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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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 seems to think the laws didn't apply to him.
So his next career will be on Wall Street?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
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'.
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