I often disagree with cliffski on these issues, but I agree on MU. They crossed the line very easily in my eyes. I don’t have any sympathy for the criminals (and I do consider the MU folks criminals).
I use(d) MegaUpload for files I want(ed) to link publicly.
But there’s really no significant technical difference with Dropbox…anyone know something similar with no US business ties or operations? (including the domain name)
So, is anybody else just surprised that megaupload has earned more than $175 million? I’m frankly amazed that enough people were willing to pay for accounts to make it worth that much money. I always assumed the premium accounts were basically useless, and wondered how they stayed in business with all their bandwidth costs. (I’ve never used the service extensively).
They also serve ads.
I see nothing wrong with that at all. That is MegaUpload advertising their service using a bunch of legitimate, copyright holding users and a catchy tune.
Hardly a publicity stunt.
I’m afraid you’d never make a RIAA executive.
You miiight feel that’s no real loss.
Bottom line: American’s lawmakers who control the enforcing arms are all greedy fucks easily bought over to do your will if you have deep enough pockets.
The boycotting of SOPA/PIPA pissed them so X512 made a call to Y632 and ordered the immediate take down to flex their angry muscle.
The first opening shot was fired. They declared war.
Time to wage hell.
I thought the requests for all the warrants etc for all ex US actions required were commenced a year ago? If so then this is not coordinated with the boycott.
hehe!
Think I might just be able to live with that.
Kim DotCom, a former illegal street racer, hacker, and convicted felon who operates one of the most popular video sites on the Web and who lives in a $30 million mansion in New Zealand.
…
Nonetheless, when police came to his door, DotCom tried to evade arrest, according to authorities. “Despite our staff clearly identifying themselves, Mr Dotcom retreated into the house and activated a number of electronic locking mechanisms,” Detective Inspector Grant Wormald said in a report from New Zealand news outlet TVNZ. “While police neutralized these locks he then further barricaded himself into a safe room within the house which officers had to cut their way into.”
They said they found Dotcom near a sawed-off shotgun but he was arrested without further incident.
If you want to root for the little guys against the millionaires, I wouldnt be too keen to defend this guy against every copyright holder who ever had their work ripped off and stuck on megaupload.
Cliffski, I did not say they’re innocent, and never will.
Look, are MegaUpload guilty? No doubt, they are.
Is this really all about the MPAA/RIAA flexing muscle to create fear and say “even without sopa and pipa, you cross us and we’ll fuck you up the ass so do what we say and stfu and buy our overpriced shit while we bang artists in the ass”? Damn straight it is.
Should this be opposed to on the ground basis that if they succeed it opens the door for them to start fucking the real innocents? HELL YEAH!
What you always need to ask yourself is : what is the next step? what this all means going forward? how will the future look like?
Remember the Penny Arcade strawberry cake incident? Remember Grid Wars vs Geometry Wars? Remember when Apple wanted to close down that website (Engadget or Gizmodo was it?) for reporting on that iPhone prototype?
Plenty of other examples to be found, I’m sure. Imagine that these sort of laws all were passed and they had that much power…Grid Wars already lost as it was. PA would’ve been no more.
A decade from now, continuing this line of anti-democratic/social/liberal laws and actions and it’s not long from the day America is a full fascist state living in cesspool of fear and greed (alot of it is already installed in there as it is) whereas creativity is either used by the giants or you don’t get to use it, all the wealth and resources flow 99% upstream exclusively for real (this also include the such as medical and educational services, mind you), and anyone you don’t approve of is easily removed out of the way by fingering them as terrorists or paying some cop to dig for/plant dirt on them…never to be heard from again.
That’s why the struggle needs to escalate and it needs to be stopped the sooner the better, Cliffski.
Because if you don’t then one day, you’ll wake up to a future you won’t enjoy raising kids in and it’ll be too late to do anything.
so Megaupload are guilty of ripping me and other content creators off, but I should let them continue because enforcing copyright law is a slippery slope, and people who create content are just collateral damage, so we have to suck it up?
Meanwhile MU live in $30million mansions, thanks to us all turning a blind eye.
If it turned out your pay was going to be cut this year, and it was because some criminals who drove a lambourghini and had a $30 million house were scamming your boss, and the authorities were happy to arrest the guy, you would lie down in front of that criminal to defend him?
really?
Is Dawn Falcon posting in a thread again? He appears to be, but I don’t see any of his posts!
(Also, lol.)
The funny thing is that the only time I’ve ever been banned from Qt3 was flaming out at cliffski, but at least I’m sane enough to agree that MU was breaking the law and flaunting the fuck out of it.
No, Cliffski. Of course not.
I’m saying they should be choked out of operation by PROPER laws and inspections that’ll require them to adhere and conform to stricter and proper regulations and scrutiny of their content to make sure a better part (95% satisfactory for you?) of the illegal trafficking their network is used for is being curtailed.
If they do manage to survive as a legitimate business after that, all the power to them.
You win. They win. The users win. Everyone win.
But to support barbaric acts of strong-arming and scrupulous politicians who enables government enforcement agencies to do dirty work for morally bankrupt mega-corporates who are devoid of social-empathy and have questionable employment mandates just to get a bit of false sense of security and copyright upholding is is the VERY WORST sort of trade.
And eventually, it’ll bite ALL OF US in the ass. Yourself included.
With all due respect Cliffski, and I DO share a lot of it towards you, when it comes to anything titled “Piracy” you tend to go sort of blind-rage and lose complete focus of anything outside the 15’ sight arc.
I hate good indies losing their livelyhood over it. I hate how good studios in the past had to foreclose over it.
But going overboard with severe implications that, in the end game, will make everyone deprived of freedom, miserable and unable to do anything, is a way way way of an unacceptable alternative.
By the way, I have no pay to be cut for the time being. ;) I’m running on deficit eating my savings for now.
That lousy ass job I had that was mentioned in that other thread? I quit it at the end of the previous year, after 6.5 years of shit-eating.
He don’t look to me like a criminal. Also, If he did all this money, is because theres a lot of underserved customers. People that is willing to PAY for his enteirnament, but that the industry don’t know or want to help.
First thing Hollywood must do is to simultaneously release movies in internet and cinema. Is not doing it because is more a battle for power than money.
I pay for all my games, I have paid for my copy of Gratitous Space Battles. I am happy to do so. I am unhappy that theres a lot of people that ruitinelly don’t pay for his games. Sometimes these people have a excuse, students that don’t have any money, but a lot of free time to dedicate to gaming. Other times theres absolutelly no excuse, people that have a BMW car, a fantastic job, but still warez the things that use “just because”. Maybe theres some work to be done to convince people to pay for his games. But doing it “angry” is a bad idea. Convincing people to do so must be done slowly, like a friend helping a friend. It can be forced, because the truth is that nobody can stop warez. Even if we convince most people to pay for his games, movies and tv series, we HAVE to provide to these people with these services. We can’t convince people to jump to legal options if theres not legal options.
Perhaps authors can feel that is his call to allow or not allow distribution. And things have worked like that for maybe 100 years. But with digital networks like internet that simple not possible anymore. A game, a movie, a tv serie, a book, are now just a “big number”, digital networks are very good at moving numbers around, the horse has left the barn. Is time to admit that authors can’t control WEN distribution will happend, is something that can’t be controlled. What we can try, is make so any distribution result on the original author getting his part. I think is what realistically we sould be working for.
- Give everyone legal alternatives to warez. 2) Convincing freeloaders of his wrong ways.
You forgot to add world peace to that list, too. It’s a bit easier to achieve than #2.
Also, calling it “his enteirnament [sic]” is a bit generous, no?
Ah yes, pre-judging the law system, the speciality of armchair lawyers.
Oh, I’m sure there will be a conviction, either in this case or later, then it’ll be revisited, the defeat in the very similar-on-the-facts civil action against Google can’t be allowed to stand. Oh, and let’s not forget the charges of racketeering and money laundering. The effective law is rapidly heading for requiring human verification for UGC, which will kill 99.9% of it. Or sites hosted out of countries who don’t give a shit, and BLATENTLY don’t give a shit.
Push em hard enough and really-hard-to-trace darknets will spring up. Heck, WASTE was nearly a decade ago.
I’d be interested to know how many of the people making decisions about the nature of the case have read the indictment.
It’s just an allegation, of course. But it’s a rather useful guide to the sort of evidence the government claims to have.
I thought that the fact that they have chatlogs and internal emails might be particularly damning in the case of showing that they did not comply with takedown requests.
We’ve yet to see any actual evidence of these chatlogs and internal emails save some non-sequitur anecdotes from un-sourced employees of unknown positions.