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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

> And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.

It was proven to a grand jury -- that's why they (and not the government) handed down an indictment.

The treatment is actually similar to what would happen to the brick-and-mortar assets of an indicted meth distributor. Normally when a grand jury hands down an indictment then business functions that aid the alleged criminal activity also get shuttered. See http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/feds-e-c-com... for instance.

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Since when is a grand jury indictment "proof" of anything?? All it allows is for a criminal case to move forward. The defense isn't even allow IN THE ROOM! Jeez, let's not be sloppy here.

It is offensive to compare a youtube/dropbox hybrid to a meth distributor. That smells of appeal to emotion.

If he wanted to appeal to emotion he'd use murder or child molesting.

When the police decide to arrest someone it's commonplace for all evidence related to the crime to be taken in as well. The fact that said evidence is needed for continued operation of your business is, sorry life's not fair, sucks to be you.

If you're a kinkos accused of committing a heinous crime with your copy machines and they need to take the copy machines as evidence oh well sucks to be you.

If you're a baker accused to knocking people on the head with your rolling pins, oh well no more rolling pins until case is resolved.

If you're an internet company accused of massive piracy and they take the servers, oh well sucks to be you.

I can't help thinking that this exact logic (life's not fair, sucks to be you) can just as easily be used to justify crime as law enforcement. Oh, you didn't realize this was a pyramid scheme? Sucks to be you, life's not fair.

I really do not think it is a constructive argument.

I'm just explaining the way it works and that there's nothing special about megaupload or new happening here:

Break the law and the police are going to take your stuff. If you used that stuff for your business oh well sucks to be you.

You may think that is a bad system and have some great ideas for liberating us from the bad police but those ideas are no more valid or invalid today then they were 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago.

By using the terminology "break the law", you seem to be intentionally disregarding the fact they have not been convicted of anything, and the assertions they even did anything illegal are questionable at best given they complied with DCMA takedown notices. That they may or may not have been aware of infringement is your next response, but irrelevant since DCMA deals with response to requests, not awareness. Sites are not required to be copyright police independently determining which user backups are legitimate fair use of rips of CDs they own and which are not. YouTube is certainly aware of misuse of their site, something they capitalize on by organizing and directing users to content they know perfectly well is unlicensed such as the Beatles catalog.

Look no one is ever convicted of anything when the police initially take the evidence away. That's how the system works, that's the way it's worked for decades, there's nothing different here.

> By using the terminology "break the law", you seem to be intentionally disregarding the fact they have not been convicted of anything, and the assertions they even did anything illegal are questionable at best given they complied with DCMA takedown notices.

Substitute "be accused of breaking the law" for "break the law".

Yes, the police and prosecutors have that kind of discretion.

And no, grand juries are not a significant impediment. As the saying goes, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich.

In case you haven't noticed yet, digital goods aren't like physical goods. The feds could have made a complete copy of the Megaupload servers while still leaving some or all of them running.

In case you haven't noticed, the legal world isn't in a giant rush to throw away centuries of precedent just so Megaupload's allegedly law breaking servers can keep running.

It may have been proven to a grand jury in the USA, but not in courts in the rest of the world, and certainly not here in NZ. This is punishment before guilt is proven or even contested.

Why should the US be allowed to punish the native of another nation like this? I don't understand it, Australia should be trying him. We aren't respecting the "jury of their peers" thing we Americans love so much. I remember a similar incident in the news recently as well, some British kid I think.

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