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From File-Sharing To Prison: The Story of a Jailed Megaupload Programmer (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "I had to be made an example of as a warning to all IT people," says former Megaupload programmer Andrew Nomm, one of seven Megaupload employees arrested in 2012. Friday his recent interview with an Estonian journalist was republished in English by Ars Technica (which notes that at one point the 50 million users on Megaupload's file-sharing site created 4% of the world's internet traffic). The 37-year-old programmer pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement in exchange for a one-year-and-one-day sentence in a U.S. federal prison, which the U.S. Attorney General's office called "a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in US history."
"It turned out that I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go from the Netherlands to the USA..." Nomm tells the interviewer, adding "I'll never get back the $40,000 that was seized by the USA." He describes his experience in the U.S. prison system after saying good-bye to his wife and 13-year-old son, adding that now "I have less trust in all sorts of state affairs, especially big countries. I saw the dark side of the American dream in all its glory..."
In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."
"It turned out that I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go from the Netherlands to the USA..." Nomm tells the interviewer, adding "I'll never get back the $40,000 that was seized by the USA." He describes his experience in the U.S. prison system after saying good-bye to his wife and 13-year-old son, adding that now "I have less trust in all sorts of state affairs, especially big countries. I saw the dark side of the American dream in all its glory..."
In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."
What bothers me the most, I think, is the incessant whining. Waah, waah, police got me waah waah. You're going to be a martyr, don't be a baby about it. That's what bothered me about Assaunge, what a crybaby he was. Be defiant, tell them they can jail you but never silence you, and wear your prison sentence like a badge of honor. But no, it's always whine, moan, complain. P.U., what a bunch of stinkers.
I grew up on the streets and I totally agree. The whining shows their true mental perspective; they didn't think they were doing the right thing, they thought they wouldn't get caught, and they're so butthurt that they did. It must have been somebody's fault, they couldn't have been caught just because they were knowingly breaking the law and there were already professional police before they started, naturally when combined leading to their arrest and imprisonment. No, that is impossible to consider; it must be simple injustice that leads lawbreakers to end up in jail.
I don't even like the laws they broke. But guess what? I don't expect the police to care either way what I think, or what the politics around the law is. If it is illegal now, and you're doing it anyway, you should be prepared to face the consequences. I mean either face it with head high, or wait until the law is different to do it. Democracy doesn't mean, "everybody does everything their own way," it means we make the rules together. We won't individually like all the rules. So what?
Others want to whine and cry about him being from another country, but don't come to the US and do financial transactions here when the business you're doing is illegal here. The result of exchanging the money here is that your activity was done here and was done under US law and when people talk about the US being some sort of policeman, you should presume that foreigners doing their financial transactions here is monitored. Duh. Make sure they're legal. "Oh gosh, I wasn't paying attention to the financial details" just doesn't cut it. Your accomplices were, and you were writing the code so you knew what was being done; you knew you were paying customers to distribute infringing works, because you were the programmer and were setting up the ability for those payments to happen. Just saying something like, "Golly, I didn't know they were going to actually use the code I wrote for the thing it most obviously does" is just not very convincing.
Here in America, we have a history of breaking the law in protest of a law. And when you do it, you expect to go to jail. That is the whole point. You do it proudly. If you complain nobody sees you as a martyr. They just see you as a whiny criminal.