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Megaupload Founder Dodges Jail Again; Wife Under Investigation
New submitter xenn writes "The linked article, titled by TVNZ as 'Kim Dotcom bail appeal dismissed, funds released,' somehow doesn't quite capture the drama the lies within... 'Meanwhile, it emerged today that U.S. authorities are investigating Dotcom's pregnant wife, Mona Dotcom, as part of a world-wide sting on Internet piracy. Toohey said she had received a preliminary application from the U.S. indicating that Mona could have been involved in Megaupload.'"
Torrentfreak adds that U.S. attempts to put Kim Dotcom back in jail failed, and he's been granted access to his bank accounts to cover essential expenses (to the tune of $30+k per month).
The feds should be going after the users that upload the content, not the hosts.
Given the summary "$30+k", it depends on the value of "k".
BEDEMIR: Tell me, what do you do with witches?
VILLAGER #2: Burn!
CROWD: Burn, burn them up!
BEDEMIR: And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1: More witches!
Don't worry, they'll be going after the other witches/uploaders/pirates once they go through Megaupload's servers.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Are we reading the same Slashdot? People around here love rich technologists whenever they do anything that the Slashdot crowd considers good/interesting/cool. Kim Dotcom is hardly the only rich person to get plaudits; people can't fall over themselves fast enough with praise whenever John Carmack is mentioned, and Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) has a large fanbase as well.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If he has a mortgage on his $5 million house that alone will eat into most of that amount. And there are good reasons the fabulously wealthy would have a loan rather than pay cash, namely the fact that once you get to a certain amount of money, using it to generate more money is pretty easy. You'll probably come out better off with a loan with a crazy low interest rate (since you have the cash and income to cover it times 10) and invest the same money in something else (if you make even a 7% profit you come out well ahead).
I think the problem here is not that he's rich and probably of questionable morals, but that there is an imbalance of justice that is being applied. Here, there is a concerted effort to pursue an individual who is key in distributing probably millions of dollars worth in copyrights. Meanwhile, the justice system couldn't give two shits about prosecuting bankers for predatory loan practiced or curtailing insider trading among congress critters. As such, this event doesn't demonstrate one guy getting nailed for doing something wrong but rather one rich group going after a slightly less-rich individual to protect their profits. This activities of the former even extend to the non-rich individuals. Given this, it's hard to be cheerful when justice is not being applied for justice's-sake but rather for moneyed interests.
The problem with your argument is this: you assume that those who see a problem with the distribution of wealth think that we should not reward merit at all.
This is not the case.
What is the case is that the disparity of wealth, when it grows too extreme, does not drive industry; it does not build a middle class, and it rewards existent wealth as opposed to rewarding hard work, diligence and innovation. Especially when so much of it is hoarded in offshore accounts.
An extreme disparity of wealth leads to a third world economy (see also Mexico) and destroys the middle class. And historically, when it gets bad enough, it causes a nation to rip itself apart.
Furthermore, it leads to corruption of democracy, as we've seen in this country. From Citizens United to the "private fundraisers", too much of our system is bought and paid for by the concentration of wealth that we've allowed to develop in the hands of the very few. It warps both the social fabric, and
Are all successful people in the 1% evil? No. Are all of their gains always ill gotten? No. However, the concentration of wealth in this nation, the disparity of income for effort, has grown so extreme that it no longer furthers those things that capitalism is supposed to be good at promoting: hard work, merit, innovation and the rest of the values that it is supposed to drive.
Check your premises.
[...] while changing the rules of society in order to gain more and more and more.
To be fair, rather than changing the rules he just chooses to ignore them, or at the very least interpret them in a way that allows him to make millions of dollars at other people's expense. I completely agree that the current copyright and patent system is broken and unrealistic in a modern world, but that doesn't mean I think people should be able to become multi-millionares by helping people distribute other people's work.
He's Kim Dotcom. She's Mona Dotcom.
It's sad that we root for a scumbag like Kim Dotcom. It's sad, because he's an underdog criminals in a system of super criminals. Chris Dodd is no less scumbag criminal mastermind than Kim Dotcom, but Chris Dodd bribed the right people to make it seem like he's legit. Don't get me wrong, I also root for Kim Dotcom, but let's not forget he's a scumbag... he's just not as big scumbag as the "legal" scumbags that currently rule the world.
I can't think what attracted her to the millionaire Kim Dotcom.
Yeah, the rich technologist Bill Gates who has blown his billions on malaria research, HIV/AIDS research, composting toilet technology, etc.
What an asshole.
Come to think of it, Windows machines might be used for piracy. Maybe they should be investigating some folks in Richmond...
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Whats Virginia got to do with it?
> When, exactly, was Microsoft good, interesting, or cool?
In the mid- to late 1980s.
In those days, IBM a monopolistic corporate behemoth that suppressed innovation to protect their market, and we all suspected that their long term strategy in the PC marketplace was "embrace and extinguish", in favor of the more lucrative mainframe trade that restricted computation to people who could pay a lot.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had a reasonably well-documented OS with lots of hooks to hang extensions on, and decent development tools that weren't too expensive. MS-DOS opened up the machine and gave you convenient access to it at many levels, you really felt like you could do anything with it.
You may vacate my lawn at your convenience.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Kim Dotcom isn't a hero, he's a fraud artist. That said, if he has the resources and visibility to pry the lid off the copyright system and its hordes of legal goons, I'll at least give him partial credit. It's less about the actual money, and more about what you do with that money. Right now, copyright is largely used as a "rich get richer" weapon, in part because it is an expensive system to maintain and enforce. If someone halfway around the world decides to upload my app to RapidShare, I have to pay some suit-wearing prick a few thousand in legal consultations, just to get the ball rolling. So for the sake of a $20 piece of software, enforcing copyright makes my lawyer $2000 richer, and me $1980 poorer - assuming I even get my $20 back which is very unlikely.
Your Robin Hood comment is spot-on. Yes, I think Dotcom is a scumbag, but he's less of a scumbag than the thousands of executives behind Disney, Viacom, Sony, Time Warner. He'll also be much easier to take down, even after he takes a bite out of those media cartels. Or, as we radicalist nutbars say: "the end justifies the means".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The only boats the contemporary US ecomony raises are yachts.
Where did the last US generation shop? Sears, Montgomery Wards, JC Penney. Where does this generation (have) to shop? Walmart and Best Buy. That ain't progress, people.
No, I don't think so. The desired result has already been achieved -- they have wrecked his business.
All that is happening now is after-the-fact justification for wrecking the business and to avoid accusations that the sole purpose was not to go after a criminal, but to wreck a business that some powerful people did not like.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I completely agree that the current copyright and patent system is broken and unrealistic
that doesn't mean I think people should be able to become multi-millionares by helping people distribute other people's work.
That *is* the current copyright system.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face