There were some of those in the google case too, I remind you.
True, but let’s be clear here, there’s no reasonable basis to disbelieve that megaupload knew what kind of business they were in. Even if they were attempting to turn a blind eye to specific content unless a specific takedown notice was served to them they, like all other file sharing services, had to have some inkling that what most people wanted to share is technically illegal.
I’m pretty anti-copyright but even I don’t have a problem with the government moving to takedown a business built from the ground-up on profiting from facilitating an illegal activity. They’ll have their day in court I imagine, though it’s unclear what court in what country, but I doubt they’ll be able to convincingly claim ignorance of what was going on megaupload.
I refer you to one my previous couple posts.
Won’t someone please think of the small to mid sized mods :(
You can point to a specific one if you’d like but I didn’t see anything convincing. All questionable evidence or biased reporting aside, there is simply no way they could function and grow as a company without knowing what kind of business they were in. Paying even the most cursory attention to their own operation would reveal it.
Even if one concedes that they made good faith attempts to comply with all takedown notices and other legally required steps, which I’m willing to do until it’s firmly proven otherwise, I don’t see a way a reasonable person can conclude that megaupload somehow didn’t know they were primarily in the copyright infringement business.
You’re preaching to the choir, pal.
Their criminal status is not what at dispute here.
I’m curious to get Ken’s take on this, actually.
Same business as YouTube…and it’s clear which courts -the American criminal courts.
They lost essentially the same case in the civil courts, after all. So now they’re going for decades in jail, with the charges brought.
I think it’s far too core an issue to hand-wave off though. This isn’t about big media flexing it’s muscle and make the government do it’s dirty work, it’s basically about governments doing what they should and shutting down criminal conspiracy to profit off of illegal activity.
Ah, never mind. Ken has weighed in, for a start.
I’m sad. Megaupload the business may have been engaging in a lot of illegal activity, but Megaupload the tool was useful for a lot of non-infringing stuff.
They wouldn’t bother with megaupload unless they were pressured onto. They definitely won’t pull the plug now instead of say 2 more years of evidence gathering and investigation (as evidently megaupload didn’t have a clue they’re under it) unless they were pressured onto it.
And that IS a problem.
Today it’s megaupload, sure. But tomorrow it’s Reddit because they made an unflattering article about RIAA sucking it or MPAA or some corrupt senator. The week after that it’s some indie dev making a game that EA don’t want to see making day light.
It’s how it starts, small. And how it ends, big.
Megaupload was not in the same business as youtube, unless you lump every internet website together under the heading “internet business” and ignore all the details of what their market was, what their pitch to consumers was, etc.
The American government would clearly love to have all this play in American criminal courts but the whole overseas angle is going to add some complex extradition layers. If the whole things get played out in a court overseas first so some foreign judge can decide if the US case has enough merit to warrant extradition, then it might stop there. I think it unlikely though, the feds probably were well aware of the extradition requirements and confident of meeting them before they pulled the trigger on something this big.
Their business is UGC. For Megavideo, media UGC even. Within which there is a very narrow set of business models. And of COURSE the RIAA lump them all together…sheesh.
The American government would clearly love to have all this play in American criminal courts but the whole overseas angle is going to add some complex extradition layers.
We’ll see. You don’t get this kind of cooperation if there won’t be a judge playing ball.
Look at the charges - RICO (a gangster law), conspiracy, money laundering…I’m surprised they didn’t throw in stealing the kitchen sink. (Criminal copyright infringement is a relatively MINOR charge, and a sideline)
Not really. Youtube offers a lot of services beyond “host your file” in terms of social commentary, search, rankings, etc. Megauploads only value add was “no questions asked wink wink.” They were appealing to a different market than youtube entirely and I doubt they were relying heavily on the content they were serving to be actually user generated. Unless we count packing the software and the keygen into a zipfile as user generation.
I’m still not convinced that Obama DOJ was really serving corporate masters on this one. I have no problems believing that big content interests can and do bend congress to their will, because those elected representatives are heavily dependent on campaign contributions to continue to exist. The DOJ much less so, though it’s possible that the administration is sucking up because it wants the big content providers to pony up some cash for the upcoming election. Hard to square that idea with the White House’s recent critical stance on SOPA though.
Congress/Gov decides funding. DoJ want money? It needs to suck up to politicians. Politicians suck up to mega corps funding their elections.
What’s the problem following the money trail on this one? It’s as obvious as the sun.
There’s so many intermediaries in that money trail you correct cite that it’s not obvious at all. The FBI has been doing this sort of thing for years and years, so I don’t see any sudden reason to believe that American law enforcement is now subverted and answerable to corporate overlords.
STOP! Seriously. I feel dirty having responded to Foxstab. Whatever conversation can be had in this thread will not be intelligent if you try and encompass his arguments. Just ignore him.
I apologize to all of QT3 for ever having replied to him.
Their priorities ARE politically set. And the RIAA, MPAA and such are pretty big buyers. Plus you know…they ARE part of the media and know how to use it!
Or if they’re not and the intelligence agencies are running a good part of the show again…uhm…
All of these companies aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Almost all of them are ad companies in disguise.
There are honest players in the file sharing space. People who want to lump them all in together are arguing the guy who drives down the street safely is the same as someone who drives down the street at 100mph doing a drive by.
They all aren’t the same. It is okay to remove a bad player in the space.