Feds seize $50 million in Megaupload assets, lodge new charges | Hacker News Reader

Feds seize $50 million in Megaupload assets, lodge new charges

arstechnica.com

23 pointsevo_917 comments

So here's the obvious question:

If I read the Supreme Court's decision in Grokster correctly, it seems that the government will have to prove not only that they knew that there was infringing material on their servers but that they either colluded with infringers or marketed material as infringing material, right?

This seems to me to be important since that's what differentiated Grokster and Betamax. So is there evidence in this case? Are they going to be able to convince a jury of that specific link?

Maybe I'm just an armchair observer here, but why didn't someone like Kim Dotcom move to a more protected location? With that kind of cash I'm sure he could've earned some favors from a military dictatorship in Fiji, or a country so small that his revenues could've easily eclipsed their GDP. Iceland? Tuvalu? Burkina Faso? There's lots to choose from.

Having lived in various "more protected locations", I'd rather live in New Zealand than some place like Burkina Faso!

He probably assumed at most he was at risk for civil penalties -- it's not like he was running drugs or supporting jihad. The company was based in HK, and the obvious legal target; his personal residence in another country should have protected him from civil issues related to the company in HK.

However, once criminal charges and an international task force get involved, doomed. Maybe he could have had better intelligence or lobbyists to figure out criminal charges were brewing, but I don't think his behavior was that unreasonable given the ambiguity of what criminal laws megaupload may or may not have been breaking.

I never used Megaupload. Never saw their site before the takedown notice went up, so I don't know anything about their business model. But where did they get $50M in assets? I have seen the number $175M as a subscription revenue number, but how did they rake in that much in subscriptions? That's a huge number.

If you provide a service people wants, they will pay. Is it really that surprising?

People paid to download files from MegaUpload. Apparently a lot of people.

(Instead of posting a comment admitting that you know nothing, maybe next time you could just Google it.)

rickmatt, I see you are a new user; please ignore the condescending tone in the replies from wmf and publicus. I thought I would never say this: the comments section on the linked Ars article is more helpful than HN (and much less condescending).

Despite everything pg has tried to keep September from arriving, the September that never ends has arrived. And by now it should be obvious why the eternal September is here. It's because the problem is _people_ and this is one problem technology will never solve.

If i were Kim i'd have money stashed in a Swiss bank account.

Jury nullification will be at play here.

Voir dire will be used to make sure nobody who's ever downloaded anything sits on the jury, just as with Thomas-Rasset.

Our descent into fascism continues.

Do such people actually exist this day and age? Someone might not have downloaded anything themselves, but how likely it is they don't enjoy watching a downloaded movie with their grandkids from time to time?

I don't doubt that many of them exist, or at least don't know they don't exist.

After tossing out four jurors (the ones who had the most experience with file-sharing friends)... - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jury-selecte...

Judge Gertner repeatedly sided with the plaintiffs, who objected to the presence on the jury of those who essentially admitted to the same activity of which Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old Boston University graduate student, stands accused. - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/tenenbaum-tr...

So much for "trial by a jury of your peers"...

I wonder what the news would be like if the feds here raided some foreign company in some foreign country, and someone like Kim had some "panic" secret automated target aquisition weapons systems and killed all of the guys as they ran up and busted down the doors with rifles drawn?

Feds bust corporation in other country, gets slaughtered. Which legal system deals with the situations where one country is imposing its laws on another, and the citizens use deadly force to fight back?

Or what about if they raided some alien company on another planet? Well, they'd probably use something similar to what they use now, an international warrant for arrest or seizure and cooperation with the local law enforcement authorities to the extent that that was available. I suggest looking into how this works rather than trying to come up with B-movie scenarios.

I think the parent's talking about the backlash in NZ were there bloodshed, etc.

Obviously international warrant, cooperation, etc. etc. is how they arranged the raid.

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