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MegaUpload Programmer Pleads Guilty, Gets a Year In Prison
An anonymous reader writes When MegaUpload was shut down a few years back, seven of the company's employees were indicted by the U.S. We heard a lot about Kim Dotcom's court proceedings, but not much about the others. A few days ago, we received word that programmer Andrus Nomm has been arrested in Virginia. This came as a surprise to everyone involved. MegaUpload attorney Ira Rothken said it was likely Nomm had made a deal with the Feds. Now, we know for sure: Nomm has pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. In a statement, the Department of Justice said they will continue to pursue his co-conspirators.
..the rest of us need the record. Don't be scared of the government, and don't commit suicide.
Isn't a programmer an employee doing what he is requested to do - and anyway making programmes does not infringe copyright laws. It seems everyone has to pay a price in this megaupload story, in order to send a strong and threatening message.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
There goes my business plan for "GigaUpload"!
If I implemented it, I'd get a thousand times his sentence.
I'd imagine he didn't have the money or patience to fight it and didn't want to set a precedence by losing in court.
So, someone hires you to work on a file sharing network. And this is conspiracy? I mean there was a time when "file sharing" was a legitimate thing to do and didn't automatically imply copyright infringement.
Even if it did, I doubt Kim Dotcom said "hey, how'd you like to join a conspiracy to enable copyright infringement?" I think it was more likely "I want to hire a database programmer"
I know it's kind of hip to say "well what do you expect?", but really this seems punitive vindictive and disproportionate.
I mean if this can happen when you write code in good faith for someone who used it for purposes later deemed illegal ... that kind of puts us all in the frame. I mean, corporate ethics being what they are and all that.
Damn.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Sure, blame the messenger instead of the sender. They may have create the service, but they aren't the ones who placed that copyrighted content there. They were even doing a relatively good job of removing copyrighted material.
By the logic of the US, all of Google employees should go to jail, considering how many copyrighted content there is on Youtube.
This is why nobody likes the US.
If programmers can be held criminally responsible for the misdeeds of their employer (which they carry out), then what about all the assholes on Wall Street with the mortgage backed securities scams and all that...
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, what programming language did they use? What operating systems? Those developers should also be held accountable "for all use of that which they created". Those co-conspirators need to be punished!
Isn't copyright infringement a civil offense?
Democracy my ass.
I don't know the details, but if a programmer can be charged for making a program that allows others to use it, among other things, for illegal activities, doesn't this mean that one can charge the workers at a knife factory as well?
Re-elect no one. Ever
What bothers me most about the attempted slaying of all supposed guilty of copyright infringement laws...
Banks such as JPMorgan and HSBC, Paypal, and Bank of America... who have accomplished entirely evil and horrific deeds... including murder, conspiring for murder, murder for hire, putting millions of people out of work, as well as laundering trillions of USD for drug cartels and organized crime... and all the while their employees (specifically young employees; under 30) are taking their own lives out of fear or possibly being framed, etc....
These entities have entirely too much power, too much control, too much secrecy, and yet they still walk; including CEO's walking with Billions.
Now this is disheartening.
All the while yes copyright infringement happens every day; yet it is not equating morally to any of the aforementioned acts I noted above.
But the government will ruthlessly oppose and hunt down those involved in Mega, piratebay, even silkroad, as well as petty drug and petty non-violent crimes...??? Makes certain logical and ethical sense, absolutely... ?
where is the logic and...?
where is the moral line being drawn in the legislature and law?
makes me absolutely ill as it does the rest of us, but we all do our best to abide and get along and not piss off the angry dragons... and it's not really that difficult to abide but when I read about developers being punished for simply doing their job (generally speaking...)
however- does law equate to justice? or should it?
things we all ponder from time to time, I'm sure.
Thats because governments are just like any other criminal outfit, and the reason they target other lesser criminal outfits is because they are encroaching on their territory.
So can I sue factory workers at arms manufacturies for murder?
Videos and other copyright were taken down at request, so they did their due diligence. Mega video et al was pretty clear about copyright and take down notices. It's sort of like suing Dell if someone used a computer to download stuff too. Why not have Dell equally share the blame? Why not imprison the internet service providers? The fiber optic cable manufacturers? DVD and CD manufacturers? When does the stupidity end?
all know that their products will in some cases be used illegally. Time to round them up.
One day the world will look back at the era were people were punished for the short lived 'copyright infringement' concept as badly as we look back to some of the other errors in our past.
Why wouldn't the family of the victim of a successful murder or the victim of attempted murder have standing to sue for wrongful death or attempted wrongful death?
You plead guilty because in America we do jury trials, and juries are highly unpredictable. They often rule based on emotions and how they feel. If you're rich you buy a lawyer that's a smooth talker and can confuse the jury. Everyone else just plea bargins. Otherwise you're gambling that the jury will like you. If you lose the gamble than years of mandatory sentencing guidelines will put you away for decades.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is exactly like sueing Tramontina everytime someone gets stabbed with one of their knives.
MU, as any tool, is not good or evil, it's just a tool and what people do with it is what matters and they are just too lazy/cheap to look for those alleged IP offenders (which just a BS case, noone should get jail time for some shitty movies or programs!)
who the fuck are these people prosecuting these cases? what sort of subhuman scum would do that for a living? if we just put them all down we'd be free.
> That never made any sense. If the search was illegal, he didn't have the authority to do it...so it was....by very definition....outside the parameters of his job. He was NOT acting as a police officer if he was conducting an illegal search.
You can find an explanation of that in this guide to the 4th amendment exclusionary rule. The short answer is that they WANT searches to go right up against the absolute limit of legality.
This is because the purpose of the rule is not to give people who do bad things a get out of jail free card when they're caught breaking a law or punish the cops for making mistakes--something which is pretty unreasonable when even the courts disagree about what is and isn't allowable half the time. The purpose is to protect us from actual police over-reach, where someone sics the cops on you to go out there and find something that you're guilty of.
Is everyone who ever wrote a file transfer program guilty of copyright infringement? Is everyone who ever wrote a protocol that makes a directory downloadable guilty? Arrest everyone who worked on Apache! And FTP. And Gopher. And telnet. And Kermit.
Say I move a file into a copyrighted public place using Windows. By this prosecution, the programmers at Microsoft should be arrested!
I don't get it. Is there no logic to prosecutions? No principle?
... What happens to geeky programmer types in prison? They have their exit ports turned into input devices.
However when police perform illegal searches they ARE people doing bad things, and this IS giving them a get out of jail free card. As far as I am concerned an illegal search is a terrible violation, and deserving of a felony conviction.
"I don't understand my job" is no excuse; and frankly, look where its gotten us, the only reason there are not many many more TONS of evidence tossed out by illegal searches is most people give up without a fight in the face of our abusive system which will do everything in its power to strong arm people into giving up their right to a trial.
Frankly, I think we should get rid of pleas entirely, automatic not-guiolty plea for all cases, you MUST fight it; that way a prosecutor must file honest charges and not try to present two massively different options in hopes of not having evidence seen or contested.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Where did I suggest that. Oh that's right, I didn't!
I instead suggested that she attacked democracy and capitalism with little understanding of either.