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Kim Dotcom Regrets Not Taking Copyright Law and MPAA "More Seriously"
concertina226 writes Kim Dotcom has spoken out about his long battle over copyright with the U.S. government and his regrets about the events that have led to his arrest ahead of his bail breach hearing on Thursday that could see him return to jail in New Zealand. "Would I have done things differently? Of course. My biggest regret is I didn't take the threat of the copyright law and the MPAA seriously enough," Dotcom said via live video link from his mansion in Auckland, New Zealand at the Unbound Digital conference in London on Tuesday. ... "We never for a minute thought that anyone would bring any criminal actions against us. We had in-house legal counsel, we had three outside firms working for us who reviewed our sites, and not once had any of them mentioned any form of legal risk, so I wish I had known that there was a risk."
> We had in-house legal counsel, we had three outside firms working for us who reviewed our sites, and not once had any of them mentioned any form of legal risk, > so I wish I had known that there was a risk.
Maybe you should have hired LAW firms....
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
.. but we know the goddam risks.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Whoever loses
We win
Never before I caught myself rooting for the MPAA. If only just a tiny little bit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What he was doing may or may not have been legal.
What he didn't evaluate was the risk that the MPAA et al had bought off/co-opted the US government, who decided they were going to go into the business of strong-arming people when they don't have an applicable law.
You can't plan for stuff like that.
From the sounds of it, no NZ law was broken, he's yet to be charged with anything for which there's an actual law in the US, and the US government is seizing his assets before they're proven he's done anything wrong.
You can't fight a nation state acting on behalf of a cartel of corporations.
Because it doesn't matter what the law says at that point.
As I understand it, he never actually committed copyright infringement. So he's being charged with some made up offense which isn't a law anywhere.
At that point, it's just a show trial.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Due dilligence or what ever New Zeland calls it. Your legal counsel, both in house and outside firms did not due there due dilligence! Sue them for the whole amount plus pain, suffering, incarceration, etc.
He knew full well that there was risk. He just didn't give a shit. The guy is a moron.
He seems to think the laws didn't apply to him.
of the mouse!
They thought they'd face civil suits.
What they got blindsided by was criminal charges, where they'd be sent to jail.
Kim Schmitz started out in the BBS days and did exactly the same thing back then: providing storage for people to upload and swap "warez" on his BBS site. Google "Beverly Hills BBS" and "House of Coolness BBS". He was reading and archiving everyone's messages and when the police in Germany cracked down on him he turned on his former colleagues and friends and gave everyone up to get a better deal for himself. He was also convicted of calling card and computer fraud, a few years later he was getting rich on an insider deal scam with letsbuyit.com for which he was also convicted.
However you might feel about hollywood abusing international leverage to break into his home, make no mistake: Kim thrives in the grey area and on illegal activities and he has several criminal convictions to prove that fact. He has repeatedly managed to at least temporarily flee jurisdiction by moving country. If there is one person who definitely understands all ins and outs of copyright then it is him, at the very least out of experience and from having been caught red handed more than once.
This is nothing but yet another one of his charades and PR stunts. He is not fighting for you or your right to keep a "backup copy". Trying to get everyone on the net riled up is just yet another PR stunt. Kim always has been and always will be caring for only one person: himself. And he will not hesitate to lie and step on former friends and partners alike. Never just trusting anything he says should be the default.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
KDC seems to regret having ever placed good faith and trust in the criminal justice system as it applies to the united states and international community, and clearly with good reason. His violent raid, the united states illegal seisure of the majority of his income, and his criminal prosecution despite 3 independent lawfirms under his employ having confirmed no such action could or would transpire. KDC regrets not taking the MPAA more seriously, because the MPAA has extremely powerful political connections and can rewrite rules as it sees fit. It can escalate your extradition, exacerbate your arrest, and fleece your civil liberties all under the guise of the free market and "intellectual property" law. The most appropriate response to the MPAA is not litigation, but mobile theatre ballistic missile.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe there wasn't a legal risk that would have held up in court. What all that legal council evidently failed to mention is the very real threat of crippling litigation that, while ultimately unsuccessful, could still wipe you out in the process.
I guess that's one thing separating the 'good' legal council from the 'best'. The former will stop at examining the laws, the latter will also examine all the ways the laws could be abused to achieve the same result.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
What they got blindsided by was criminal charges, where they'd be sent to jail.
Nobody involved with enabling massive copyright infringement (for good or ill, let's save that for other arguments please) is ignorant of the fact that the USA has criminal copyright infringement. It's a ridiculous idea that to suggest that they were blindsided by this. What's happening here is that Kim is making a statement for the record, which is actually a lie, and it's being amplified and rebroadcast by the masses of asses, like slashdot editors.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not entirely unreasonable for him to have legally evaluated them as an industry actor with a potential for engaging in civil litigation as a strategic measure in order to advance their business objectives.
Being surprised that the money was only the beginning, and they had enough pull to obtain the (illegal) cooperation of New Zealand's clandestine services, a well armed raid on his residence(rather than a nasty subpoena at work), and nearly unlimited FBI access to an investigation and set of evidence in New Zealand, followed by the sort of dogged prosecution-by-any-means from Uncle Sam that you usually have to move a lot of cocaine or deal in embarassing state secrets to earn is somewhat understandable.
FYI, Dotcom wasn't living in the US.
He had never lived in the US.
This is exactly comparable to someone with lung cancer who started smoking in 2002 and saying "I wish I'd known there was a risk."
What he needs to do next is figure out how to frame himself as a victim. If only he was brown or female instead of a fat white man. Everyone knows fat white men are the last approved object of public ridicule.
-Styopa
FYI, Dotcom wasn't living in the US.
He had never lived in the US.
You are just like my ISP. When I raise a salient point, you prevaricate. I tell them that their service frequently does not get my packets to the internet, they quote link uptime statistics. I give a fat fuck whether my radio link was up, if its radio link was down, and I couldn't get to the 'net. And likewise, I give a fat fuck whether Kim was living in the USA, because a) he was doing business in the USA and b) if you assume that the long arm of the USA ends at our borders, you're a fucking moron who ignores history and the news. There is no evidence that he is actually that stupid. If he were, he'd be locked up right now, not chillin' in a mansion in NZ.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So he's being charged with some made up offense
Vicarious infringement is defined as profiting from infringements that you have power to stop. A policy of paying users who share infringing copies of popular files is pretty good evidence of profiting from infringement. Safe harbor laws such as OCILLA exist in many countries to protect site operators from having to pay excessive damages due to accidental vicarious infringement, but it appears Megaupload didn't take steps to qualify for these safe harbors.
which isn't a law anywhere.
What do you mean by "isn't a law"? New Zealand and the United States are common-law jurisdictions, which rely heavily on how previous judges have interpreted statutes.
First time I heard that name, I thought, "Cool name! How neat! I bet she's a hottie!"
And then I thought, "Well, Kim is a common Korean name, so maybe it's a he".
And then I Googled it, and found out it's a fat fuck!
God dammit.
I take it Kim believes the Berne Convention means absolutely nothing in New Zealand?
Dotcom said via live video link from his mansion
No need to read any further.
Kimble isn't "one of us", and never was. He's a career criminal, just like the MPAA and most politicians. He's not the Robin Hood his PR agency tries to create, he's just the sheriffs jealous brother. Same breed, same morality, and given half the chance, he'll fuck you over the same way for a quick buck.
I wish /. would spend less time on these celebrity spectacles and more on the people who actually make a difference, who actually are on our side, whose interest goes beyond having a mansion and a private helicopter.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Anybody who is exploiting a disruptive technique MUST assume that the existing players in that market segment will act to protect their profits
Sure the music industry is corrupt to the core, sure they deliver little value for what they charge, sure they are strangling an industry
BUT, anybody who is going to drop a bomb on their income stream MUST be prepared for them to defend their revenues, even at the cost of the entire industry
Anybody that wants to disrupt the must (entertainment) industry and SAVE it should be familiar with the story of MP3.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com#History
MP3.com was my personal playlist for years. I got NEW music, unheard of artists and great fun with tracks like "The Terrible Secret of Space"
MP3.com started offering personal cloud storage. The music industry noted that copyrighted material was being stored there... and at the end of the lawsuit Vivendi owned all of their assets and turned it into another place to purchase run of the mill musical dreck
we need the Kim Dotcoms and the Mp3.coms, we do NOT need them to stumble blindly into the same trap time and time again
A greedy moron who realized that he could become wealthy as a parasite, but somehow claims to not realize that eventually his wealth would not protect him from prosecution for his crimes. And yes, these were real crimes. This Isn't a guy who copied a couple of video tapes for personal use. He engaged in massive copyright infringement to enrich himself by stealing other people's work.
He might've done business in the US, but the government ignored the proper legal process in Kim's country. The US thinks it is the world police that can do as it pleases (including enforcing draconian copyright laws), so hopefully they fail in this instance.
He might've done business in the US, but the government ignored the proper legal process in Kim's country. The US thinks it is the world police that can do as it pleases (including enforcing draconian copyright laws), so hopefully they fail in this instance.
I hope they (we, etc) fail here too, but it's not a foregone conclusion. We often succeed, and that's what someone needs to take away from history before assuming that it won't happen to them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"to enrich himself"
This is what really sets him apart from other copyright cases. He knowingly hosted massive amounts of copyright content, regardless of how it got there, and created a system that gained him massive revenue from it.
"They can't convict a husband and wife for the same crime!"
So... Just like YouTube? And any number of other sites?
This guy banked hard off his streaming sites, the massive mansion he has in New Zealand is testament to that. The only reason he is repenting right now is because he is loaded and comfortable. He would do it all again.
I think what he actually regrets is not having the $65 million.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
What's happening here is that Kim is making a statement for the record, which is actually a lie, and it's being amplified and rebroadcast by the masses of asses, like slashdot editors.
Of course it's a lie. Megaupload's entire business plan was based on a perceived loophole in the DMCA takedown process that didn't exist.
If two users uploaded the same file to Megaupload, they stored it on their servers once and provided different links to those two users. If a movie studio filed a DMCA takedown notice and provided one of those links, Megaupload would disable just the link mentioned and leave any other links to that file active. The DMCA says that once you're aware that a file is infringing, you have to stop distributing that file. You can disagree with the DMCA as a law and a treaty, but it does not take a lawyer to realize that Megaupload was blatantly violating it.
The thing that really got Megaupload in trouble was incentivizing piracy. They had an affiliate program that would pay people cash if the files they uploaded were downloaded a lot. Which gets more downloads, Dr. Who fan fiction or a copy of the latest X-Men movie? Management was completely aware of what was going on because they discuss it in emails. By paying people to upload pirated material, that's a conspiracy.
They have Condi Rice on the board of directors and know how to 'play nice'.
Oh really? They took all his stuff and ruined his company and now he wished he wouldn't have been such an arrogant fat bastard. If only he also took seriously how the entire world hates him.
Fuck you. The rest of us are all doing legal things for a living, like digging ditches, and hoping to put food on our table this week.
And he is hiding some of what he stole by entrusting it to his wife and children...
And yes, these were real crimes.
I would say that copyright infringement, whether on a massive scale or not, is pretty far down on the list of "real crimes."
He engaged in massive copyright infringement to enrich himself by stealing other people's work.
Copied. Also, I'm pretty sure it was his users. He may have benefited, but I don't think he directly did much of anything.
For example, I'd say that governments ignoring proper legal procedures and passing draconian laws because some corporate scumbags bribed them are real crimes.
Headline: Kim Dotcom Regrets Not Taking Copyright Law and MPAA "More Seriously"
Article: "My biggest regret is I didn't take the threat of the copyright law and the MPAA seriously enough," Dotcom said ...
Big difference between taking the law seriously and taking the threat of the law seriously. The headline implies that there's some sort of actual legitimacy to the law and that he's almost apologetic for doing something "wrong." The actual quote however is just a recognition that the government thugs are the thugs they are and the threat they represent is real.
Liberty in your lifetime
Then by all means follow the example of your big hero. Don't complain too much when the MPAA destroys your life. Do you understand that the fucking VICE PRESIDENT of yhe US is and has always been a MPAA/RIAA lawyer and lobbyist? What can you ever hope to do against such power?
Sometimes laws suddenly appear when an activity breaches the social threshold for good taste. It's not always obvious that new laws or interpretations with be unveiled in the pursuit of 'justice'
Bingo, I wish I had some karma for this comment - it was the monetization structure that did them in. It's the same as where the feds aren't going to go after you for making copies of DVDs for your home collection and friends, but you're going to get dicked if you're distributing bootlegs en masse. MEGA is a much better business model for them since it achieves what they wanted from the start - the end-to-end and immunity from DMCA takedowns.
"You can't plan for stuff like that."
He had $65 million in cash. If he had invested the $65 million in land in New Zealand (or a good portion of the $65 million), the US couldn't have taken his assets.
So actually, he could have planned.
A foreign government can't take your land.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Nothing did them in, because they haven't been found guilty in a court of law. If someone is going to execute an illegal raid, do you think they care whether you are actually breaking a law or not?
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of KD's actions, one thing has been very strongly lighlighted by his arrival in NZ and the actions that have followed from that.
When he first arrived, he was welcomed with open arms by the government, despite his shady past.
Why?
Well he had *lots* of money and was prepared to give some to the government and spend the rest locally.
Yes, you *can* buy your way into New Zealand -- despite claims to the contrary.
Then many people of power and influence hob-nobbed with KD, hoping perhaps that they'd get favours from him -- as indeed one politician did, to the tune of thousands of dollars contributed to his funds but not declared (later resulting in a conviction for that MP for filing false returns).
Once KD had given huge sums of his money to the NZ government he was then of little further use to them so they were more than happy to help out their US overlords (the FBI and MPAA) by engaging in *unlawful* surveillance and an unlawful raid and asset seizure. Despite the illegality of these government-organised activities, nobody involved or responsible has been censured for breaking the law. How convenient, and another sign of deep-rooted corruption.
Once KD dared to meddle in local politics by funding a party which stood at the last election, this was the final straw. The Prime Minister (whose office has been engaged in some *very* shady dealing with our Security Intelligence Service recently, prompting that agency to apologize to another opposition MP) has now obviously decided that it's time to kick KD to the curb.
In any *real* democracy where people's rights are respected and the government and its agencies are required to obey the laws that they pass, there would be little problem. However, as has been seen by the massive trail of graft and corruption, plus the ongoing lack of accountability for wrong-doing on the part of the PM, his office and its agencies, it's unlikely that KD will get a fair deal at all.
As I said... I don't give a damn whether KD is an angel or the devil incarnate -- his mere presence in this country has exposed the lie which is a claim that we are the least corrupt country on Earth. No... the truth is that, until now, we've been the best at covering up huge levels of corruption that are now exposed for all to see.
What was confiscated was not just the property on KDC, I know ppl who used megaupload legitimately to store personal files - family photos for fucks sake, which have had those stolen from them illegally by law enforcement agencies.
Copyright infringement is not stealing! It should never have been criminalized. It should not even be a civil violation, or thought immoral or wrong. Sharing is a public good, and as such should be encouraged. Yes, encouraged. The government should never have tried to regulate sharing. Restricting copying was a terrible way to raise revenue for any purpose, and as for the stated purpose of enabling producers to profit and thereby encouraging more production, it is failing miserably. Instead, copyright and patent law are frequently misused to censor and suppress the very arts and sciences it was supposed to encourage.
The real greedy scum in this show are the RIAA and MPAA members. Many people, and apparently you too, have swallowed their line of reasoning. They are nothing more than slimy monopolists. They squelch most art to keep the rest small enough for them to manage it all themselves. They own it, or they bury it. In doing so, they hold us all back. Who knows what scientific advances we would have now-- cures for cancer, solutions for famines, and so much more, if they had not created this climate of denial of knowledge.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
There are plenty of files that I'm legally allowed to access but you aren't. If we both put them on a file sharing site, and your copy was removed, I'd be pretty annoyed if my copy was too.
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I give a fat fuck whether Kim was living in the USA, because a) he was doing business in the USA and b) if you assume that the long arm of the USA ends at our borders, you're a fucking moron who ignores history and the news.
Rarely does the US actually go after people. The US knows the names of many of the drug dealers sending drugs into the US, but goes after Kim with more vigor than murderous drug dealers. It doesn't really make sense.
Learn to love Alaska
It's not like we "swallowed their line of thinking". We know the detrimental effects on society their stance has. We also know we can't do anything about it: they're simply too powerful. They can force governments to change laws. They can have secret treaties signed and enforced. Against such sheer power, what can we do? What can anyone do? I'm sorry but the cause is lost. They have won.
I agree with you but I did want to mention that the payment thing was only on files under 100MB if I remember correctly. Kim mentioned that in his interviews many times. A movie is significantly larger than that.
And then after "all" saw this corruption they voted more corruption right back in again, right?
Nothing did them in, because they haven't been found guilty in a court of law. If someone is going to execute an illegal raid, do you think they care whether you are actually breaking a law or not?
For a given value of being done in... Even if it never goes to trial, that's an amazing amount of money that went *poof*.
"You can't plan for stuff like that."
He had $65 million in cash. If he had invested the $65 million in land in New Zealand (or a good portion of the $65 million), the US couldn't have taken his assets.
So actually, he could have planned.
A foreign government can't take your land.
They can when the foreign government's goodwill is worth more to your host country than you are. Remember, citizens don't /actually/ own land, they just sublet it from the state.
that the payment thing was only on files under 100MB
X-men-XVID-HQ-MKV-part1.rar
X-men-XVID-HQ-MKV-part2.rar
X-men-XVID-HQ-MKV-part3.rar
X-men-XVID-HQ-MKV-part4.rar
etc etc.
Rules? Money makes the rules. MPAA/RIAA make the rules. Deal with it. No argument in this world will ever change that.
There are plenty of files that I'm legally allowed to access but you aren't.
Sure. And nobody sends DMCA takedown requests for those files.
No, I do not agree with that defeatism. They have not won. In fact, their cause is a losing cause. And they know it. Secrecy and treaties tried as attempts to bypass legislatures are not signs of power, they're signs of weakness. Enforcement is utterly impractical. No organization has the power to force everyone to obey copyright. It only works somewhat because people are willing to obey it, thinking that doing so helps artists.
What can we do? If we do nothing, they lose. The only way copyright cartels can win is if we help them win. Don't help them. That's all you and everyone else has to do. Don't buy DVDs or CDs, or devices that play them. Don't buy devices that enforce DRM. If you want to help, we can do a bit more than that. Use your public library, and not corporate bookstores (*cough* Amazon *cough*). Help crowdfund art projects. Tell your schools to use open, libre textbooks. Tell the library and politicians you want libraries and schools to have digital options for everything, as soon as possible.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I'm not so sure about that. It's well known that Megaupload was popular with some music producers for transferring work around.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Please allow me to make sense of it for you then.
The drug dealers you reference are protected by the CIA since they are an extremely large source of the revenue stream used for the black budget projects which the government hides all information about at all costs.
The MPAA and the RIAA are large campaign contributers to both political parties. They paid for and wrote our current copyright laws. Their money also has a large influence on how and when those laws are enforced.