“This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood,” he says. “Mega has become a re-election pawn.”
The sad thing is, as flamboyant a character as he is, he's probably right.
I don't know about "re-election" pawn. But this whole thing is certainly a pawn in the game between popular media consumption and rights holders. I really can't see left or right taking a stand in favor of Mega's position in this.
I can quite easily see this as a move by the Obama DoJ to mollify the content industry after SOPA fell through, so they wouldn't follow through on their threat to not donate. Colour me jaded, but I can easily see him (or any recent US politician) doing that.
It seems extremely likely the government could have proved that Megaupload was built on copyright infringement. But instead they're just going to come out discredited, making it harder for such actions to succeed in the future.
All that's happened here is that they've taken down one player among many, and their ability to get the rest is lessened. That's not what they wanted here.
1. the intimidation factor of the US government willing and able to do anything to any company over "intellectual property", including foreign ones, even if it falls well outside the legal jurisidiction of any state.
2. forcing the hand of foreign jurisidictions to expedite US government processes to carry out these types of activities on pain of economic issues, e.g. the infamous trade blacklists, or other on-going diplomatic relations.
3. the acquisition of assets and resources for the federal governments budget (this runs into billions every year that is siezed).
4. minimum total resource usage for highly effective results means that very little political or judicial capital risks being spent. Someone somewhere in government has likely benefitted greatly from this outcome or certainly will in future even just for the potential to recreate the same type of results.
5. the creation of precedent that causes jurisidictions formulating their own domestic rights and justice system around new technology to reconsider what is the norm or what is pragmatic based on global "standards" or actions. This is particularly strong pressure for English-speaking/Anglo countries.
All this without judicial oversight and no domestic political repurcussions because of the accepted plutocratic culture of the US.
If this had been the actions of China or Russia against a US company, e.g. against Google/Youtube, I wonder how people would have felt then...
TL;DR. One could say this is about as "ideal" as it gets: "we, the US government, can get you anytime, anywhere, for anything with little effort or reason - laws are irrelevant".
On the other hand, this has shown people that the Megaupload business model was very profitable (which was a surprise to many, certainly I didn't think it could be).
People who feel themselves sufficiently hidden from the US government, or just don't care, are going to come along and create a raft of similar services to fill the same space.
I just think the same thing would have occurred regardless of who was in office. Gotta protect the old incumbent industries. Hollywood actors != Hollywood Businesses.
Your nose doesn't lie. MU was supposed to have one of the biggest IPOs before it was raided. And given that the minds that conspire to 'make the Market' are fixated on this new tech bubble its quite likely that this isn't over.
Legalese is the underlying factor in both, while SOPA clearly denoted its intention to target the biggest players in so called IP battles clear, CISPA still tries to achieve the same (State sponsored and enforced Corporate protectionism) using less defined, broad and wide spread powers.
Consider that protest has now been classified as a low level form of 'terrorism' according to the DHS. How easy will it become for someone who is sharing a leaked rip of the next upcoming 'blockbuster' a cyber criminal? (It will likely be an issue raised by all the proponents of SOPA and PIPA whose IP/Hollywood lobbyists are wine-dining as we speak.)
You make the deadly assumption that they intend to enforce the letter of the Law as its 'clearly defined,' and nothing more. You also clearly neglect just how tightly bound Corporate and State alliances are, I would argue they are one in the same, you do realize that insider trading is legal for Congress/Senate members, right?
Joe Biden has long supported Hollywood; one of the reasons Obama chose him as a running mate was because of this support. Biden's track record on the Senate Judiciary Committee speaks for itself.
Don't kid yourself. Obama and Romney are owned by the same interests. All users of the internet are threatened by any politician that is backed by Daddy Warbucks Inc.
MAFIAA has rapidly descended from regulatory capture (anti trust et al) to legislative capture (DCMA, Sen Dodd) to finally executive capture (White House, DoJ, international arrests). Where they intend to go from here is anyone guess... Dictatorship? Hyperbole maybe, but only of the thinnest variety.
I never quite understood how the government could have the power to completely shut down a business before a court had determined the business' practices to be illegal. It seems completely backward to me.
In other well known laysuits against major publicly traded companies, for example the anti-trust suit against Microsoft or AT&T, the government wasn't able to take any action against the company until a settlement or verdict had taken place.
Even in other torrent lawsuits, like the isohunt.com lawsuit, those sites weren't shut down even after being served the suit. In fact isohunt.com is still operational despite the lawsuit that was filed a number of years ago.
So I wonder under what legal authority the FBI operates to completely shut down an entire business without a court order or ruling?
USA has a reputation for trumped up charges: mentioning money laundering charge allows police to seize everything. There's no money to request lawyers. Judges in USA are known to do ex parte and default decisions in favour of plaintiffs. And a history of sovereign immunity which means no compensation because police can lie that they did it in good faith. There's no liability for police to lie in USA.
There's no justice in USA against government abuse except through some gun amendment I hear.
I'm not sure about NZ though. Join your Pirate Party to fight against the anti-Internet American government.
Since the sentence (taking down MU's business and confiscating all of their property and money) has already been carried out, I'm pretty sure the FBIAA doesn't care.
The business can be rebuilt (perhaps at great cost), but since the NZ court order which led to the seizure of his property was also ruled to be "null and void", Kim is legally entitled to his property back.
I'd be suing like crazy now if I was in his position. And anyways, since computer hardware depreciates like crazy, wouldn't he be in a position to get cash to make up the lost value? Don't know about that one, but it would be the right thing.
A few law enforcement types are going to lose their jobs soon, I take it. (And if they were connected with this farce of a case, all the better)
In the US, the state is almost never liable for damages if the officers are performing their duties in good faith. This is true even if the officers (mistakenly) execute a completely illegal warrant leading to substantial financial damages to an innocent citizen. Obviously, this sets up terrible incentives for the state (why bother to double check your facts and procedures if there are no repercussions for getting things wrong?), but that's how the law is.
Yes it is: and like a number of such things, it stems from the War On (Non-White People Who Use) Drugs. The incentives regarding property seizure in narcotics cases are even more perverse, and lead to brazen de facto theft.
I think it was back in the 80s that Jello Biafra was arrested on drug charges and had property seized. The sheriff's office was able to legally sell the seized property before his trial. I don't know what happened to that law, hopefully it's been fixed since...
I think that's hyperbole. I understand the whole "damn the man" cynicism thing you got going on but there's two sides to the coin. When you work for law enforcement you get orders and you carry them out. These people are just like anyone else; honest people trying to get by. If anything it should be the ones giving orders who get canned.
>When you work for law enforcement you get orders and you carry them out. These people are just like anyone else; honest people trying to get by. If anything it should be the ones giving orders who get canned.
You could say the same thing about the cops in Russia who raid businesses that have gotten on the wrong side of the state or its business network. Of course it should be the ones who give the orders who get canned. But noone gets canned.
The definition of tyranny is "arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power". That accurately describes the current situation where authorities can, with no risk to themselves, freely take your property and destroy your livelihood even when you've broken no laws. The fact that the US can even do this to people in other countries should be concerning to anyone who values rule of law.
Ugh I knew that either the prison experiment or Nazis would come up. Hyperbole. It's a real fine line and equating some of the things people have retorted with to what's happened with MegaUpload isn't fair. They're not n the same level. Yeah, there's potential for abuse but at the same time I see this as a necessary evil. You trust and hope that they get things right most of the time. That's the social contract we all enter into unless we want anarchy.
But all I was saying is try to see things as the other side would. As the guys carrying out orders would. We have a hard time putting ourselves in others' shoes around here. Try it out and maybe what I said will sound just a little more reasonable.
First, making an honest mistake does not give you automatic immunity in any other legal area, and there's no obvious reason it should here. If I'm a private contractor following the instruction of Cisco systems and I destroy the electrical system in your house, I have to pay for it even if it's an honest mistake. Now, it's perfectly fine for Cisco and I to agree as a condition of my employment that they will take on responsibility for any damage I cause in their employ, but that's between Cisco and me.
If if we wanted to give such automatic immunity, the way to do this is simply to assume that an agreement like the one described above has been made: i.e., the government should have to compensate you. If state, acting as a collection of flawed humans, harms an innocent person, the state as a whole should have to compensate that person.
In the US, the police can take anything they want from you without compensation. For example, if you have a sports car and the police need to chase a suspect, they can take your car. If they crash it into a bridge and it explodes in a big ball of fire, that's your problem, not theirs.
>In the US, the police can take anything they want from you without compensation.
I think you are mostly wrong here, and WALoeIII 2 is mostly right, but I wanted to add some detail.
Certainly, if the police destroy your property inadvertently while pursuing a criminal, they are under no obligation to compensate you. It's considered tantamount to the criminal having destroyed it (and so you might be able to seek redress from him). But, it looks like if the police commandeer your property, they do in fact have a responsibility to compensate you, a la eminent domain. The Straight Dope article has good details. Choice quote:
> In United States v. Russell the Supreme Court was faced with a claim for three steamers commandeered by military authorities during the Civil War. The Russell court found it obvious that "the taking of such property under such circumstances creates an obligation on the part of the government to reimburse the owner to the full value of the service." The court continued, "private rights, under such extreme and imperious circumstances, must give way for the time to the public good, but the government must make full restitution for the sacrifice." The court concluded that the obligation to make full restitution was based on an implied promise "on the part of the United States to reimburse the owner for the use of the steamboats and for his own services and expenses, and for the services of the crews during the period the steamboats were employed in transporting government freight pursuant to those orders."
That said, things aren't always so clear:
>The Supreme Court hasn't said what happens if equipment is borrowed and returned damaged, but lower courts have been reluctant to award compensation in such cases. In Blackman v. City of Cincinnati, for instance, the Ohio Supreme Court refused to compensate a vehicle owner for a crash that occurred when police ordered him to chase a fleeing suspect. Other courts have followed suit.
I think the second quote was what was stuck in my mind when I wrote that comment. I knew I read about this somewhere; probably on The Straight Dope. Thanks for sharing the correction and context.
Sure, that's the law - but that is not the practice, that's not the facts on the ground. The moral panics over drugs and terrorism have expanded police powers such that it is de facto possible for the police forces to just steal from you. It's not legally theft: they've just redefined it, basically. It's similar to how the US government just effectively says "the things we do aren't torture, because we're doing them, and we condemn others for doing these things because they're torture."
If you have money, you have some recourse - but if you're an average citizen, the police can with any sort of drug- or terrorism-related charge, even if you are acquitted or the charges are dropped, de facto steal your shit and not reimburse you at all.
That's not all that protective when it comes down to it - all you need to do is redefine what 'unreasonable' means in law.
It's 'unreasonable' and not 'illegal' by the way - and the latter would be even easier to get around, because you just legislate 'this is legal now', no semantic tricks required.
Considering they were renting most(all?) of the hardware from third parties I doubt they were able to capitalize and hence realize deprecation on the servers. Its possible if the agreement was some sort of a "lease to buy" arrangement but I doubt it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "law enforcement types" who lost their jobs because of this mess-up immediately got hired by the MAFIAA. Provided that anyone actually loses jobs in the first place, which I doubt.
What exactly is it supposed to be an acronym for? MAFIAA at least has a clear meaning ("Music And Film Industry Association of America"), but FBIAA seems to only stand for "Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association", which doesn't have anything to do with copyrights.
I'm no real fan of MU or kim dot com but the way all this occurred taking down the guys whole business empire and putting him under arrest makes me think it can happen to any dot com company which I am (I trade in Europe, NZ and australia and a .com address seems the most logical to make it country agnostic)
I seriously hope he takes the NZ government for millions for being a bunch of FBI arse kissers.
And maybe he can use the wads of cash he gets to fund a start-up pirate party here.
This event may have made their brand a household name, but one would imagine it poisons the trust consumers would place on any storage service Kim would create in the future.
Once you have looked behind the curtain of government wheeling and dealing at such multi-billion situations you tend to believe that what Kim Schmitz is telling might actually be the closest we get to the truth.
Now we should all think about how such a case would/will be handled in a few years time based on the changes to civil rights / Internet regulations / totalitarian powers currently in the pipeline across most western societies.
2015:
I guess you will not hear about it other that a few of those who lost their files and were not immediately constraint with gag orders will mentioning it on some low frequented boards. Sites like TorrentFreak will then immediately taken off the net / silenced by gag orders.
A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing in the moment and will eventually get better over time.
> A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing in the moment and will eventually get better over time.
But of course, we don't care enough about all of that to bother using censorship-resistant technologies like Freenet or Tor hidden services because The Web is so much more efficient and convenient...
(Not trying to blame you -- I'm guilty of the same laziness myself.)
From Kim's reply: ...“We have already been served a death sentence without trial and even if we are found ‘not guilty’ which we will, the damage can never be repaired,”...
That pretty much sums up what the US Gov intended to do from the start - show that they don't need SOPA or whatever. Hopefully, Megaupload can sue the US Gov and get some money out of them, although that's probably not going to happen...
Very few (although it does happen), because generally law enforcement takes a lot of time and great care to build a case. They may allow a drug gang to operate for months or years before busting them. This case seems rather rushed.
As a thought experiment, I've wondered what would happen if prosecutors were required to go through a full trial every time they file criminal charges (no plea bargains, no dropped charges, and all the prosecutorial mistakes publicly recorded as evidence).
The feds are trying to have the servers wiped and evidence destroyed. Dotcom has tried to stop this as he believes the evidence on the servers is crucial for his defense.
The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.
> The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.
That is absolutely disgusting.
Let me get this straight - their logic is 'These guys did something illegal, and you have evidence that they didn't commit the crime in your possession. You need to destroy the evidence, because we're planning on charging you as an accomplice to that same crime.'
“This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood,” he says. “Mega has become a re-election pawn.”
The sad thing is, as flamboyant a character as he is, he's probably right.
[1] http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-lashes-out-against-corrup...