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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."
The USA sees its future in intellectual property. Non-tangible goods. With that directive the pendulum is swinging towards the absurd side right now. Eventually, say 10 to 15 years or so - government time, it'll swing back to a sane-middle.
Shh.
for the USA: manufacturing is done elsewhere, so it tries to monopolize the worlds intelectual property and tries to turn it into something protected and ever more valuable, extending copyrights indefinately and bullying any country that doesn't play ball.
We can only hope for and wait for the total downfall and collapse of the US economy, before this madnes ends.
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...In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."...
Wouldn't the relatively light jail sentence handed down belie the level of financial harm claimed?
The people who "share" files were never the ones that would buy content.
A file shared is not a media stolen.
A file shared is not a copyright violated - no money exchanged hands for the "media".
File sharing isn't "pirating" - no sabres were rattled, no ships were stormed, no lives were lost.
File sharing isn't "theft" - the original source of the file still exists and still belongs to the owner.
When will we, the people, kick our collective government representatives in the nuts until they wake the fuck up and stop listening to these RICO act violators, these Mafia-like entities, these black-mailing con artists who continue to make record profits while whining that they aren't making more, while continuing to withhold payments to the artists, directors, actors, stunt-people, gaffers, mixers, computer artists, musicians and whatnot.
Why are all of those that get the fruits of their labor stolen from them by the RIAA, MPAA, and other major criminal organizations like them, supporting these asshats? Why aren't they storming their strongholds and shoving spears through their collective entrails until they find the .1% of those organizations that aren't just greedy fuckwands willing to do anything just to make yet even more money.
Ruin a lot of lives, seriously damage the global economy. It's all fine, as long as you don't make it easy for anyone to share a song or movie.
We keep using the phrase "The US is the world's policemen" without realizing that it is literally true, that even if you are not a US person and you do something that happens to be an offense in the US, even a nonviolent one, the FBI can come and get you in every part of the world.
This story needs to be trumpeted (or hillaried, if this is possible) in this year's political campaign. This is a lot more serious an abuse of centralized power than those banana regulations in the European Union.
By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
â"Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 August 1813
Everything I create is non-tangible intellectual property. All biomedical genetic advances are in the end described by sequences and methods. Completely replicable. And without patents or copyrights they would never ever reach their potential as there would be no money to deliver them to people or companies. Companies would not base product lines around things they can't monetize or would expect to be undercut by an overseas manufacturer. SO they rot in the lab.
Because there's no money in selling medicine, like there's no money in selling groceries right? Most things end up as some form of actual product or service that does have value to people. Yes, we need incentives to make people come up with new ideas but we don't need to let them own them. I'm glad I don't have to pay royalty to the guy who invented the wheel and if you discover the cure for cancer, sorry I don't want to pay you and all your descendants in perpetuity either. It's humanity's knowledge and I'm willing to give you some time limited, exclusive rights as kickback for creating it but it's not yours like a man owns a shirt. Copyright, patents, trademarks yes but ownership no.
The difference is fundamental, if it's my car I can choose when, where and how you get to drive it. I can add a GPS tracker and cameras and microphones (with info signs, so it's not covert) and alcolock and speed clamps and whatnot. If it was Hollywood's movie, they could do the same but it's not, they just got the copyright. They can make copies and sell copies, not dictate where, when and how people watch it or at least they shouldn't. I'm not against intellectual rights, but I'm against intellectual property rights. It's newspeak to create owners and an aura of permanence and right to control that doesn't and shouldn't exist. Particularly when you want to shorten copyright and they talk as if that would be stealing from them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Your arguments sound sane but couldn't be further from the truth.
When 'theft' of imaginary property takes place, that causes the loss of imaginary sales. Which causes damage to some rich f**s bank account. As in: imaginary money that does *NOT* appear in said bank account. Whether or not that imaginary money would have appeared otherwise, is irrelevant: it's the not-showing-up-of-something-expected that counts here.
For the 1%er concerned that's a very traumatic, life-changing event, and causes grave imaginary pain. Not to mention long-term mental harm (maybe that's why those rich f**ks are so f**d up in the first place).
Obviously that's much more serious harm than whatever a rapist could do to his victim. And therefore it follows that the punishment for this imaginary crime should be more severe than for rapists, murderers, armed robbers etc. No expense should be spared, no stone left unturned to grab these imaginary thieves off the streets, even if they were in a different country when the imaginary crime took place.
So for members of the general public: don't do it! Where possible, buy the physical media, *and* ask the owners of that imaginary property if there is some way to send money their way on top of that. When a Blu-Ray comes out, that's a chance to re-buy a movie you already bought on DVD. And when some DRM scheme makes your imaginary purchases disappear, seize the opportunity to send more of your hard-earned money that rich f**ks way. Then they'll have more money to pay their (copyright) lawyers, the imaginary property will be better 'protected', imaginary sales go up, and artists will receive a much greater share of the royalties. Which in turn will make those artists produce more and not-as-crappy-s**t as they produce today.
All for the public good, of course. Win-win for everybody!
I've read all comments, and it seems everyone here accepts that providing a file sharing service is an illegal activity.
Did this man actually uploaded copyrighted material? He did not.
Did he worked on it with the purpose of others uploading movies? He did not. He just provided a file sharing service, which I have used it myself to distribute family videos that were large enough to not be sharable by email.
So why do you all accept this ludicrus position that file sharing is illegal?