[tzs]

> How was MU different from any other cloud storage provider, or for that matter, Google?

Google, Dropbox, and so on were not founded by people who had been convicted of fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement, and in their entire adult lives only seemed to not be involved in criminal activity when they were still on parole from their previous conviction and so HAD to keep clean to avoid having parole revoked.

That tends to make people, including law enforcement, give Google and the others the benefit of the doubt when they say that any misuse of their service is not intended on their part and they will try to stop it.

[drcube]

This is simply ad hominem. I asked how the web service differed in specific ways related to copyright, not how the founders differed in general.

[tptacek]

Then the question should have been resolved to your satisfaction upthread: Mega was a service, run by a criminal, that conspired overtly to profit from infringement of music, TV, software, and motion picture copyright.

[b1daly]

@tptacek, don't you think this point about Apple and the iPod (as well as early Youtube behavior) have some bearing on this case? Obviously Apple knew for a long time that the vast majority of music on mp3 players was copied, probably illegally. They provided tools to "rip" the CDs! In Apple's case, they stayed well on the legal side of the letter of the law, but the underlying reality was the iPod siphoned off a lot of profit from the record labels because the ability to carry a lot of music with you was so compelling, legal or not.

In the MU case, setting aside the unsavory aspects of Kim Dotcom, they were well on the other, illegal, side of the letter of the law.

But in both cases, the defense of the behavior comes down to legal technicalities, as opposed to broader concepts of "fairness" or "ethicalness."

Really, it seems the same with Google, as long as they comply with the DMCA they are safe, but I doubt they care to much about the wellbeing of content owners whose content is being infringed and accessed through Google. That's money in the bank to them.

I'm not trolling, just curious as to your thoughts on this.

FWIW, I do support the concept of intellectual property. But I think it should be enforced against for profit entities, and take a live and let live when it comes to individuals copying for their own use. It's messy obviously, such a distinction might not be able to be enforced.

But I don't think it's as much a case of ethical behavior as other laws address (laws against violent crime for example).

[jlgreco]

His non-answer makes the real answer clear; they are not.