Slashdot Mirror
FBI Asked Megaupload To Preserve Pirated Files, Then Used Them Against Dotcom
avxo writes "According to an article on the New Zealand Herald, Kim Dotcom says his team has evidence showing that the Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant on Megaupload in 2010, forcing it to preserve pirated movies. According to Mr. Dotcom, those preserved movies are the center of the latest legal battle. 'When the FBI applied to seize the Megaupload site in 2012, it said the company had failed to delete pirated content and cited the earlier search warrant against the continued existence of 36 of the same 39 files.' He added: '[t]he FBI used the fact the files were still in the account of the ... user to get the warrant to seize our own domains. This is outrageous.'"
That's where the FBI's case is going to go. Everything I've read tells me that the FBI, their Australian exponents, and the other parties involved broke too many regs to be able to bring a real case against Megaupload. This is just one more nail in the coffin.
The goverment bought and paid for by hollywood over the last decade would pull out every illegal dirty trick to get there way once again?
I'm not shocked. That's normal now.
Best get used to that kind of shit. This is the path we have chosen. Or someone did...
Speculate much? Imaginative speculation anyway.
No. The content industry has a continuous campaign against internet companies which help to distribute material. The same players have gotten other country's law enforcement to act on their behalf even when what they were doing wasn't actually illegal. Getting the US enforcement agencies (note I did not call them law enforcement... just 'enforcement') to break the law in such an overt way is proof of the power and influence these content providers carry.
I will not miss them. They are a cancer on progress. Volunteer entertainers are popping up everywhere just to get a million likes instead of a million dollars. They can't compete against that kind of currency.
So is this how things are run in "The Nation of Laws?" If whatever was done is lawful, then I rather stay put.
Someone will have a lot of work to convince me to immigrate to the USA.
The trial is the punishment.
Legal requirements on technology companies are often poorly written, and not actually sensible, as the lawyers involved may not properly understand the internet.
It's quite plausible that they used standard boilerplate 'Do not delete, modify, or ...the file at http://.../ which could not reasonably be read as allowing them to be pulled offline, as that would be a modification.
Possibly. It depends on how much truth there is behind both sides claims. Neither the Feds nor Kim have much credibility here, and both have a history of distorting as much truth as possible to get their way. I don't envy the ones who have to try and cut through the bullshit and figure out exactly what needs to be done.
But there is something in the law that protects megaupload from this kinda BS. They complied with a search warrant and held the files on their system like FBI asked, now they are being shut down cause they kept them.
There is nothing in the law that protects them. The law is there to protect the FBI and enable it to do whatever it wants. For example, it's been legal for the past several years for evidence collected from a search warrant to be used even if the search warrant is later found to be invalid. Evidence collected without a search warrant is also admissable; The so-called "poisoned fruit" laws were struck down by our new, ultra-conservative, supreme court. And establishing probable cause has gotten a whole lot easier thanks to expansion of police powers -- for example, let's say your tail light is busted, your criminal record is totally clean, but the officer suspects you may have drugs in the vehicle. That suspicion alone is a reason to call over the K-9 unit and allow it to crawl all over, under, and around the vehicle. If it barks, that's cause to search the vehicle. And by search, I mean completely dismantle and leave on the side of the road in pieces. Oh... and you're responsible for the tow. Even if they still find nothing. Bonus: Dogs were found to only be effective about 2/3rds of the time in a recent study... and had a false positive rate of 1 in 8. In other words, 15% of the time, the dog indicated the presence of drugs when none were found (even in trace amounts).
Don't kid yourself... procedural mistakes won't derail the case. Maybe, in bygone days, the police were required to follow all laws and procedures and if they screwed up the guy walked, but not anymore. Getting tough on crime means that we now don't let little problems like a lack of evidence, or tainted evidence, get in the way of justice. And of course, then there's confessions... -_- Many of which are forced out of suspects.
The police don't care who their guy is; They just need a guy. There are no innocent people in the world anymore... there's just guilty, and not yet guilty.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Hidden at the bottom of the story, in internal emails Mega said they had 2,000 users with those 39 infringing files. They weren't supposed to delete the NinjaVideo account, but what about the other 1,999? If you believe one side is right, why not tell the truth about why that side is right? Why the need to mislead and lie? (Answer - writers try to mislead users users like tnat when they know the truth isn't on their side.)
they're the Federal Bureau* of Investigation. They are an office of the Government. Ergo, they are the Government.
*From the French, literally office.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
No, over 2000 users uploaded these files. Mega is trying to use the structure of their site where they hashed an upload and only kept one copy of the file to say that because there was only copy and because NinjaVideo had uploaded 36 of these files at some point (because NinjaVideo uploaded thousands if not hundreds of thousands of files), they couldn't delete those files because the order from the DHS instructed them not to. But that's a ridiculous assertion— even if they were told not to delete the files (really they were just told not to delete the NinjaVideo account, so they're using a liberal interpretation to include these files) they had an obligation to prevent the files from being used for further illegal purposes.
Phrased another way, a court order requiring preservation does not mean Mega is allowed to continue to allow others access to those files and continue to break the law. Those 36 files were accessed, downloaded, and shared illegally after the point at which they were required to be preserved, and access removed under the DMCA.
Mega cannot use a design component of the site which was done for cost purposes, as a defense against criminal liability.
You expect me to believe that Megaupload couldn't not-link those other 1,999 people to those files? Really? Maybe they had to keep the files, but they certainly didn't have to allow a bunch of other people to create links to and download it.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Entrapment? OK, maybe there was entrapment, but why would the FBI even need to do that? Megaupload was swamped with freely downloadable copyrighted material. Users paying for premium access to download that stuff was Megaload's cheif source of income.
Most likely because, any time someone gave them a correct notice, Megaupload would delete that stuff on demand. This means that what they were doing was legal under the terms of the DMCA and equivalent rules all around the world. The FBI needed a way to interfere with that process so that Megaupload would behave "illegally" so that by the time they found out about the trick, the FBI would have got some dirt on them (on the principle that everybody is guilty; they just don't know it yet).
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
It isn't. MegaUpload DID make infringing links nonfunctional promptly upon report.
The indictment (have you read it?) is that they didn't take down the underlying files which were still accessible via other links which had NOT yet been reported as infringing.
I'm not sure how this gels with the language of DMCA 512(c) which states "remove OR DISABLE ACCESS TO" [emphasis mine], but that demonstrates bad faith on the part of the FBI.