[ebbv]

Why is this guy's legal troubles news? Honestly. There's tons of rich jerks like him who have legal troubles that we don't hear about. But for some reason he likes to put out press releases about every step of the way and then they actually get picked up and upvoted on sites like this. Why? I really don't understand.

It's not like he's some principled crusader fighting for a precedent that affects all of us. He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy, and then managed to dodge the consequences because he is rich. Whoopitee doo.

Don't get me wrong I think the US copyright laws are screwed up and have been manipulated by awful corporations for decades. But his legal troubles don't really have any consequence on that front, things won't be any better because he wins (and won't be worse if he loses.) So I fail to see why anyone thinks it is interesting on any level.

[Mononokay]

> He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy

He actually got rich off of the Dot Com bubble years before, which is why he changed his name to Kim Dotcom.

He embodies a lot of the stereotypical hacker image that people have - overweight, hacked the Pentagon+NASA+Citibank before he was old enough to drink in the US, a touch dramatic, etc. It's only natural that he's given a bit of attention.

Not to mention he really didn't break any law - Section 230 made site-owners not responsible for content posted to their site unless they failed to remove it, and MegaUpload complied with DMCA requests all the time.

[wpietri]

I don't believe Section 230 is a sufficient defense here. If you have a site that is used for a lot of things but has the occasional bad actor, then Section 230 means that bad actor is the legal publisher of the content, not the site.

Megaupload, though, was not that. They paid people who uploaded popular content, which was of course mostly other people's property. They they sold ads against it. If you look at the structure of the business and compare it with a a real cloud storage provider, it's pretty obvious they are no Dropbox:

https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Virginia_Eastern_District_...

The indictment has a clear claim that Section 230 doesn't apply, as well as a lot of detail. Dotcom was pretty clearly running a criminal conspiracy, and just thought he was clever enough to avoid getting arrested for it. Had he stayed small, he might have managed.

[lawnchair_larry]

He didn’t hack anything nor get rich off of the bubble. He was always a fraud.

[Mononokay]

> nor get rich off of the bubble.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/jan/26/internetn...

> He didn’t hack anything

He claims to have, and I'm fairly sure he's convicted of doing so in his home country, but I'm not going to contest it because I'm not incredibly familiar with that part of the issue. I was going off of his Wikipedia page, which as always can be innaccurate.

[lawnchair_larry]

He was well known to folks in the security scene in the late 90s/early 2000s. He had many bold claims, but knew nothing about security and generally bragged about his fictional transgressions for attention. It's not that it's difficult to believe that someone of even low to moderate skill could have hacked such targets during that time, it's just that he was a big talker that could never back up what he was saying.

He initially got rich off of a blatant pump and dump engineered by himself, followed by some Ponzi schemes, and a lot of credit card fraud, most of which he probably wasn't busted for. It wasn't what we typically think of as Dot Com Bubble money, it just happened to take advantage of that investment climate.

Megaupload was the closest thing to legitimate he has done.

[ebbv]

> He embodies a lot of the stereotypical hacker image that people have - overweight, hacked the Pentagon+NASA+Citibank before he was old enough to drink in the US, a touch dramatic, etc. It's only natural that he's given a bit of attention.

Bullllllcrap.

[chrissnell]

This is not Kim Schmitz's first involvement in illegal activities. He's no folk hero.

[gameswithgo]

Yeah I agree. Kim is not the hero we need. Maybe the one we deserve though.

[FussyZeus]

Nice to see I'm not the only one who's tired of seeing this guy.

No, he wasn't technically responsible. Sure, his site complied with takedown requests to the extent they were required to and literally not one damn quarter inch further. Technically, technically, technically.

He also profited directly off of and made no secret about enabling people to skirt copyright laws. I agree they need a lot of work, but you don't get to break the law simply because you disagree with it.

[tristor]

The reason it matters is exactly what you said. MegaUpload did comply to the law and not one inch more, just like they were supposed to. Then the MPAA got the US government involved in what should have been a civil matter. That wasn’t enough so then the US government induced an allied government to execute a tactical raid on the guy’s house and seize his business assets including the servers containing customer data.

The outcome is that this has been strung out in court so long that companies like Google/YouTube far exceed what the law requires in bending over for the MPAA/RIAA mafia, leading to massive amounts of false copyright claims. The precedent set by MegaUpload was “it doesn’t matter if you follow the law, the MAFIAA is so powerful that the US will send men with guns after you no matter what corner of the Earth you reside in.”

[FussyZeus]

They violated the law, and assisted others in violating the law, openly, and defiantly.

When he was raided it was of no surprise to anyone who was paying attention, himself included. People like to paint this up as "this guy was just running his business in full compliance with the law and Big Government came in with their jackbooted thugs and took away his business" but the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

He was openly snubbing the Feds and MPAA, he was deliberately allowing and not even making face attempts to dissuede his users from uploading copyrighted material to share, and was quite aware and complicit of the whole thing, and wasn't one damn bit interested in stopping it because it was making him rich.

I'm just saying, if you want a martyr for people who got screwed by our Government because of overstepping authority, Dotcom is far, far, FAR from the best example of that. Dotcom is more a poster child for the old axiom, "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

[tristor]

I'm not holding up the guy as a saint, but what happened to him was heinous. Whether you agree with his behavior or not, the fact men with guns were used to take enforcement action about US copyright law in New Zealand is a problem.

If I was going to write about someone I think is a much more admirable martyr for the insanity of US copyright laws I'd point to Aaron Schwartz, not Kim DotCom. But that's not what this conversation is about, and nothing I said was untrue.

[FussyZeus]

> I'm not holding up the guy as a saint, but what happened to him was expected.

He showed his ass to the feds for YEARS, not even in like a dignified and well articulated way like Snowden, in an open, flagrant "Fuck you and your laws" way.

And frankly, as broken as the US IP laws are, this whole "you can't enforce X country's law in Y country" is BS. In our ultra-connected global economy, especially in terms of tech companies, if you can skirt the laws of a nation by simply moving to another one, then we might as well have Anarchy and skip a few steps.

[thaumasiotes]

> his site complied with takedown requests to the extent they were required to and literally not one damn quarter inch further. Technically, technically, technically.

> you don't get to break the law simply because you disagree with it

I'm having a hard time seeing where complying with the law in full, but refusing to go above and beyond its demands, is supposed to be an inappropriate course of action when you disagree with it.

[esturk]

I like to know why you think things won't be better and for whom? How do you know it won't set a precedent in NZ? Or is the frame of context based on an American centric point of view? And that things won't be better for Kiwis?

[the_cat_kittles]

im really suprised this is so downvoted, its articulate, and seems right to me. why would you like this guy? some people like anyone rich apparently...

[ballenf]

The comment could be read to imply that due process is something to be earned with good behavior, instead of something to be afforded as a matter of law to all accused, even the most heinous criminals.

I personally am not a fan of "why talk about this one example when there are so many other examples" type comments, because it's literally impossible to talk in any depth about the topic generally if we insist on finding the best example first. We'll spend all our time debating which person is the better victim instead of talking about whether our criminal justice system is working properly.

[ebbv]

> The comment could be read to imply that due process is something to be earned with good behavior, instead of something to be afforded as a matter of law to all accused, even the most heinous criminals.

That is a pretty deliberate misreading of my comment. I'm very obviously saying why does his legal process continue to be news, not whether he deserves to have legal proceedings. Nothing even close to that.

[ballenf]

> I'm very obviously saying why does his legal process continue to be news, not whether he deserves to have legal proceedings.

It's news because he has the money to bring the blatant abuses made in attempting to prosecute him to light. Instead of vague accusations of prosecutorial caprice, he's got the resources to document and prove how egregiously broken the system has been in handling his case.

When the process can be used as a substitute for the punishment, the system is broken.

> It's not like he's some principled crusader fighting for a precedent that affects all of us.

He very much is fighting for a precedent that affects all of us. And it really seems like you don't think people should stand up for or publicize those principles if the accused is an unsavory individual. Why don't we stand up for more principled people instead? I think we would, if one of them had the resources to bring the injustices into the light. The fact is, it is so incredibly rare that a person both has the resources and is willing to spend them in a fight to reveal these kinds of unscrupulous prosecutions. He would probably be better off right now if he had just rolled over and copped a plea, but we would all be worse off because the authorities wouldn't be held accountable.