Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand | Hacker News Reader

Kim Dotcom's extradition to the U.S. given green light by New Zealand

torrentfreak.com

853 pointswut421,150 comments

I appreciate Kim Dotcom for running MegaUpload and later Mega, in a time when the internet was younger and wilder. Also for his pirate spirit and "stick it to the man" attitude. But everything has a limit, specifically his resistance against the law, even if he hid it behind virtues. I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved. Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise? But people are superficial and tend to develop an "i'm the main character" personality, pushing them into recklessness, like persisting doing certain things or publicly talking shit. Hope he and his family will be ok.

> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

The problem is that government doesn’t have a line, that line is defined by the resistance it faces. Today it might be people sharing MP3s, tomorrow they will come after you for hosting a parody of mickey mouse. 10 years from now they’ll be busting down doors for sharing illegal memes (Seems to already be the case in the UK).

Sitting by passively and praying that the system will come to its senses is a fool’s errand. Copyright holders, the government, and powerful interests are entities that have no problem playing dirty.

To add: you know with the stable-diffusion function, there are ranges of vectors whereby technically just conjuring them is 15 years federal and possessing them is 5 each. That is 20-25% of a lifetime in one, 7.5% in the other!

You know how nuts that sounds to me as a mathematician?!

> (Seems to already be the case in the UK)

[Citation needed]

> 10 years from now they’ll be busting down doors for sharing illegal memes (Seems to already be the case in the UK).

UK law does not prohibit memes. It prohibits incitement to riot, as does US law. It prohibits incitement to murder, as does US law. In fact, these acts are illegal in almost every democracy in the World, even the most progressive and liberal ones, because they are reasonable statutes to extend common law (protecting people and their property from damage by others).

In recent weeks, a young man born in Wales to Rwandan-born Christian migrant parents, diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders, stabbed three 6-year old girls to death at a dance class. He attempted to murder the other children in the class, and the adults who intervened.

The "illegal memes" as you put it, were that he was a foreign-born Muslim who had entered the country illegally (all aspect of this narrative are false), and that people should riot to show their displeasure, and kill Muslim migrants to "save our children".

Seeing these "facts", mobs rioted in multiple towns over the course of a week, injured multiple (unarmed) police officers, caused tens of millions of pounds in damage to private property, and attempted to burn down a hotel with 200+ migrants (including children), staying in it, while many people of colour were individually attacked, their shops looted, their homes and cars damaged, and so on.

Arresting and charging the people who did these things is an obvious priority.

Arresting and charging the people who spread misinformation (I believe it was actually disinformation - purposeful, intentful lies), and suggesting that riots and murder should take place, are just as guilty of incitement in the UK as they would be anywhere else in the World.

The internet is not a fantasy land. What you post has real World consequences. If you get together in a private forum and plan to kidnap, rape and kill a celebrity (a case also tried in the UK recently), that's not "online meme banter", that's conspiracy to kidnap, rape and murder. You're going to prison, you're a threat to public safety.

The lines you say the government don't have, they're there. They're called "laws". Some of them are arguably unjust - I've campaigned against some IP law extensions in the past, including the introduction of software patents in the EU (when the UK was still a member), and think RIPA was a tragedy of law making - but to say that laws are irrelevant and action is defined only by the resistance a government faces is absurdly cynical, naive, and simply not true.

Your last sentence leads to an obvious question: what do you think people should do instead of "sitting by passively and praying that the system will come to its senses"? Do you think inciting riots and murder are the way to go?

> Sitting by passively and praying

Curious what you have done instead?

Mp3s were yesterday literally long time ago. Parody is always legal. And Mickey mouse by the way is way past copyright. Don't you know at least the original.

>that line is defined by the resistance it faces

THIS is why the Second Amendment. It's easy to revenge-kill a crazy, it's harder to revenge-kill a government. Keep your governments small and your crazies armed!

It's not always black and white; let's be honest, yes, Kim Dotcom was probably more about piracy than freedom of whatever simply because that's where his money was. But:

> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

I think there's a significant difference between someone who does the right thing despite personal risk (because it's that important), and someone who does the profitable thing despite personal risk (because they can't imagine the rules actually applying to them).

Whistleblowing is not the same as hosting pirated material.

> > Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

Or maybe even more generally to people like Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Buffet? Because maybe at some point enough should be enough?

Snowden quit working for the NSA and left the country, and Assange does not appear to be operating Wikileaks anymore. I would imagine that they would both agree that there comes a point where it makes sense to factor consequences into your choices and quit what you are doing.

>> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

I don't think it's a relevant comparison, but I do think that particular suggestion should apply to them. Imo a fundamental component of "succeeding" in Western culture is in how quickly you learn which parts of which systems act on perverse incentives or actively against the good of the people, and subsequently being able read the room when there's an opportunity to play hero; sticking your neck out might earn you a smily face sticker next to your obituary, but more likely it'll end up screwing you, and it's naive and/or arrogant to think that this time will be different and you'll singlehandedly rid the ocean of pollution (metaphorically). Realizing that you can't rid the ocean of pollution doesn't mean you should start dumping more trash into it, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't do your civic duty to reduce your personal waste, but it does mean you have to set your ego aside for your own benefit, because in practice and in all likelihood you'll make practically zero or even very negative difference, and put a real tangible target on your back, in whichever context this plays out.

Could be a safety meeting at your company in which you're just a peon and you feel like speaking up about a code violation, could be that you're a young Mr Beast employee that wants to vouch for their co-worker who's making less but doing more, or it could be that you want to make your company's website more accessible, in any case, unless you very clearly have the latitude to do so and control over the outcome, don't, because you'll screw yourself or someone else.

Drive as well as you can in your lane, whatever that means to you, and if you don't like it, signal and change lanes, then do it again.

This also means not overexerting oneself on things that require real tangible sacrifice but have only tenuous, nebulous, or only marginally more financially beneficial outcomes. Don't sacrifice too much time alone or with your partner or family or in nature for shipping yet another arbitrary AI SaaS bs product that will disappear in a week, pick the relevant battles and demand am important outcome, we don't have enough time to squander on such asinine missions. Again, that doesn't mean don't do work, or earn money, or help others, or whatever, just be careful how much of your life you trade for some 1s and 0s.

>Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

No, you make tools which are easily copied and spread which disempower states and groups and instead empower individuals to act unimpeded. You make tools which make it impossible to enforce copyright or any other state imperative because everybody has the tools needed to neutralize the group attempting to use force.

The correct answer is to formulate software and memes (human software) which act as viruses which infect the local carriers of the overall social operating system (in America it is some flavor of American Westernism), turning the original operating system non-functional (Bezmenov's demoralization), and steamroll the reigning technocratic elite off top the tiger and install yourselves, or your StateDAO, or whatever.

When the system is going to take at least a decade, that should be treated as a pending life sentence or execution, and I admire anyone who fights it to the death even. Just don't go in, get housed in concrete, work for $0.68/hour they deduct 75% for housing from and then sell you bricks of Ramen for $1, while dodging shivs from behind. At that point it is too late to act to defend yourself!

You need a year of this treatment if you disagree with me!

Thanks, your response made my day. In practice though it's a lonely and a difficult battle for those who are even remotely capable, most of us or not. Side note: I'd argue that the larger problem is not the state, it the masses who enable them, by their ignorance and stupidity.

The problem is, then they just go after the tools. There’s absolutely nothing stopping one from creating a pirate streaming tool based on e.g. torrents, but popcorntime doesn’t exist precisely because the movie industry frowned intensely at them. The core problem is that the government, if compelled to act, seems able to do whatever it wants to protect rich people’s interests. Cute loopholes like making tools vs sharing content are covered over eventually, hell even links are taken down now by DMCA requests.

> Also for his pirate spirit and "stick it to the man" attitude.

When the internet was even younger, and he called himself Kimble, he sold out other pirates to save his own ass.

His attitude is of a selfish and greedy person. Nothing to be admired.

> i'm the main character" personality

he always had this and has always been selling snake oil. He might gotten some clout with mega but he always has been a charlatan.

https://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/

This is the wrong position to take. The government is wrong, and a bully, the answer is not to give them what they want.

How is the government wrong? He is being charged with money laundering and wire fraud, both things that require pretty substantial paper trails to prove in court.

I think enough time has passed that I can say this openly: I worked for an ad network that was used by MegaUpload. Most of the traffic from his site was fraudulent bot traffic. Mysterious advertisers would repeatedly rebuy ad placements that were clearly not generating any returns. There was definitely things that didn't add up to the point I would error on the side of believing the government on this one.

Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself off of content that people were already sharing? There's a lot of retcon-ing those like him, Ross Ulbricht, etc as freedom fighters, when the truth is they were simply capitalists.

Kim Dotcom is simply a career criminal, settling on piracy after having previously been convicted of trafficking in stolen phone calling cards and embezzlement. He simply figured out a crime that is socially more accepted than what he engaged in previously, but it was always about the money for him.

So I remember sharing a file to my brother and "uploading" it over very slow DSL at the time (I think I was getting 100kbps a second or something). The file was copyrighted, a TV show, Supernatural, or something like that. Anyway, the upload was instant. Apparently Megaupload would do a quick hash of the file (not sure if it was in browser or probably more likely the first 100k bits or something of the file), and if it was a file that was already on their servers, they would just make a new download link for it, and the "upload" would finish. Links would be taken down by DMCA notices from forums and other file sharing sites (back then you could get good money making affiliate links and such, so people did a lot of their own uploading). But your private links and links you didn't share would remain. The files remained.

The fact that they did the hashing thing and kept the files locally really, incontrovertibly, proved they weren't deleting the files themselves when a notice went out. And that they were aware the hashed file was given a DMCA notice. This one little thing, probably to save bandwidth (and convivence for the end user of course; though outside of Linux ISOs there's little question what kind of files people are sharing), screwed him.

Anyway, #freeRossUlbricht (Yes I know he tried to make a hit out and a lot of people died from drugs he enabled to be sold, but the hit never happened and the drug users were consenting adults.) A life sentence is insane. 20 years? OK. Life? Heck he rejected a plea deal that would've given him 10... bet he regrets that now.

Youtube became popular over similar sites (like Vimeo) by hosting pirated tv episodes. But one was started by ex-Paypal founders and the other bootstrapped (MegaUpload).

Worse, while MegaUpload followed the letter of the law by doing removals of content that was reported as pirated they fell afoul of the law by stringently going after child pornographers and a court decided they can do that then they could do the same for piracy. So, they followed the law but, in their case, now the law is something entirely different and unexpected.

> Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself

You could ask the same question about the Hollywood studios that were built on evading patents.

What he did was clearly illegal - because the studios make the laws.

> Was he trying to stick it to the man, or find a way to enrich himself

Why not both?

Yeah, large scale copyright theft for profit is something that you're only allowed to do if your name is "Sam Altman".

I'd go with "Anarcho-capitalist."

Which of course explains their allure and the desire to retroactively improve their origin stories. They stand precisely in the face of what the OP himself retroactively considers.

> "I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved."

Which is the mantra of the bullied. As if we aren't the government. When precisely did we all decide that copyright should exist for a term of life PLUS 70 years? The government does not seek our permission when applying these laws to us yet we have to implicitly sacrifice our freedoms in order to blithely comply with it?

And we all know that the problems with these individuals is not that they committed these crimes, it's that they explicitly called into question this very authority in the first place. That the government then uses this as further justification to destroy these individuals lives, permanently destroy their liberty, and broadcast a chilling effect over anyone who would ever attempt to improve these policies is what inspires people to lionize these figures.

You can fight for freedom while being a capitalist. In fact, you can fight for freedom with capitalism.

I still do wonder also in the light of Julian Assange why in the age oft the Internet one always need to worried about extradiction. Why cannot New Zealand handle the crimes or maybe Germany where he is citizen. Also in the age of the internet a remote trial should even be possible and if the US is keen on it they can pay for the prison in New Zealand. Not saying I like him or what he did. But this always seems so political.

> I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved.

Russia or China wouldn't have extradited him.

Also, he'd probably live a peaceful, wonderful life had he not flexed and talked shit on Twitter so much.

Yes but he also let his true colours show through when it came to his treatment of New Zealand, as a safe haven to run from the law rather than a home. He wanted to stick his nose into politics and start twisting things using his wealth there too, to the point that many Kiwis couldn't give a shit about what happens to him.

If everyone just sat back and allowed the powers to do what they please, we'd have absolutely nothing in this world. Countless have spilled blood or have been killed over the fight for freedom in the past giving us the humanist open society we have now. The fight is never over.

This isn't a clear-cut case of humanism vs something else.

Humanist values include right to property ownership, and the right to get the benefits of your work. Artists deserve that, and can sell their rights to big studios if they want.

Just because it's easy to copy something, or just because studio execs were idiots who wouldn't get on board with streaming, or whatever else, doesn't mean it's morally right to copy someone's work for free.

I can think of a worse habit.

I don't know, Kim Dotcom's Wikipedia page reads like the one of sociopath criminal that masquerades as a fighter of the people against "the man". But the dude has done some real illegal shit, beyond "just" illegal file sharing. Some examples, but go read his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

> Schmitz was arrested in March 1994 for selling stolen phone numbers and held in custody for a month. He was arrested again in 1998 on more hacking charges and convicted of 11 counts of computer fraud and 10 counts of data espionage. He was given a two-year suspended sentence; the judge of the case described Schmitz's actions as "youthful foolishness".

> In 2001, Schmitz bought €375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company Letsbuyit.com and subsequently announced his intention to invest €50 million in the company.The announcement caused the share value of Letsbuyit.com to jump,resulting in a €1.5 million profit for Schmitz.

Also, that he used many of these things to enrich himself and live a lavish lifestyle does not exactly make him more likeable to me.

>In 2001, Schmitz bought €375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company Letsbuyit.com and subsequently announced his intention to invest €50 million in the company.The announcement caused the share value of Letsbuyit.com to jump,resulting in a €1.5 million profit for Schmitz.

This is just _dumb money_. Also I dont see how this is different to many crypto marketeers today.

If someone spends just one day on a video production set at any level, they will never pirate media again.

Who is running mega.co.nz? It looks like a superior offering compared to mega upload with sophisticated encryption and decoding.

Kim runs it. Isn't it the defacto successor to the now defunct mega upload?

Alas for many negative things to take flight, they will always make a call to virtue.

unrelated, but why is your username a different color than the others in this thread?

its that color for people who recently signed up

>I appreciate Kim Dotcom for running MegaUpload and later Mega, in a time when the internet was younger and wilder.

I like this. Us internet boomers got to learn and get everything for free. The new kids coming in are paywalled to hell :)

only in the avenues you continue to inhabit. New aventues that you dont are flourishing with the same human spirit to work around paying for things that have persisted forever

not really, his website was based on hong kong, this is a fight against america playing world police, which i'm on board with

they have no business going after just a single man so fervently, he's a foreign national and the websites weren't based in the US

Mega stored files in the US, Carpathia and Cogent were the providers specifically.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case

He was predominantly stealing US intellectual property, films, TV shows and music and the like. And unlike say normal use of bittorrent, making a lot of money off it. And being the largest player doing that. I'm not sure about the morals but you can certainly understand financially why they've gone after him.

New Zealand is for all practical purposes a USA protectorate. If you want to break USA law don't do it in a country that is dependent on the USA.

Being based in a foreign country doesn't mean you aren't committing a crime. Cyber criminals, drug traffickers, money launders, etc are all still on the hook even though they operate in a different country.

Also what he was doing is also a crime in NZ otherwise he wouldn't be extradited.

>> this is a fight against america playing world police

That is how Dotcom wants it characterized. Everyone else sees a fly-by-night website run by an eccentric millionaire making money by playing fast and loose with the law. It is one thing to be an outlaw subverting oppression by distributing free bread to poor people. It is another to be a bootlegger selling vodka under the table and then throwing huge invite-only parties with the profits.

If not the US, then who do you suggest could plausibly lead (I would even say prop up) the free world and the global economy?

> I think it's clear for everybody that one cannot get away with this kind of stuff, once governments get involved.

I'm far more concerned with the stuff that governments get away with, including infringement of the freedom to share information.

Totally fair point, but what can you do? This is how the world works. Fighting such beasts is pointless. You might tame them with lobby money, but no billionaire is interested. And we're now talking about the human spirit that cannot be chained, as also seen in Pirate Bay or Snowden. Sure, people do need heroes and hope from time to time. But I have become less romantic over the years, and more careful.

Elon Musk comes to mind...

>But people are superficial and tend to develop an "i'm the main character" personality

How on earth are you labeling the people persistent to a fault "superficial"???

There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates. Moving heaven and earth to extract a citizen from another country using the power of the state, and drag him before their feet is tyrannical.

> There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates.

I think there is business "harm" to piracy, but it's (mostly) vastly overstated. If I illegally download a song/movie I wouldn't have otherwise bought, did anybody lose out? There was a reason Napster was popular in colleges, because many of those people were cash poor. Music industry revenue peaked in 2000 at $21B and went down to ~$7B in 2015 before steadily growing again. Also, the entertainment industry are not multi-trillion dollar conglomerates. Not even close. Disney is worth $160B and Netflix is $260B.

That being said, if it were up to the music industry we'd still be paying the inflation adjusted equivalent of $20 for an album we only like one song on and we wouldn't be able to create out own playlists. You can only fight the consumer for so long (and they fought long and hard). That's to say nothing about the morality of repeatedly increasing copyright from 14 years to life plus 70 (which is BS). The Beatles' great great grandchildren (or whoever owns the rights later on) shouldn't still be benefiting from intellectual property.

> Moving heaven and earth to extract a citizen from another country using the power of the state, and drag him before their feet is tyrannical.

This is what rule of law is. KDC knew he was breaking the law and not only didn't do anything about it, but invested in an encouraged it to benefit himself financially. Even after being charged and having megaupload shut down, he then tried again. Do you really feel sorry for him?

Here's your evidence: I would have bought House on DVD 15 years ago if there hadn't been the option to stream it illegally.

You might object this evidence by telling me that you bought all seasons of House only because you had been streaming it illegally before, and that you wouldn't have done so without previously streaming it – but in most jurisdictions, this kind of "business procurement" does not cancel out the harm done in the first case.

Anyways, the burden to disprove the harm done through me not buying it is on you.

There is a ton of evidence. Ask Snoop Dogg how much money he gets from streaming compared to CD sales. Look at how badly industry revenue has collapsed. It literally never recovered fully since Napster.

https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...

It is an industry that employs real people from artists to studio engineers to musical instrument and equipment companies to the bartenders at the venues. Those people are sharing a smaller pie than they used to before Internet piracy devalued their music.

In your opinion it's tyrannical. Sure, most certainly a non-violent crime against a wealthy corporation isn't on the same level as murder or assault. At the same time, copyright infringement is conceptually not that different from property crime.

You would want the police to arrest someone who broke into your home and stole your movie collection.

You wouldn't want to spend a year writing code for your micro-SaaS product and then have a hacker breach your infrastructure, steal your work and sell it on their own website.

It's really a grand piece of irony for software engineers that depend on enforceable copyright law to put food on their table to call this arrest tyranny. If nobody can go to jail or be fined for copyright infringement then I hate to say it but you are going to need to quit your job writing software and start driving a city bus or something.

Don't forget that Megaupload was specifically designed to enable piracy and discourage other uses of the technology. It wasn't a file storage service that could be used for legitimate personal use because unpopular downloads would be deleted. The company actually paid people via an incentive program to upload popular files that were copyright infringing. This wasn't just "YouTube is bad at playing whack-a-mole with DMCA claims," this was a company that was responsible for something like 4% of all Internet piracy all by itself and actively encouraged it.

It's not like they were a company that didn't have access to lawyers who could warn them not to do what they did. Kim deserves his fate because his own hubris invited it.

>> There's no evidence that piracy causes any type of harm to these multi-trillion dollar American entertainment conglomerates.

Not sure if you know this, but there are tens of thousands of people involved in making a movie or TV series. Many making minimum wage and many who own businesses that are employed by the studios like catering companies. Or transportation companies, or even all the companies who tech they use like the camera's they use to film said movies.

ALL of those people? Their employment DEPENDS on movie studio's and the work they do to keep them gainfully employed. When you pirate movies you're not taking money out of the faceless multi-trillion entertainment companies, you're taking money out of the people's pocket who are integral part of creating the movies and shows you watch and who's livelihood depends on their continued employment by those companies.

Take a studio like New Line who put out the Lord of the Rings movies and was wildly successful until a series of flops effectively closed the studio:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/featu...

From 'Nightmare on Elm Street' to 'Lord of the Rings', New Line Cinema created some of Hollywood's most influential blockbusters. But now its 40-year history is in tatters following a string of big-budget box-office flops.

I usually imagine extradition being used for people who are dangerous, for someone who at worse encouraged a lot of copyright violations by making software feels like an abuse of power to me.

What's going on here? A new account, attracting several comments about a controversial figure. I'm not convinced the parent comment is actually bringing much to the party, yet it's getting traffic.

How do online communities discuss controversial subjects while ensuring good-faith participation?

I’m not sure what this comment brings to the table either, I mean are you really saying their opinion is invalid because they’re new / haven’t “put enough time in”? That doesn’t seem very fair.

I don’t think newcomers should be excluded from conversations…what’s the requirement; 12, 24, 48 months? Who determines that? Account age isn’t the best indicator of good-faith participation (accounts can be hacked, bought, etc.).

Instead engage with the content itself and where it comes from to determine if it seems to be in “good-faith”. Ironically, writing off someone’s opinion based on a single (potentially unrelated) fact is probably “bad-faith”.

HN has moderators that track things like that and can see where the upvotes are coming from and determine if the attention is genuine. If you're concerned, the correct approach is to email them about it, not post vague accusations of astroturfing.

From the guidelines:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Didn't YouTube get popular on pirated content first? What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload? They both went legal later.

It did. YouTube has paid the piper here and continues to do so. It pays a lot of money to record labels right now. TV networks choose to run their own streaming, and YouTube enforces what networks ask for.

Consider what things look like when you can't pirate. Many services now, like Claude, do not let you create password accounts, to make it less practicable to share a subscription. Apple News and Apple Arcade is totally impracticable to pirate.

Enforcing copyright violations is as much about how you feel about IP as it is about, whom do we permit to make money? It's a big part of why Apple is so fucking rich. Should only Apple be permitted to make real money? I don't think so.

> It's a big part of why Apple is so fucking rich. Should only Apple be permitted to make real money? I don't think so.

Apple is rich because they've optimized the hell out of their supply chain and through some clever marketing have convinced (rightly or wrongly) people that it's somehow reasonable to charge $200 for 64GB flash storage upgrades on their devices that only cost them ~$20. They are probably the only company in the world that have consistently run 20%+ profit margins on selling hardware ALONE. Their services revenue from streaming and arcade are puny in comparison. Even throw in the cut they take from app store sales, compared to hardware it's relatively small.

> Enforcing copyright violations is as much about how you feel about IP as it is about, whom do we permit to make money? It's a big part of why Apple is so fucking rich. Should only Apple be permitted to make real money? I don't think so.

I read this and din't quite understand the argument, but realized (if I understood) this is saying that if you are a content host, then you need a lot of resources to deal with copyright violations, so it's hard to compete against these hosts.

Safe harbor in the DMCA isn't perfect, but a world without safe harbor would be a world with a lot less freemium products, that's for sure.

> Claude, do not let you create password accounts, to make it less practicable to share a subscription.

How does that prevent sharing, you can just setup email forwarding with someone else you want to share the account.

Isn't Apple losing money on their streaming service though?

I am sure if youtube execs had emails showing that they were actively encouraging and participating in the posting of copyrighted material on the site they would have been prosecuted as well. Thats the evidence against Kim Dotcom, emails.

Funny you should say that, because there are literally such emails all the way up to Google's C-suite. They leaked a few years ago when Viacom sued them for mass copyright infringement on Youtube. In that case Google even tried to argue that it was ok because it's the content creator's and not the service's fault. When are they getting prosecuted?

>Revealing e-mails and other internal communications unsealed Thursday as part of a $1 billion lawsuit brought by Viacom show that many top Googlers — all the way up to co-founder Sergey Brin — were concerned about YouTube’s copyright piracy problems and how they could reflect badly on Google’s ethics.

>[...]

>Google executives — who previously had referred to YouTube as a “rogue enabler of content theft” whose “business model is completely sustained by pirated content” — nevertheless agreed to pay $1.65 billion to buy YouTube in 2006.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/03/18/google-executives-cal...

No it's not that, it's that if Google had not donated to the right politicians, or had enough lobbyists, they would have been prosecuted.

One big (alleged) difference that many folks skip over when mentioning YouTube is that Kim actively and not very secretly recruited pirates to upload known pirated stuff. YouTube may have done a crap job at preventing privacy but they weren't actively soliciting pirates and paying them.

I think youtube cooperated with taking pirated content down while Kim was a bit like screw you, I'm offshore, you can't get me.

More than that. They gave the media basically a tool to identify music that they owned, then either remove it or take all the money from it.

I don't think Kim ever paid content creators. Youtube is pushing probably $5 - $10 billion a year to them in cash plus serves as a promo / branding / ad vehicle (all the sponsored content or product placement stuff in music videos).

DMCA safe harbor says you don’t have to actively police your content but you have to take it down if a copyright holder complains. YouTube had robust tooling to take down content when they received a complaint. They got sued anyway, they won because the evidence showed they always took the content down (and that Viacom the party who sued was active in putting the content up there in the first place)

Spotify too (allegedly) had bunch of pirated content to bootstrap the service. I guess the difference is that they (and YouTube) tried to pivot away from it, compared to Megaupload which seemed to have leaned into it instead.

For the first 5 years videos were limited to 10 minutes. Clips of things were popular and there were things split between many videos, but that's not what I remember the people around me using youtube for.

Kim was a maverick, and his political connections were weak and easy to break. If you don't have the connections, you shouldn't be playing such a dangerous game.

My original youtube channel was basically just funneling split up episodes of Daily show & Colbert Report directly onto it. Would get about 100,000 views a day until they started cutting down.

Ehh... I'd say Youtube initially wasn't a super popular pirating option. The 10 minute limits meant you had to put everything up in chunks and at the time there weren't many super user friendly options to download them as a batch. You'd often enough have things where one part would eventually be missing and that'd ruin the whole thing. For tv shows it could be okay but for films once you're dealing with 10+ parts, often without knowledge of playlists, it'd get grating fast.

Youtube first broke through for me as the main form of sharing embedded music videos on forums and myspace so I always assume that's how most encountered it. A lot of these were probably pirated content too but pirated promotional content so a bit blurrier imo than Megaupload/megavideo

apparently so did crunchyroll (https://restofworld.org/2024/crunchyroll-india-subscription-...). difference being they went the legal route what seems like even earlier in the lifecycle than youtube.

Probably mostly Dotcom's attitude tbh

It was definitely used that way, early YouTube had a download button

> What was the main difference of the initial phase of YouTube and MegaUpload?

Kim dotcom didn't go to Stanford and have layers of contacts within the DoJ

The US seems to have this knack of sliding itself into this narrow gap between individuals they're idealistically pursuing and something worse. "If I could just slip in there, ooh, that's tight, yes, thank you, aah comfy, this feels like where I belong".

In their desperate attempt to not lose a fight that's been going on for, what, 10 years? 15 years? They're increasingly looking like a child that cannot move on from a primary school sleight.

The US look like an ass because the law they're seemingly-autistically pursuing, is an ass.

Pragmatism has no place here, it would seem.

Also, downloading from Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement.

You're looking at this through too narrow a lens, I think.

The Government has a duty to protect domestic industry from foreign threats, and throughout history, that isn't reserved to state actors.

Megaupload was a severe threat(*) to major American industries, and Kim Dotcom flagrantly ignored pressure from America to stop what it was doing. When that happens the Government gets to pick which of its heavy hammers to drop, and KDC is lucky it was just lawyers.

You have to look at this through the eyes of the government and how it conducts foreign policy, often over long spans of time, with the goals of expanding and defending American interests - which includes protecting industries.

(* was it? we'll never really know)

I think this is a good take. Much of the commentary here has been on the morality or otherwise of copyright infringement, proportional legal response and extraterritorial reach. All topics of interest, certainly, but clouding the real story here.

This is foreign policy, and the US has pursued control of copyright distribution, globally, for a very long time. Being from Australia, I remember the sense of disquiet as our copyright laws were modified as part of trade deals with the US. Many other nations (perhaps most?) have done the same (whether the law changes were pushed via the US directly or through UN related bodies is largely irrelevant). You combine that with the extremely tight coupling of large corporate bodies and the US government, and US foreign policy looks like authoritarianism.

So I agree that what we see with these extreme examples of “Kim dotcom” and “Assange” extraditions are part of a broader foreign policy strategy. Where I disagree with your post is the statement “American interests”. To me, the interests served are the conglomerate of political and corporate powers, which may be at odds with the average US citizen.

Completely agree.

For the GP: part of (any) gov's power is what you refer to as "autistically" pursuing a case. A large org will never be nimble or fast enough to catch criminals in the act or immediately afterwards. It balances that slowness by inexorably pursuing criminals, sometimes at greater expense than the cost of the original crime.

Would be criminals should believe that they might execute a heist successfully, but that they will need to always keep running because the gov is doggedly pursuing.

None of what I am saying is specific to Kim Dotcom, just trying to highlight to GP how governments execute business.

Mega succeeded Megaupload and together they operated freely for almost two decades. I think we can conclusively say they were not a threat to US industries.

The only threat that movies/music industry face are divided attention and changing tastes, it’s not pirating. They don’t want to face the reality of their situation and improve their products; people like twitch, YouTube, social media, TikTok, etc just as much as going to the movies or watching cable television or listening to Spotify.

>Megaupload was a severe threat

All problems smooth away the moment some based brogrammer chad puts in a pull request on a clone of Hyphanet's Opennet (call it Onionnet), and just swap out all the IP address variables for .onion address variables and clean things up.

Literally. I might do it myself even and I hardly know how to terminate a C string! Nationstates are going to love me dicking with the code...

>Mega will get you a (partial at least) red flag from intelligence / law enforcement.

I think this would flag my entire generation, at least back in the 2000s.

Mega (sorry: MEGA), not Megaupload, in this specific case.

(the opposite to the case this article is about)

Source for the final claim? Is this still the case? Shit Man I distributed a dataset via megaupload for a paper awhile ago. Am I now a target of the glowies?

See reply to antai below. MEGA, not Megaupload.

Re: source. Hopefully I'm consistent, you can go back through my comment history. I was raided by the police a bit over two years ago. When I got my stuff back (8 months later, no charges) the lead detective said that there was evidence I'd downloaded things from Mega, and that this was "suspicious", amongst a couple of other things.

I got the feeling she thought I was still guilty and had somehow managed to get away with the distribution of which I was suspected (or it was some kind of retro justification for gross violation of my rights and she was taking a front foot stance to minimise the chances I'd see what legal avenues are available in such situations - turns out very few to none).

She specifically mentioned as suspicious:

- history of downloading from MEGA

- using virtual machines

- having "tor" installed.

Interesting combination of cluelessness (wait until they're introduced to containers!). MEGA somewhat stands out in that bunch, in that there are lots of similar services as far as I know. Makes me wonder if it's a honeypot (but maybe not, because then they'd know the only thing I downloaded from MEGA was android ROMs).

Other than being outspoken on certain topics online, my browsing history is as boring as the next guy's. So I really think they put some weight behind MEGA activity.

>Am I now a target of the glowies?

Ready your proximity Geiger counters, they're already on their way (bellies full)!

Here's a thought experiment for you: if you were raped, would you want the government to give up prosecuting your rapist just because 10 or 15 years passed before they could locate them?

I'm not saying that this crime is on the same level, but Megaupload was at one time responsible for 4% of the entire Internet's piracy activity. And it wasn't a non-profit peer-to-peer file sharing community like The Pirate Bay or anything like that, it was a for-profit corporation directly profiting from stolen IP. Kim built himself a gigantic mansion off of other people's work.

And he certainly had the means and ability to consult with lawyers who almost certainly told him that what he was doing was incredibly risky.

Probably Kim Dotcom has done wrong, but I don't think he deserves to go to court and or prison in a country he has never resided in.

I'm not sure that can be applied consistently. Would you say the same about heads of drug cartels or human trafficking rings (not equating these to Kim, as I'm sure you understand)?

I think you should build your argument a little bit more.

I’d say, why not say that also for drug cartels? The only reasonable argument that comes to my mind is that some big cartel head might have local government influence, but that does not apply to Kim and New Zealand, right?

Another possible argument would be that the damage has been done elsewhere. But in the case of the dtug cartel, if there are victims in 20 countries that why would any third party have priority for enforcing their law?

When is the last time the head of pretty much any drug cartel was extradited to the USA?

No because they have committed serious violent crimes. Human trafficking is not the same as enabling and profiting from internet piracy.

His choice was to build a lucrative service off U.S. consumers, knowing the service's popularity was in pirating content, mostly created in the U.S.

I still don't understand how could he got an extradition to US.

He doesn't have US nationality and he was living most of his life in Germany and New Zealand.

We have copyright treaties signed by most nations. I think the copyright infringement crime shall be judged at the jurisdiction the suspect is living and committed the suspecting act.

More than 100 countries have extradition treaties with the US, and extraditions go both ways.

(Sample https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57883892 )

Meanwhile nothing for mega corporation pirating data to train AI.

It’s not pirating. It’s transformative and fair use. Derivative even in some cases. Each piece of content is but a grain of sand on an island.

It’s called the open internet.

It's pirating when these scrapers are ignoring terms of user and whatever the AI equivalent to robots.txt is as has been widely reported as happening.

Key here would be transformation rather than reproduction?

Youtube is mentioned in the 2013 brief:

>b. According to the YouTube “Terms of Service,” users who upload content to YouTube retain all of their ownership rights in their content. By uploading their content to YouTube, however, such users grant YouTube a license to use, reproduce, and distribute such content. >

>c. In general, the further reproduction and distribution of videos that are taken from the Youtube.com platform violates the copyright of the individual who uploaded that video to Youtube.com.

I my country making a copy of copyrighted works is illegal unless you have permission from the copyright holder.

It’s impossible to use a copyrighted work to train without making a copy of it.

So how much of a book of poems can I assemble from other books of poems and spit out as an ebook on amazon before it is not "transformative and fair use"? Few words, sentence, chapter?

It's called the open internet when the same rule applies to everybody.

This is one rule for corporations and another rule for individuals.

Additionally, there is often with little or no recourse when the latter are falsely accused.

Look and the frustration of YouTubers evoking DMCA takedowns for including 5 seconds of a commercial song accidentally.

Training is not pirating, but generating copyrighted data is.

You pirated all the books you have read, all the movies you have watched, and you're pirating this message right now.

Show me the money.

This Kim dude. Neverending story.

Amiga (never heard of him during my scene time), then his alleged mobile ISDN service, MEGA.

He seemed like the shady poster child for every trend who got stopped before jumping once more publicly on Crypto.

He were at the top of the leader boards in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 too.

[0] https://venturebeat.com/games/kim-dotcom-modern-warfare-3/

He has done some shady stuff in Germany with stocks

then used those proceeds to launch his other businesses

I really enjoyed Megaupload & rapidshare those were almost as good as the WaReZ days if not better: direct links to any digital content without waiting for seeders

It's a shame. Arresting Dotcom won't do anything to curb piracy in fact it would raise the stakes even higher and more untraceable leading to more uncensored content that would be deemed "harmful"

Dotcom should've chosen Russia or China instead of NZ but obviously the quality of life isn't quite up to par with NZ. Russia dacha outside moscow would've been great for him without worries of US extradition.

What exactly has Mega done that Dropbox hasn't? In my eyes they're basically the same product, the only difference being Mega's edgier tone.

You can just read the charging docs.

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-edva/legacy...

> On or about February 13, 2007, ORTMANN sent an e-mail to VAN DER KOLK entitled “my concerns about the thumbnails table.” In the e-mail, ORTMANN asked VAN DER KOLK to create “a dummy lifetime premium user,” stating that “[t]his is very important to prevent the loss of source files due to expiration or abuse reports.”

The company was literally reposting copyrighted material under puppet accounts.

It's about MegaUpload, not Mega. True, they both offer(ed) cloud-storage and public sharing, but MegaUpload was much more on the shady side. They were stalling and ignoring requests for removing illegal content. Furthermore, they were even actively supporting uploads of popular content. I vaguely remember they were even paying some people. Over all, it was a platform strongly focused on distribution of illegal content. And this is just about commercial content. I wouldn't be surprised if it also was popular for porn and abuse-content.

IIRC you had to pay for "premium" on MegaUpload, but if you uploaded a file that got downloaded many times, you'd be granted X months of premium (or lifetime premium, can't remember)

This is about Megaupload, completely different business.

Not completely different, actually, they're pretty much the same.

The only difference is the "we encrypt everything so we don't know what users upload" trick, which seems to have worked so far (and branding and stuff).

Dropbox scans shared files and checks hashes against known-pirated material. It's not just and "edgier tone", one actually makes an effort to take down infringing material and the other tacitly (and at time explicitly) condones it.

I don't think Dropbox has released a song featuring this many famous musicians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Wvn-9BXVc

I've found mega to be consistently faster and it's a little cheaper.

It feels like a decade ago, but I remember the issue being with how they dealt with abuse reports. To save storage space, they matched similar files. So if two people ripped a DVD and compressed it, they would just keep one source file, and generate 2 different metadata files, to avoid wasting space. So they'd have different filenames and creation dates, but only take up half the space. Then, when one got an abuse report, they would delete that metadata, but as long as one still existed, the source data never got deleted. Law enforcement called it a conspiracy to commit crime, megaupload called it smart database deduping. It was usually much more than 2 copies, so content owners were playing endless whack—a-mole while megaupload was barely shuffling a few kilobytes around.

Wasn't the allegation that Mega uploaded copywritten content to themselves to kick things off with something people wanted?

You confusing it with MegaUpload that was shutdown 12 years ago.

When MEGA launched Kim was well known enough where his new service got tracktion on it's own.

So (allegedly) like early Spotify

Didn't like the guy when he was in the news, but this is too long ago, give it a rest. Why does NZ even play ball on this, just tell the US to f off.

NZ elected a business-centric government last year. Since then, all government decisions involving individuals-vs-business have taken a distinct lean towards the business side.

Because NZ is a vassal state.

Because the US and NZ have an extradition treaty.

A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective.

I’d argue Kim was too successful and too unlikeable at the end of the day, and that was probably his downfall. Toward the end, MEGA had transitioned to actually partnering with hip hop artists for distribution.

The US has a long history of IP rights holders criminalizing new business models / protecting current models in law, and then a fair amount shaking down and sorting out happening as new technology hits the scene, going back to radio. Each of these waves has led to push / pull between distributors, retailers, artists and song writers, and whether or not you like it, that’s the system we have today.

MEGA was too early and too tainted (and run by an aggressively weird / antagonistic dude) to become Spotify. But, it wasn’t the wrong model using tech of the time. It was too early, and too successful, without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.

One thing you learn over the years is that people make up everything. I can't recall the exact quote but the character Frank Underwood once said something to the effect of "the law is the law, but the law is people and I know people". Meaning he could control the situation regardless.

The opposite also happens and you can see cases like this or Shkreli, Dotcom and others where they think being edgy on top of minor crimes will not get them in hot water because other people do worse but keep on the low down, but time and again you see these guys being made an example of, probably because a bunch of people dealing with their cases also start disliking them personally.

So I guess like, don't behave like an asshole generally, but specially if you're also committing crimes. Kinda like not breaking traffic laws if you have a dead body in the trunk.

Pedantically: MEGA runs today as a Dropbox-alike, and has very little to do with Kim Dotcom beyond his being involved at the very beginning and then departing quickly.

You're referring to Megaupload, which is entirely different despite the name similarity.

> A fair amount of “this is fine, governments enforce IP laws and that’s a public good” vibes in here, which is all a very reasonable perspective.

I'd say it would be a a reasonable perspective if his case was being tried where the offences actually took place and/or where he was a citizen of and not a country who refuses to give the same rights to non-citizens being tried there compared to citizens[1] and wasn't even where the offense took place. This is absolutely chilling for anyone who isn't an US citizen honestly.

[1]:https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511y42z1p7o

As for the reason, Mr. Dotcom has claimed to have been a supporter lf WikiLeaks and this was probably not of signifigance, but I would overall bet 10% that his less public involvement with WikiLeaks & WikiLeaks-type activity was part of the analysis that led to him getting targeted.

May be worth to compare the usual tactics of IP owning companies to what happened to Kim. I have a feeling that it could be shown that the kind of treatment he got was not very probable for a normal piracy case, even after accounting for his eccentric behabiour.

ALSO politically he was a failure but not so much that it was not worth paying attention to him as challenger of establishment. Even those normally ignorant of related topics but active in politics may have seen him as an agent eating their votes.

My favorite part of this was SOPA was being discussed on the same exact day they arrested Kim Dotcom, and they argued they needed SOPA to do what they did to Kim Dotcom. Kind of a useless bill.

I’m not sure I understand the comparison. Megaupload was a file sharing platform that we used to download mostly pirated material and although they had a music platform at some point, that wasn’t the primary method that most people interacted with Megaupload. The illegal equivalent to Spotify was Grooveshark, not Megaupload. The majority of Kim Dotcoms products outside of file sharing came long after Megaupload was attracting scrutiny. He was not a trailblazer, even Megaupload itself was a clone of Rapidshare. I’m sure we all remember the terrible album he used to launch his music platform which came after he was arrested.

> MEGA was too early and too tainted (and run by an aggressively weird / antagonistic dude) to become Spotify.

Megaupload was founded in 2005 and Spotify was founded in 2006, so it's unlikely that being too early was a factor.

You do know that they pushed it left and right as 'dropbox' share everything platform targeting pirate groups with referral money right?

He was not early or anything he was literally pushing pirated movies and TV shows

Politicians steal, make horrible decisions, and worst things and nothing happens. But you share movies and go to prison!

If anything, it's a cautionary tale that tech is only one dimension of the question of creating a process, service, or system that will be a net benefit to people (or even allowed).

A road paver is a great thing to have, but if I rip a three-lane highway through my neighbor's back yard, you can be damn sure someone's going to try and stop me.

Megaupload was not deleting content. They only deleted links to the content. So, if you had 10 links to the same video, and a copyright holder contacted them to delete their content under link #1, they would only remove that link but leave the rest (links and content) intact.

> It was too early, and too successful, without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.

In a way that makes it much easier to argue against the idea that IP protects creators and not their pimps.

> without cutting in the existing rights holders properly.

That's the killer, right there.

"existing rights holders" is a big deal, and one that has been ignored by tech bros for a long time.

As a [former] artist, and [former] musician, I can say that the tech industry has been cooking the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. The opportunity for individual financial and ego success is a huge driver for modern popular art culture (for better and for worse).

If we take that away, guess what happens?

No one wants to do it, anymore.

This may be an issue, with AI-generated creative content. Unless the AI is truly better than human talent (and "better" is in the eye of the beholder), it has the very real prospect of turning the commercial creative industry into gray goo.

[EDITED TO ADD] Watching the karma count on this post, yo-yoing up and down, has been fascinating. This seems to be an issue that people have very strong feelings about.

Pagers created a new business model for drug dealers. It didn't change the criminality of drug dealing.

He was not early at all.

this likable/unlikable narrative gives me chills. it’s just like with assange—(il)legal imperialism at play - basically a rogue country playing the world police for the capitalist class, yet we’re fixated on personalities. it's like mistaking the finger for the moon.

The government enforcing IP laws is certainly not a public good, in my book.

I also don't think you can be held responsible for what your users do with your service, especially if you are complying with DMCA requests.

They're shooting the postal service just because it bothered some powerful people.

This is happening because Media is a powerful lobby in the USA and Mega is a nobody.

Just another example of government corruption, move along.

Yeah it's totally fine. No uncomfortable thoughts bubbling below the surface here.

Do you think UK will sign an extradition order for JK Rowling to go to France over a olympic harrassment lawsuit? Or USA will sign an extradition order for Elon Musk if France asks in that same lawsuit, or if UK demands he be extradited for participating in incitement from abroad?

Something tells me the extradition orders only work one way — if the US Government wants it.

Who knows. To be fair it took years and seems to have been given due process. But how much of it is “leaning on” the countries? Recently on his X interview with Musk, Trump bragged about “how quickly” he was able to use US leverage to extradite people they wanted, from LATAM countries! And everyone was like “right on!”

Anyone know why this is prioritised? Wasn't this copyright stuff from like 2 decades ago? Just genuinely curious.

If the media industry is successful in using DMCA against foreign residents to put them in US jail, it'll be a huge deterrent against any other similar people hosting similar platforms in countries with US extradition treaties.

The indictment was a bit under 12 years ago. As the article covers, Dotcom initiated extensive legal proceedings, with one argument going to the (NZ) Supreme Court in 2020, about whether he could legally be extradited. Presumably we’ve reached the end of those proceedings.

He fought it all the way and ran out of options, we have a more right leaning government now who want to suck up to the US

He's a popular voice of dissent on Twitter and someone must be cracking down right now. Scott Ritter is another--he had his passport seized recently and his house raided by the FBI a week ago.

Sad news. I don't really know if there's more than the file sharing thing behind this, but the US is cracking down too hard on this guy. Seems unfair, tbh.

The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO.

I do not think he's a criminal. A big (massive, maybe) fine should have been more than enough.

I disagree, he has engaged in a deliberate media/public personality building campaign over the last 12 years to make the public sympathetic to him and his plight.

>>I do not think he's a criminal "He was arrested in 1994 for trafficking in stolen phone calling card numbers. He was convicted on eleven charges of computer fraud, ten charges of data espionage and various other charges in 1998 that he served a two-year suspended sentence for.[7] In 2003, he was deported to Germany where he pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and after five months in jail awaiting trial he received another 20 months suspended sentence" (From Wiki)

>>The raid at his NZ home was already taking it too far, IMO. Yeah it was over the top, but he had firearms on the property and bodygaurds....

I'm with you that he should have just been fined, but he made a tremendous amount of money very deliberately (despite his protestations) trafficking illeagaly in Warez, I geniunely think the US is right to go after and nail him.

As a New Zealander, our government should be far more judicous about who it grants visa's to - he should have prima facae been refused his original visa on the basis of his prior convictions (I am sure there is a good story about why this was (incorrectly) overlooked by NZ officials). This ultimately is not a problem of New Zealands government/judicial system making, they have very fairly given Kim every chance to appeal and hear his side of the story - whilst he engages in games of attempted political manipulation for his own aim. The chickens must come home to roost at some point.

IMO I dont think Kim deserves the publics sympathy, the shield of New Zealand residency or that he is a good faith operator.

>I do not think he's a criminal.

I should have added "in the context of this lawsuit". An edit now would be disingenuous.

I wonder if people have forgotten the legal grounds on which the US claimed jurisdiction. I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it.

I guess one lesson from this is that running out of .COM domain names is not a bad thing, because it reduces the grip the American empire has on the internet.

It doesn't really matter because, as the dominant world power and arbiter of the world's currency, the US can invent legal grounds to do pretty much anything to anyone.

The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country. The US treasury will withhold the ability to transact in US Dollars from any country that does not report the holdings of US-adjacent persons every single year.

If you think you're out of reach of a country that treats their own citizens as criminals by default the minute they leave the country, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

His mistake was to host content in the US.

"Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said." - Jun 25, 2012

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/internet-file-sharing-giant-...

> I may be misremembering, but I think it was because megaupload.com was registered as a .COM, and the .COM top level domain is owned by Verisign, an American company, and therefore the US has jurisdiction over it.

You are definitely misremembering and spreading FUD backed by your biases.

He was hosting illegal material on servers geolocated inside the US. I'm sure if someone were producing and distributing illegal material (let's use the extreme example: child pornography, for instance) on NZ servers and networks, NZers would want to see them extradited.

It has nothing to do with "imperialism".

That tracks with the fact that they use a .nz now.

It is unconscionable that governments in both countries are spending time on this or chasing Assange or Snowden instead of the criminality of things like government warrantless surveillance, megacorp anti competitive actions, civil forfeiture, etc. Or the cartel of organizations behind this extradition that abuse copyright laws to keep things out of public domain. Or companies all exchanging our private information with each other, which inevitably gets released in a hack, which is far worse than a storage platform being used by some people to share songs or whatever.

Are any candidates actually against this farce? Or are they all simply working for the companies behind this?

It's complicated. Most career politicians like all those things you hate because it lets them outsource the state's dirty work. The state made constitutional commitments it can't quite keep and has worked around them. On the other hand, those workarounds are themselves becoming threats to the state in ways that have made some politicians willing to rebalance power. On the other hand, I do not want to name specific names of people to vote for, because few Congresspeople are actually hacking at the root of power. Remember when Obama was a Marxist and then turned out to just be another neoliberal?

To explain why, we must keep in mind that all states are in a perpetual crisis of legibility. They have more force than anyone knows what to do with, while having no idea of what happens in their territory or whom to use that force on. To make matters worse, most democratic states - and nearly all states in the Anglosphere - have been constitutionally handcuffed to restrict their investigatory powers. This is an existential threat to the state, and so the state will take any chance it can get to impose legibility upon the people by force, lest the state be replaced with something worse.

I've worded the above like some kind of conspiracy theory, so let's remember exactly who we're talking about: the "I'm-just-doing-my-job" types. If your job is to investigate crime, then the 4th Amendment is an annoying hurdle you have to think about constantly. But it's not a high hurdle to jump over because most criminals are profoundly stupid. Drug kingpins are more of a problem, however. Organized crime is the criminal equivalent of an MLM, so you can pick off a bunch of idiots at the exterior, but not people running the organization. This is where law enforcement gets creative, weaponizing things like tax law and - yes, civil forfeiture - to cut at the root.

The pattern of how democratic states deal with limitations on their power that prove inconvenient is simple: they cheat. Or at least, they cheat the spirit of the law, if not the letter. For example, if your job is to investigate foreign threats to the country, you're not fighting criminals. You're fighting the Borg[0] - an existential threat that learns from and adapts to everything you do, even the successes. For the CIA/NSA, having to get a warrant is like running a marathon while having both hands tied around your back and wearing a pair of cement shoes.

Data brokers are the perfect workaround. They built the perfect panopticon and used social engineering to get people to consent to it. The CIA and NSA buys shittons of their data and mines it to find threats to the state because it's significantly easier and less complicated than getting specific warrants to collect specific data.

Those abusive copyright laws that keep shit out of the public domain? Those were payments made to Hollywood in exchange for positive propaganda. Here, we're working around the 1st Amendment, not the 4th. The US government can't legally compel Hollywood to make propaganda, nor can they prohibit Hollywood from making movies that denigrate US actions. But they can still pay Hollywood to make propaganda[1], they'll downplay the critical movies to save face, and even if they don't, it'll make America look like they're aware of and fixing problems they have no interest in fixing. So when the US government treats a storage platform for stolen songs as an existential threat, it is specifically because they are fulfilling their end of a deal with Hollywood.

But there's a catch. Those constitutional restrictions were put in there for a reason. If the CIA can buy data from data brokers, than so can China's MSS. American lawmakers are so irrationally afraid of TikTok because China figured out how to use the CIA's own weapons against it. The government's defense of the TikTok ban is page after page of redactions. They can't publicly say they know TikTok is a Chinese intelligence asset without telling the judge enough information to blow the cover of every CIA agent in China, but the black highlighter[2] itself is an admission.

Same with the anticompetitive actions. The late 90s saw the US government bring the hammer down hard on the tech industry[3], and then suddenly stop. Why? Simple - the tech oligopoly became useful to American interests and so was given a pass, to the chagrin of America's other sweetheart, Hollywood. Politicians only realized how much power had been actually ceded to big tech by accident. Social media made the mistake of ceding power to Donald Trump, who used it to run for president legitimately, lost a re-election campaign, and then attempted a feeble self-coup. Twitter and every other tech company rightfully shut him down, but this exposed how much power they really had been given in the political process. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter in a vain attempt to restore Donald Trump's influence[4], ensuring that the concern over Big Tech would be bipartisan.

I still can't point you to a politician to vote for, but I can at least point you to an ideology and a person who talks about it: the New Brandeis movement[5] and Cory Doctorow specifically. Louis Rossmann is also a good option if Cory is too left-wing for your taste. Lina Khan is a huge figure in neo-Brandeis and she runs the FTC now, which is why the FTC has been trying to do its job again[6]. I single out antitrust here as it is the enabler of all the other abuses I've detailed above. You need economic centralization in order to get perfectly funded propaganda machines or privatized spying and censorship.

[0] I hope Star Trek is still culturally relevant enough for this reference to land correctly.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y

[2] https://www.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-h...

[3] Examples include the antitrust actions against Microsoft, the copyright actions against Napster and Grokster, and various legislative attempts to either force computer manufacturers to include copy protection hardware or force online services to have upload filters for copyright.

[4] This is an after-the-fact justification; at the time Musk was high off Tesla's stock price and bought Twitter basically in the same way one buys a bunch of shit they don't need off Amazon at 3 in the morning.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brandeis_movement

[6] And let us hope to $DEITY that she succeeds, lest we find ourselves living in South Korea.

The context is more nuanced that how presented by K.D.:

  the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided
  to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload"

See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case#Basis_of...

It only took twelve years, but the heroes working at the FBI are finally on the cusp of ending online piracy!

Much like Napster, his only real crime was success. If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble.

He paved the way for streaming and digital distribution of media. Megavideo in particular had the highest encoding rates possible at the time, even superior to YouTube.

Except, he paid people for, and promoted the upload of copywrited works. He knowingly participated and basically tailored his products to pirating. Some people love him, but he will see his day in court apparently, but no one wants to even deal with him because he's gone crazy.

> If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble.

In a world where opportunity costs exist, as they do for law enforcement, this makes sense?

YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.

Which kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

I expect different treatment for Pablo Escobar / Chapo level drug dealers vs a guy who gave some of his weed to a buddy of his for some cash and later bought a pizza with it.

They are both technically drug dealers, just one a bit more successful than the other.

> his only real crime was success.

Success even when obtained with some illegality is fine so long as it plays well with the interests of elites. Kim didn't just break the law, he also painted himself a target by upsetting people with power.

For all of his flaws, I think where I'd give someone like SBF a significant amount of credit is that he understood very well that if he wanted to do dodgy things he had to remain on the right side of those in power.

Kim hasn't played the game right. Had he tried to win friends from the start he may not be in the situation he's in now.

> his only real crime was success

Nonsense. He has a criminal history going back to the early nineties.

> “If nobody or barely anyone used Megaupload, he wouldn’t have been in as much trouble”

And if Captain Kidd hadn’t managed to raid any ships, he would have avoided the whole unfortunate hanging business. It goes without saying that unsuccessful criminals mostly don’t get caught.

The craziest thing about Kim is that he held the FIRST PLACE in competitive Call of Duty at some point while running the company.

I always thought that was impressive, and he was a good player but I remember him admitting st some point that he was paying people to play on his account which is what kept it at no. 1.

I know little about this case but remember the wild show Kim put on before his arrest. The way I saw it then was his colleagues pleaded guilty and where never extradited so my assumption was new Zealand would bend to his favour but I guess interpretation of rule of law is above precedence... I wish I could say I know what Im talking about.

I'm mostly curious about the timing. Wasn't the raid on his house in 2012? 12 years ago?

This raises an interesting question: when you piss off the current hegemon (for good or bad reasons, not the point anyways), where can you currently go to get out of its reach ?

Asking, because his "plan" is very likely that. Some folks have been know to travel in boxes inside a container [1]

All of the anglosphere is clearly not a good destination choice as they are basically all vassal states.

Russia does not look to hot right now either, and the PKR is basically not an option for a very long list of reason.

China ?

Any other suggestions ?

Asking for a friend.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn

New Zealand source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253465

I don't know why the entertainment industry is so angry. 500 mio. $ is less then Disney loses on a single movie these days.

As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

With some 'diplomacy', Julian Assange was brought home after near 15 years fighting for BS extradition charges.

The news and politicians in Australia follow almost lock step with whatever our US overlords allow us to say.

It's been more of a thing lately with them trying to secure the pacific away from China's sphere of influence and the biggest 'dumb' thing from our government is that silly submarine deal (under something called AUKUS) which is about as good as our F-35 jets purchased (totally useless IMO).

There's probably some bootlickers in NZ trying to gain political favour / power by brown-nosing with the US of A.

>As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

Fox News is an Australian product built to flood the US with far-right, pro-business outrage. We'll get out of your lane once you get out of ours.

All kidding aside, describing these sorts of things in terms of national influence is extremely unproductive. New Zealand wouldn't be turning itself into a pro-commercial-pirate haven or anticopyright haven but for the influence of the US[1]. The question regarding extradition is not "should we consider what Kim Dotcom did to be a crime[0]" but "do we abduct him to another jurisdiction to face trial." It's bikeshedding over the color of the wood on the electric chair.

[0] In general, extradition treaties only apply for acts that are crimes in both jurisdictions.

[1] Even China's pro-copyright, they just don't want to pay America for any of it. If they were anti-copyright they'd be freely sharing all the "IP" they keep stealing.

> As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

Australia and New Zealand have extradition treaties with dozens of countries, it's not just a US thing.

> As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

You got our attention by filling all our streaming channels with your shows.

As is common in the international film and television sector, a key driver of Australia’s ongoing production upswing came from an enhancement to its incentive schemes.

In July, the country’s national government increased the location offset program in its annual budget from 16.5 percent to 30 percent. Thanks to those changes, films spending at least A$20 million dollars (about $13 million U.S. dollars) in the country can claim back 30 percent of all expenditures on goods and services upon completion of the project.

Previously, it often was [already] possible for especially savvy producers to add to the guaranteed 16.5 percent offset and bring total support to 30 percent by cobbling together prior grant schemes — but the increases introduced last year provided global producers with a much-needed sense of ease and surety.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/planet-o...

> As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

Look at Sky News Australia, literally all they talk about is US politics.

My theory is that as US focus shifts to East Asia, Australia is being groomed as a proxy state. Not as a deliberate effort, just as a consequence of a lot of different things coalescing.

It's kind of interesting to see.

There would be less external influence in the latter case if the US wasn’t your main form of military and arms supplier.

Don't forget the Aussie influence on the US. Murdoch is Australian.

> As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

No you’re not. You’re seeing more TikTok influence but not US influence.

> As an Aussie observer, I'm seeing more US influence in our region.

Not an expert, but my guess is that there is (probably valid) concern about China. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that.

In your opinion why is the submarine deal/F-35 program "totally useless" for Australia? Are you saying it's the wrong equipment? Too expensive? Not needed?

He is probably going to blame this on Ukraine

Ever watched that show Monk with that villain Dale the Whale who had to go to prison? That's pretty much how I see Kim Schmitz rotting in jail: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMb6zUTVwAAQwPn.jpg

Haha wow, this brings back memories.

Are any of the people who were arrested for RIAA/MPAA violations still imprisoned? That was such a weird time to be a kid. Scared if I downloaded a Greenday mp3 my parents would get arrested for piracy and I'd never be able to work in computers.

Make sure your own kids' curiosity isn't stifled by such fears.

Oh yeah once they started cracking down I stopped watching any mainstream movies, music, etc., especially not anything less than 10 years old. You miss out on a banger here and there, but it's a lot safer.

Kim was not the robin-hood like figure he portrayed himself to be. If anything he was the opposite given the many illegal dealings he was engaged in before creating Megaupload, and his bad reputation in some German technology communities for being a rat. Kim also in all probability is guilty. I hold no love for Kim however I can't agree with this ruling. Despite Kim's conduct; the case against him has been so rife with so much extreme police and prosecutorial misconduct it should've been thrown out ages ago.

Some of the misconduct in this case includes but is not limited to:

- Abusing the power of a national security agency to illegally spy on him, which lead to the Prime Minister being forced to publicly apologizing due to the political fallout.

- Attempting to freeze his defense funds

- Performing a no knock raid utilizing a heavily armed anti-terrorism task force for a non-violent crime, which lead to the department being successfully sued by all parties for excessive force.

- Performing an illegal search by intentionally and knowingly filling out an improper warrant, and having had the crown admit this.

- Sending the evidence ruled to be illegally obtained to the FBI regardless

- Allowing a foreign government to maliciously apply to revoke someone's bail the day they can no longer afford their lawyer

- Already ruling that under New Zealand law you cannot be extradited for copyright infringement, but proceeding with the case regardless for the more flimsy fraud charges.

Kim is a bad person who very likely is guilty, but at what point do we draw a line and say the abuse of process has been so great it harms the reputation of the legal system to proceed? Cases are routinely completely thrown out for much less. It's frankly a travesty towards the legal system that this case has been allowed to continue, especially given the charges.

The guy is a total a hole, and at the end of the day megaupload was illegal and he knew it, but just wanted to get rich.

Additionally he's now a conspiracy theorist and Russian shill. He just spouts incorrect stuff on his Twitter every day.

Friendly reminder to all of us that copying is not stealing (neither in the dictionary sense nor in the legal sense) and that loaded language like that hinders objective discussion.

It is rumoured (by locals) that Kim Dotcom has been allowed to reside in New Zealand (being a German/Finish) on the basis that he spent his money in New Zealand. I don't think they are in a rush to extradite him to the US, and the US will not come after NZ for the money spent.

How is that a rumour? That's literally how the Investment 1 and 2 resident visa worked before 2022 when they finally scrapped the program. You invest at least NZD $750,000 in growth investments. Given that that's 450k USD, and kim dotcom's net value was quite a few million, that was barely an inconvenience. Then he just needed to spend the majority of his time in NZ to qualify for citizenship.

NZ is not a random atoll island in the Pacific. Kim Dotcom is wealthy, but still way far, way far from having enough money to bribe the whole country like that.

Orders of magnitude are a thing.

about time. delayed justice is an injustice. making millions via copyright infringement has a price; prison.

In which case why isn’t he in a New Zealand prison after being found guilty by a jury of his peers in New Zealand?

I'm sure we all could appreciate Mega for what it was, and we could also debate the charges and go back and forth on extradition laws. The reality is that according to the DoJ, US citizens were victimized by a service that used US assets (servers) within its territory. That opens the doors for litigation. This happens literally in every country that can enforce it.

Like Reddit, HN has a crowd of anti-US folks with terrible sentiment until, you know, when they need the US or need a job in the U.S. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Yay get him out of NZ. All he does now is parrot propaganda for the CCP, Russia, and Hamas. Guy has lost the plot.

> ... cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million ...

This bit is standard, trope-style make-believe.

However:

> ... paying users [...], which generated more than $175 million in revenue for the [Kim Dotcom's Megaupload] website.

.. if they can prove that bit, it's a much more damning case.

Not the usual hand-wavey 'We were banking on several thousand dollars of revenue from each of the 12yo's we're going after' claims, but actual, demonstrable, revenue that was misdirected.

He could flee to Russia

Fuck the MPAA/RIAA

Who backed him?

It's been 12 years.

I wish the 6th amendment meant more.

One-way flight to Russia? His Twitter feed for the last decade does give merit to the idea that he's been on the payroll.

What other options does he have? I really wish people wouldn't cheer when smallfolk like us get crushed by the state. Not saying he's perfect, but what him and others have to suffer seems vastly out of proportion to what they did

sad to see that kind of comments in HN. I feel that 10 years ago there was more room for accepting that a political opponent should be free to speak up. now our educated masses are pushing for prison and extradition because they don't belong to the axis of good.... you def cannot be for opensource and its values and say things like that

Ah yes, the classic. Everybody who opposes american foreign policy is labeled. Tweet about opposing the genocide in gaza? Oh dont listen to him -- he is pro khamas. Tweet about opposing war in ukraine arguing that NATO is outdated and not in the interest of Ukrainians? Oh pay no attention to him -- he is on the communist payroll.

I understand when leaders in politics or industry make these character-assasination attacks as they do it for their own interests (political or economical) but why do you do it? Why would normal people throw baseless accusations like this? What is your motivation? What skin do you have in this game? Is your argument really "Kim Dotcom is an agent because he is opposing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and he is against a forever war in Ukraine"?

He is presumably some guy that youve never met that happens to be fighting against the US government and its copyright laws so why are you making these comments? Are you so passionate about copyrights because you are an artist that has lost money because of mega? What motivates you?

I'm not a fan but do you have real proof of this conspiracy theory? It's very popular to accuse people of being on Russia's payroll now. Rather unfortunately it dumbs down the movement to hold Russia responsible for invading Ukraine.

Just like trump eh?

Is everyone you don't like a Russian spy?

if he had a dmca process and it was followed, what's the crime?

He must be mega disappointed

Kim DC is not a likeable or admirable person, but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.

It appears very similar to the treatment of Ross Ulbricht, Assange, maybe even Snowden?

These are the equivalent of white collar crimes (typical massive frauds from the finance sector, etc) but they are getting a blue collar punishment of decades in jail that a successful and persistent street drug dealer could receive, NOT the few years in comfort camp prison that white collar frauds usually get.

One of these things is not like the other. Ross Ulbricht was part of a murder for hire scheme, and was not a whistle blower or anything close to a reporter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...

White collar crimes should be punished with the same vigor as blue collar ones. White collar crimes mostly steal money, at scale. Insufficient money is a huge cause of suffering—people don’t get to retire at early, they and their kids don’t get the opportunities they would have had otherwise.

You can be a drug dealer that doesn’t hurt anybody.

I remain unconvinced that the relative punishments of the two categories is either pragmatic or fair, mind you.

US Gov's revenge-deployment machine was first put in motion at the request copyright industry (which funds elections).

Through the 2000s and 2010s, legislators (and by extension LEO agencies) were extremely responsive to whims of copyright lobbyists. ex: ICE agents patrolling events for locals selling knock-off goods.

It was so pervasive, news orgs noticed it - and even covered some non-sensational incidents. Though I don't recall journalists ever following the money.

>but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.

Seems to be pretty much how the US government operates on these high profile tech cases. They are going to turn you into a martyr.

Ross is a great example of this. He received a double life sentence + 40 years + no chance of parole. By comparison, El Chapo, a dude who most certainly ordered the deaths of many and imported billions of dollars of drugs, only got a SINGLE life sentence + no chance of parole.

That is not justice, its a message.

He's not one of "them" (bankers, politicians, lobbyists).

Street dealers as well: not belong to "them".

See how Epstein was punished in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Legal_proceedi...

"On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and [...] allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week."

That's for a horrible crime. Not for allowing people to copy some audio and video files for entertainment purpose.

He was one of "them".

> but this vindictive pursuit seems even worse.

It's been profitable for the US agencies that stole millions for KDC

https://www.techdirt.com/2015/03/27/how-us-government-legall...

Don't forget Aaron Swartz.

Are the actions of these individuals really the equivalent of financial fraud?

Assange and Snowden especially, who revealed to the public crimes perpetrated by agents of the US federal govt.

Bernie Madoff got real prison time for his white collar crimes.

You know how it is. You search someone's home, you set aside the evidence, and you promptly forget about it for 12 years. I dislike Kim Dotcom as much as the next gal or guy, maybe even more, but this is weird.

Don't forget they helicopter-dropped a heavily-armed swat team onto his property to execute the search of his home.

Illegally, extra-judicially. Although it was mainly NZ authorities who overstepped their bounds by allowing it.

Thats just how much time money buys you in appeals, challenges and what not.

YouTube has a thousand to a million times more copyrighted content than Megaupload ever had. And no, not all of it is via partnerships with the copyright holders. Kim's problem apparently was that he didn't bribe Congress.

YouTube didn't bribe congress. They built significant tooling that gave the rights holders what they wanted, even beyond what the law required them to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....

To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.

This is a place where “intention” matters to the courts. A lot of these laws require the platform to make a “best effort” at preventing illegal uploads. YT is making an effort and claiming it’s their best.

Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....

> Kim's problem apparently was that he didn't bribe Congress.

Can you elaborate? Is there concrete evidence of this or just a general feeling that it must have happened?

you could argue that YouTube is "trying" to not have illegal content. i don't think Mega was "trying" very hard.

You really need not look any further than this thread for what-about-isms and attack-the-man arguments. The fact Hacker News of all places is going to bat for the RIAA and US Industrial Complex leaves me disappointed. Top comment reads something like "Yea but maybe its time to call it quits", well I guess that's how meaningful fights should end, giving up because the adversity is too great or the fight has lasted too long. Shame.

Please don't take HN threads into offtopic flamewars, especially not meta ones. Those do more damage than the thing you're complaining about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you had legally purchased DVDs and blu rays during mega-upload's time, and hadn't tried to decrypt them for backup purposes (thus circumventing copyright measures, also using tools developed mostly by "outlaws"), those discs would now be suffering from bitrot and becoming unplayable.

But now we're moving away from physical media, we're fast moving to a world where all you can even "own" legally is a DRM laden copy that can be revoked at any moment by the digital store front providing it. Your windows 11 upgrade requires hardware TPM (a form of hardware DRM that everyone used to really fear) chip support to even install.

And this seems to be the world the hacker news what and tech crowd really wants. I personally miss the old mid 2000's slashdot days when everyone knew better. I haven't changed -- they changed.

> The fact Hacker News of all places is going to bat for the RIAA and US Industrial Complex leaves me disappointed.

The real trend on HN is low-effort comments like this that generalize about HN. How about making an actual argument defending Kim Dotcom?

> Top comment reads something like "Yea but maybe its time to call it quits" ... Shame.

But ... what happens to your point when your comment becomes top-voted like it is now? Is HN redeemed because apparently everybody on HN agrees with you that HN is terrible?

> US Industrial Complex

At this point I wish Eisenhower hadn't coined the famous phrase. Everything gets called some variation of Foo/Bar Industrial Complex which sounds smart and describes nothing.

Naming of Hacker News is like Open AI.

I'm convinced that online discourse is overrun with LLMs shilling for various corporations and governments based on how many sycophants and bootlickers suddenly appeared on every social media platform after chatGPT went public.

> RIAA

There is something about treating the RIAA as the scary internet boggy man in 2024 that just seems so quaint.

Funny thing, i stumbled upon HN because as a youngster i searched for news about...hacking.

>The fact Hacker News of all places is going to bat for the RIAA and US Industrial Complex

Hacker News of all places! Never would have expected a website created by a billionaire venture capitalist to lean into intellectual property absolutism. Completely out of character for venture capitalist community to bend the knee to industry associations.

Kim says "Oops Don’t worry I have a plan" https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1823993237931221340

Good. He has had a major hardon over Joe Biden for years and his X posts indicate such.

Lately, as other pointed out, he's been a ccp/russian/who knows shill.

He did some interesting things, some not legal - others served their time he wandered off rather than trial.

I am not particularly sympathetic to Kim Dotcom personally; but: Intellectual Property is illegitimate, anti-social, immoral. We should oppose its enforcement, both within states and in international contexts.

I am reminded of Eban Moglen's "dot-communist manifesto" of 2003, worth a read:

https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html

There's also the matter of the USA being able to enforce its legal norms on people living in other countries, via instruments like extradition but also sanctions for less-friendly world states.

I'm not a fan of Kim but....

Basically, this is a win for big money interests and the powerful in the US. It was only a matter of time before New Zealand caved. Meanwhile the US has become a banana republic as demonstrated by the lawfare being waged against the Republican party and it's leading candidate for the presidential election.

For those supporting this change in position by New Zealand, when this erosion of rights used against you remember that you reap what you sow.

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