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Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for inf

Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Lets jail the developers of uTorrent while we are at it, thanks to them, I am able to easily queue up a torrent of Game of Thrones. We are living in a world where people are being jailed or acts that cause no actual harm to anyone all the while people committing actual crimes go unnoticed or repeatedly go in and out of the system. People slinging drugs in the streets probably get lesser sentences than Andrus got for helping develop Megaupload. "In court papers, Nomm agreed that the harm caused to copyright holders by the Mega Conspiracy’s criminal conduct exceeded $400 million. He further acknowledged that the group obtained at least $175 million in proceeds through their conduct." Classic entertainment industry mathematics. How can a figure as large as $400 million be accurately proven? Seems like they just spun a massive wheel down at the law firm and chose whatever number sounded large, but not over the top. More specifically, how can a computer programmer who doesn't sound like had any involvement in the business side of things know how much Megaupload supposedly cost the industry? There are so many things about this story that don't sit right with me. They went after the low hanging fruit. They couldn't touch Kim Dotcom, so they're going for the vulnerable and lesser high profile people involved in hopes of building up a case for bringing down Dotcom. This is what it is all about: sending a message to Dotcom and trying to slowly try anyone even remotely involved in the Megaupload site. They know Kim won't go down without a fight, they'll basically say: Well one of the sites developers admitted there was copyrighted material on the site and he knew about it, he was sent to jail. As a developer this worries me. If my employer is committing illegal acts I don't know about like copyright infringement or fraud, does that mean I'll be sent to jail even if I legitimately didn't know? We should all be concerned with this judgement.

tzs 12y ago
> Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Neither Google nor Dropbox was set up with the intent of aiding copyright infringement. Neither Google nor Dropbox based their business model on aiding copyright infringement. The comparison is invalid. > As a developer this worries me. If my employer is committing illegal acts I don't know about like copyright infringement or fraud, does that mean I'll be sent to jail even if I legitimately didn't know? We should all be concerned with this judgement. He was the head of software development for Megaupload. It is hard to imagine that he did not have full knowledge of what they were doing and was not involved in planning it.
- kaoD 12y ago
  To be fair, Megaupload didn't explicitly condone copyright infringement, and if I recall correctly infringing files were removed. Are my memories flawed and Megaupload ignored the copyright infringement notices, or is Megaupload the fall guy to scare everyone else?
  - rtpg 12y ago
    People at Megaupload were uploading copyrighted things onto their servers at one point to gain traction. Like, company policy to go around and get stuff to put onto their servers. If you follow takedown notices, there's no issue, DMCA's safe harbor provisions protect you totally. The issue was that Megaupload was participating in the uploading and stuff (for the record: not condoning the federal gov't's usage of time/money trying to get Dotcom arrested/extradited or whatever)
  - tzs 12y ago
    When Megaupload received notification of an illegal file, their action depended on the type of file. If it was child porn or terrorism propaganda, they deleted the file. If it was copyright infringement, they made the specific URL that was reported stop working, but retained the file, and all other links that referred to that file continued to work. Even making the specific URLs stop working was a sore spot with Dotcom. He sent emails to employees telling them to not even do that when they got a mass report of infringement from an "insignificant source". An "insignificant source" meant anyone other than a major organization in the US (e.g., major Hollywood studios). As far as explicitly condoning copyright infringement goes, sometimes users would see movie trailers, and ask Mega where they can see the full movie online, and Mega employees would answer by pointing them to third party sites that linked to the full movies on Mega. One Mega email to such a user included the explanation that you cannot find the links by directly searching Mega because "that would cause us a lot of trouble".
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Megaupload also ran a monetary incentive scheme that ranked rewards for users based on the value of the content; discovery during the prosecution turned up emails from Megaupload employees overtly acknowledging copyrighted content and rewarding it with enhanced payouts.
throwawaykf05 12y ago
>How can a figure as large as $400 million be accurately proven? Does that even matter, given the $175 million number that comes right after? Pretty sure that number can be easily proven from their ledgers.

tzs 12y ago

> Uh, oh. Lets hope that programmers at Google and Dropbox don't find themselves in prison for knowingly developing web applications that people are using for infringing content. This is ridiculous. Neither Google nor Dropbox was set up with the intent of aiding copyright infringement. Neither Google nor Dropbox based their business model on aiding copyright infringement. The comparison is invalid. > As a developer this worries me. If my employer is committing illegal acts I don't know about like copyright infringement or fraud, does that mean I'll be sent to jail even if I legitimately didn't know? We should all be concerned with this judgement. He was the head of software development for Megaupload. It is hard to imagine that he did not have full knowledge of what they were doing and was not involved in planning it.

kaoD 12y ago
To be fair, Megaupload didn't explicitly condone copyright infringement, and if I recall correctly infringing files were removed. Are my memories flawed and Megaupload ignored the copyright infringement notices, or is Megaupload the fall guy to scare everyone else?
- rtpg 12y ago
  People at Megaupload were uploading copyrighted things onto their servers at one point to gain traction. Like, company policy to go around and get stuff to put onto their servers. If you follow takedown notices, there's no issue, DMCA's safe harbor provisions protect you totally. The issue was that Megaupload was participating in the uploading and stuff (for the record: not condoning the federal gov't's usage of time/money trying to get Dotcom arrested/extradited or whatever)
- tzs 12y ago
  When Megaupload received notification of an illegal file, their action depended on the type of file. If it was child porn or terrorism propaganda, they deleted the file. If it was copyright infringement, they made the specific URL that was reported stop working, but retained the file, and all other links that referred to that file continued to work. Even making the specific URLs stop working was a sore spot with Dotcom. He sent emails to employees telling them to not even do that when they got a mass report of infringement from an "insignificant source". An "insignificant source" meant anyone other than a major organization in the US (e.g., major Hollywood studios). As far as explicitly condoning copyright infringement goes, sometimes users would see movie trailers, and ask Mega where they can see the full movie online, and Mega employees would answer by pointing them to third party sites that linked to the full movies on Mega. One Mega email to such a user included the explanation that you cannot find the links by directly searching Mega because "that would cause us a lot of trouble".
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Megaupload also ran a monetary incentive scheme that ranked rewards for users based on the value of the content; discovery during the prosecution turned up emails from Megaupload employees overtly acknowledging copyrighted content and rewarding it with enhanced payouts.

throwawaykf05 12y ago

>How can a figure as large as $400 million be accurately proven? Does that even matter, given the $175 million number that comes right after? Pretty sure that number can be easily proven from their ledgers.