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by FussyZeus 3005 days ago
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."
1 comments
tristor 3005 days ago
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.

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FussyZeus 3005 days ago
> 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.

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