload was different from other file sharing services.
- netmonk 2y ago[dead]
- bArray 2y agoIt is rumoured (by locals) that Kim Dotcom has been allowed to reside in New Zealand (being a German/Finish) on the basis that he spent his money in New Zealand. I don't think they are in a rush to extradite him to the US, and the US will not come after NZ for the money spent.
- moralestapia 2y agoNZ is not a random atoll island in the Pacific. Kim Dotcom is wealthy, but still way far, way far from having enough money to bribe the whole country like that. Orders of magnitude are a thing.
- micromacrofoot 2y agoNZ also has no shortage of rich people with apocalypse houses there
- TheRealPomax 2y agoHow is that a rumour? That's literally how the Investment 1 and 2 resident visa worked before 2022 when they finally scrapped the program. You invest at least NZD $750,000 in growth investments. Given that that's 450k USD, and kim dotcom's net value was quite a few million, that was barely an inconvenience. Then he just needed to spend the majority of his time in NZ to qualify for citizenship.
- bArray 2y ago> How is that a rumour? That they were purposefully delaying the extradition process to get money out of him.
- the_doctah 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Asooka 2y agoIt only took twelve years, but the heroes working at the FBI are finally on the cusp of ending online piracy!
- foresto 2y agoFriendly reminder to all of us that copying is not stealing (neither in the dictionary sense nor in the legal sense) and that loaded language like that hinders objective discussion.
- undergod 2y ago[flagged]
- yellow_lead 2y agoCitation?
- nkmnz 2y ago[flagged]
- undergod 2y agohttps://unherd.com/2023/11/is-sam-altman-compromising-us-security/ https://unherd.com/2023/11/is-sam-altman-compromising-us-sec...
- yellow_lead 2y agoSo the original source is a random person on Blind? Per the daily dot: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/sam-altman-china/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/sam-altman-china/
- slashtab 2y agoMeanwhile nothing for mega corporation pirating data to train AI.
- ProofHouse 2y agoIt’s not pirating. It’s transformative and fair use. Derivative even in some cases. Each piece of content is but a grain of sand on an island. It’s called the open internet.
- trueismywork 2y agoTraining is not pirating, but generating copyrighted data is.
- lacy_tinpot 2y agoIf generating copyrighted data pirating, then so is being served literal images that are shared across the internet. Should a corporation be able to sue you for simply sharing an image of Micky?
- mjhay 2y agoThere's a difference between a fair-use reproduction of Mickey and reproducing an image of Mickey that you claim is your own original creation (or there was until the copyright ran out recently).
- bredren 2y agoKey here would be transformation rather than reproduction? Youtube is mentioned in the 2013 brief: >b. According to the YouTube “Terms of Service,” users who upload content to YouTube retain all of their ownership rights in their content. By uploading their content to YouTube, however, such users grant YouTube a license to use, reproduce, and distribute such content. > >c. In general, the further reproduction and distribution of videos that are taken from the Youtube.com platform violates the copyright of the individual who uploaded that video to Youtube.com.
- axegon_ 2y ago[flagged]
- sleeplessworld 2y agoI have heard of the worlds tiniest violin - but the 'universes' tiniest? How can we possibly be assured that your violin really is the tiniest? There may be some civilization, maybe in Alpha Centauri maybe around Betelgeuse, that produces really small violins? We cannot know in this primitive pre-warp time that we live in... A search reveals an offer on Ebay - search for 'Worlds Smallest Emergency Violin!" ... the URL is too long to paste. But this is an emergency violin. Clearly not a violin made for normal everyday purposes. And it is still only the 'worlds' smallest. It also does not describe for what emergencies this may help. I am still confused. It seems to me that these violins on offer are small, but that they surely can be made much much smaller....? However, there may be some instrument/sound physics at play that I am not aware of...
- mise_en_place 2y agoMuch like Napster, his only real crime was success. If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble. He paved the way for streaming and digital distribution of media. Megavideo in particular had the highest encoding rates possible at the time, even superior to YouTube.
- skullone 2y agoExcept, he paid people for, and promoted the upload of copywrited works. He knowingly participated and basically tailored his products to pirating. Some people love him, but he will see his day in court apparently, but no one wants to even deal with him because he's gone crazy.
- hinkley 2y agoWe had a friend who threw amazing parties because he had this sort of transgressive sense of humor. He got rich, retired young, and I fully believe that the professional peer pressure was the main thing keeping his screws tight because he just fell apart over three years. At one point he was telling my spouse he was trying to make himself crazy. Congratulations bud, you already are. Sane people don’t do that. Predatory people took advantage of his behavior and generosity, and by thirty he was involuntarily committed, his mother given power of attorney. My spouse was the person feeding his mom the information she needed to see to intervene. All he had left was the equity in his condo and $50k. I’m not sure I believed the deranged millionaire trope until I met this guy. And I watch my younger friends and acquaintances for signs of mania that masquerade as out of box or transgressive thinking.
- gautamcgoel 2y agoHow did your friend get rich, and how did people take advantage of him?
- hinkley 2y agoMassive mooches, and a “situationship” with a woman who wasn’t quite his girlfriend. Microsoft millionaire.
- colechristensen 2y agoIt's been 12 years. I wish the 6th amendment meant more.
- FactKnower69 2y ago[flagged]
- aestetix 2y agoI wonder if people have forgotten the legal grounds on which the US claimed jurisdiction. I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it. I guess one lesson from this is that running out of .COM domain names is not a bad thing, because it reduces the grip the American empire has on the internet.
- arresin 2y agoThat tracks with the fact that they use a .nz now.
- floam 2y agoAs long as he’s calling himself Dotcom, he is explicitly property of Verisign.
- janmo 2y agoHis mistake was to host content in the US. "Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said." - Jun 25, 2012 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/internet-file-sharing-giant-megaupload-shut-down-1.1239469 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/internet-file-sharing-giant-...
- next_xibalba 2y agoWouldn't his mistake have been hosting pirated content?
- wellthisisgreat 2y agoThe craziest thing about Kim is that he held the FIRST PLACE in competitive Call of Duty at some point while running the company.
- ElCapitanMarkla 2y agoI always thought that was impressive, and he was a good player but I remember him admitting st some point that he was paying people to play on his account which is what kept it at no. 1.
- wellthisisgreat 2y agoHmm, still unless the ratio of them VS him playing was close to 50% that’s quite incredible given how massive the game was already and how demanding it is to be competitive, skills-wise but also just time-commitment-wise. I imagine to stay in top-10 requires no less than 4-6 hours of daily win-heavy gaming.
- kimungdotcom 2y ago[dead]
- kimungdotcom 2y ago[dead]
- Aaronstotle 2y agoHe is probably going to blame this on Ukraine
- tim333 2y agoKim says "Oops Don’t worry I have a plan" https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1823993237931221340 https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1823993237931221340
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rqtwteye 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Tarucho 2y agoWho backed him?
- heyaco 2y agoabout time. delayed justice is an injustice. making millions via copyright infringement has a price; prison.
- chgs 2y agoIn which case why isn’t he in a New Zealand prison after being found guilty by a jury of his peers in New Zealand?
- nottommo 2y agoProbably Kim Dotcom has done wrong, but I don't think he deserves to go to court and or prison in a country he has never resided in.
- sergiogjr 2y agoI'm not sure that can be applied consistently. Would you say the same about heads of drug cartels or human trafficking rings (not equating these to Kim, as I'm sure you understand)?
- harperlee 2y agoI think you should build your argument a little bit more. I’d say, why not say that also for drug cartels? The only reasonable argument that comes to my mind is that some big cartel head might have local government influence, but that does not apply to Kim and New Zealand, right? Another possible argument would be that the damage has been done elsewhere. But in the case of the dtug cartel, if there are victims in 20 countries that why would any third party have priority for enforcing their law?
- Blot2882 2y ago> if there are victims in 20 countries that why would any third party have priority for enforcing their law That's not really relevant. No one is arguing priority. "Priority" implies there's 20 countries fighting to prosecute someone and we need to resolve it. In this case, it was a cooperation between multiple countries who agreed someone needed to be prosecuted, regardless of which country did it.
- harperlee 2y agoThe point being why should any argument in this line end up with “lets extradite him to the US”, when he is already in a cooperating country that will enforce acceptable local law. And his own country, where he resides, and where the did the purported crimes.
- wordofx 2y agoYay get him out of NZ. All he does now is parrot propaganda for the CCP, Russia, and Hamas. Guy has lost the plot.
- jmspring 2y agoGood. He has had a major hardon over Joe Biden for years and his X posts indicate such. Lately, as other pointed out, he's been a ccp/russian/who knows shill. He did some interesting things, some not legal - others served their time he wandered off rather than trial.
- fareesh 2y agoif he had a dmca process and it was followed, what's the crime?
- treebeard901 2y agoHe must be mega disappointed
- trallnag 2y agoHe could flee to Russia
- OfficeChad 2y ago[dead]
- ezoe 2y agoI still don't understand how could he got an extradition to US. He doesn't have US nationality and he was living most of his life in Germany and New Zealand. We have copyright treaties signed by most nations. I think the copyright infringement crime shall be judged at the jurisdiction the suspect is living and committed the suspecting act.
- actionfromafar 2y agoMore than 100 countries have extradition treaties with the US, and extraditions go both ways. (Sample https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57883892 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57883892 )
- alexey-salmin 2y agoOh wow, very surprising to learn that US constitution allows extradition of US citizens abroad
- arlort 2y agoWhy is that surprising?
- ruffrey 2y agoI believe it could be surprising because a person's government has turned them over to a foreign government where they have no representation. The foreign government is not governed by the same Constitution, Bill of Rights, laws, or checks and balances. A core cultural understanding in the US is the rule of law and right of representation in a government by-and-for the people. It could seem like a loophole where the US government can forcibly remove a person's rights.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoI come from Russia which is an extremely low bar with respect to human rights, however giving up a citizen to a foreign government is explicitly forbidden by the constitution. It's a very reasonable rule because by doing so you're effectively stripping him of constitutional protections (which sadly don't exist anymore but they did in the past). I always assumed all decent countries have that, and of all especially the USA which is famous for things like "The Hague Invasion Act".
- memer426 2y agoThe guy is a total a hole, and at the end of the day megaupload was illegal and he knew it, but just wanted to get rich. Additionally he's now a conspiracy theorist and Russian shill. He just spouts incorrect stuff on his Twitter every day.
- raquelbritzke 2y agoI don't know why the entertainment industry is so angry. 500 mio. $ is less then Disney loses on a single movie these days.
- ur-whale 2y agoThis raises an interesting question: when you piss off the current hegemon (for good or bad reasons, not the point anyways), where can you currently go to get out of its reach ? Asking, because his "plan" is very likely that. Some folks have been know to travel in boxes inside a container [1] All of the anglosphere is clearly not a good destination choice as they are basically all vassal states. Russia does not look to hot right now either, and the PKR is basically not an option for a very long list of reason. China ? Any other suggestions ? Asking for a friend. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn
- SentientAtom 2y agoYou really need not look any further than this thread for what-about-isms and attack-the-man arguments. The fact Hacker News of all places is going to bat for the RIAA and US Industrial Complex leaves me disappointed. Top comment reads something like "Yea but maybe its time to call it quits", well I guess that's how meaningful fights should end, giving up because the adversity is too great or the fight has lasted too long. Shame.
- talldayo 2y ago[flagged]
- trollski 2y agoAny reccomendations?
- bishbosh 2y agoConsidering there is already another person replying to this comment saying that 'hacker' doesn't really mean anti-establishment, sharing them here seems like a good way to get a wave of unsavory folks.
- spacephysics 2y agoWhere can i find such sites
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoPresumably mongolian basket weaving forum, but it lately mandates phoneposting, so take it with a grain of salt.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- poincaredisk 2y ago
- erros 2y agoI'm sure we all could appreciate Mega for what it was, and we could also debate the charges and go back and forth on extradition laws. The reality is that according to the DoJ, US citizens were victimized by a service that used US assets (servers) within its territory. That opens the doors for litigation. This happens literally in every country that can enforce it. Like Reddit, HN has a crowd of anti-US folks with terrible sentiment until, you know, when they need the US or need a job in the U.S. The hypocrisy is astounding.
- lgleason 2y agoI'm not a fan of Kim but.... Basically, this is a win for big money interests and the powerful in the US. It was only a matter of time before New Zealand caved. Meanwhile the US has become a banana republic as demonstrated by the lawfare being waged against the Republican party and it's leading candidate for the presidential election. For those supporting this change in position by New Zealand, when this erosion of rights used against you remember that you reap what you sow.
- UncreativeAlias 2y agoKim was not the robin-hood like figure he portrayed himself to be. If anything he was the opposite given the many illegal dealings he was engaged in before creating Megaupload, and his bad reputation in some German technology communities for being a rat. Kim also in all probability is guilty. I hold no love for Kim however I can't agree with this ruling. Despite Kim's conduct; the case against him has been so rife with so much extreme police and prosecutorial misconduct it should've been thrown out ages ago. Some of the misconduct in this case includes but is not limited to: - Abusing the power of a national security agency to illegally spy on him, which lead to the Prime Minister being forced to publicly apologizing due to the political fallout. - Attempting to freeze his defense funds - Performing a no knock raid utilizing a heavily armed anti-terrorism task force for a non-violent crime, which lead to the department being successfully sued by all parties for excessive force. - Performing an illegal search by intentionally and knowingly filling out an improper warrant, and having had the crown admit this. - Sending the evidence ruled to be illegally obtained to the FBI regardless - Allowing a foreign government to maliciously apply to revoke someone's bail the day they can no longer afford their lawyer - Already ruling that under New Zealand law you cannot be extradited for copyright infringement, but proceeding with the case regardless for the more flimsy fraud charges. Kim is a bad person who very likely is guilty, but at what point do we draw a line and say the abuse of process has been so great it harms the reputation of the legal system to proceed? Cases are routinely completely thrown out for much less. It's frankly a travesty towards the legal system that this case has been allowed to continue, especially given the charges.
- MELEKE 2y ago[dead]