
The copyright industry should brace itself: the Kim Dotcom saga isn't over - lukashed
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/mega-kim-dotcom-copyright-baboom
======
moomin
Schmitz is a deeply unpleasant man. It takes a fair amount of effort to make
him look like a good guy, but it looks like the MPAA and the FBI are putting
the hours in.

~~~
Crito
_" The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive
laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is
to be stopped at all."_

-H. L. Mencken

It is a well known problem, but one that you must deal with if you are
interested in defending principles that you stand for. The ACLU has defended
the KKK in the past. Most recently: [https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-em-
defends-kkks-right-...](https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-em-defends-kkks-
right-free-speech)

~~~
moomin
We can add weev to the list of people I'd much rather not have to defend.

------
grecy
> _Domestically, Dotcom has caused carnage. A government minister has resigned
> and is facing charges of not declaring political donations made by Dotcom.
> Prime minister John Key has had to apologise because an intelligence agency
> for which he was personally responsible was exposed as illegally spying on
> Dotcom. The police were embarrassed when it emerged their raid, using an
> anti-terrorist strike force, was carried out unlawfully_

It would be great to see these kinds of repercussions in America when the
government oversteps it's bounds.

~~~
earbitscom
Yes, and equally great if criminals got convicted instead of awarded damages.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
What was his crime? Bribery?

~~~
earbitscom
Sort of, yes. He incentivized users to upload popular content for credit on
their service knowing full well that the popular content was generally
copyrighted. There is a legal difference between letting users upload files
for storage, or files they own for sharing, then trying to squash the
copyrighted material you do get, vs actively incentivizing users to upload
infringing material and then taking it down while you pay the next guy to
upload it again.

~~~
makomk
Not really. MegaUpload's ToS said that they wouldn't pay out rewards to people
who uploaded pirated content, and they actually enforced it - probably because
it cut their costs by quite a bit, but they did enforce it. This was, from
what I recall, fairly well known at the time amongst people who'd have
otherwise considered uploading pirated content for profit.

------
toufka
Woah - bold plan Mr. Mega.Com:

>Dotcom will launch Baboom! next year... It aims to directly reward artists by
paying them when users listen to the songs for free. The price for downloading
free music is that users install the "MegaKey", a piece of software which
strips out embedded online advertisements in favour of those sold by Dotcom.

~~~
seniorsassycat
What is the legal precedent for this?

Adblock has been able to fly under the radar because it is used by people who
sought out a way to block ads, a minority of internet users.

MegaKey replaces ads (something that is more likely to piss off advertisers
more than removing ads) as the 'cost' of downloading free music, something
many consumers are interested in.

~~~
drcube
Why would this be a legal issue at all? Can't I do what I want to the software
on my own machine and with my own network connection, so long as I abide by
the software license terms and the contract with my ISP?

Certainly I can't be compelled to accept whatever unwanted packets someone
throws at me just because that someone based their business model on the
practice, right?

~~~
Widdershin
Do we give websites the right to serve us ads in their ToS? That seems like
the only blatant legal issue I can think of.

~~~
Karunamon
Seems like how you define "serve". Good luck enforcing that, though.

------
earbitscom
Two massive problems with this plan.

Next to no artists own the rights to their music. So, there will be no
significant catalog on this service unless people falsely claim to be the
rights holder (as they do on Grooveshark) and upload the content under DMCA,
then start collecting fraudulent checks for the material.

But the main problem is, the kinds of people who will install garbage on their
computer in order to get free music are already getting it through Pirate Bay,
etc. If I care enough about getting it "legally" through this service,
wouldn't I have a problem ripping off the other companies whose sites I browse
that depend on the ad revenue I'm now depriving them of? "Hey music lovers -
make sure your favorite artists get some hard earned money from their music by
taking it away from all those writers, game makers and other people whose
products you use!"

~~~
earbitscom
To that point, anybody who works for an ad-supported web business ought to
realize this is a plan to rip them off by someone who really just cannot
figure out how to make money without taking it from others.

~~~
Guthur
From my understanding the only party that can make money without taking it
from others are governments, though they do take as well.

~~~
earbitscom
Exchanging value is different than taking value. What is this guy giving to
the websites whose ads he's replacing?

------
rayiner
Referencing some "copyright industry" is like saying that farmers are part of
some "private land industry." Its a legal protection that's available to
everyone, not just one industry. Its also a legal protection that is more
morally justifiable than private land, seeing as it protects original works of
creation rather than (in the U.S., anyway) land stolen from native Americans
(which in any case is a product of nature).

~~~
belorn
Those very morally justification that demands 12 year olds to work and earn a
pay if they want to learn physics, rather than just letting them learn.

Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to
listen to music from all around the world, and learn to be a great musician.

Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to
watch movies and become a move creator of culture and thus learn from the
past.

Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to
experience a wide range of video games, so he later get inspired to make new
fantastic and wonderful games.

Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old to use
images programs to create images of art, or advanced physic emulators to
become the next Einstien.

After all, the creator of copyrighted works need to get paid, and restricting
12 years old in learning is the only moral superior way to force such
payments.

~~~
criley2
_Think of the children!_

Give me a break with the theatrics. You're basically saying "doesn't my
extraordinary case justify copyright infringement / theft?"

No, it doesn't.

It justifies you getting off your rear and making resources for 12 year old
kids to learn and play and experience FOR FREE. The existence of commercial
products doesn't negate free stuff. So why not let the 12 year olds use any of
the free and open source and widely available stuff? If you think that the
stuff produced for free isn't as good as the copyrighted stuff, isn't that
itself a useful observation of the effects of copyright?

Instead of using those 12 year olds as a prop piece for a bad argument, put
your money where your mouth is and go out there and produce content for them
that will inspire them, without forcing them to break copyright to be
inspired.

~~~
belorn
Give me a break. Do you think that racism is justified just because you let
black people ride in the back of the buss? Arguments that the back of the buss
is equally good as the front of the buss is not good enough. If you think that
putting in nicer seats will be a useful observation of the effects of racism,
think again.

Instead of using those fixed up back seats as a bad argument in favor of
racism, be honest with yourself. You simply want to continue a society that
separate one part of society (black, poor, kids), from you (white, rich, old
enough to be working with a high paid job).

Btw, _I do_ produce content for free. My tax money however goes to support the
restriction of 12 years old who want to learn physics. I think that is not the
compromise that copyright is intended to be, or should exist in a moral
society.

~~~
lelandbatey
I think you've wandered a bit far from the original point with this talk of
racism. More back to the first, I think it's an unavoidable fact that if you
create something you are allowed to dictate the terms of using, consuming, or
experiencing that thing. That means I can make something, and then I can
require people to pay to use it/see it/experience it. And I don't think we can
get away from that.

I also don't think we have can say that violating that right is an act of
integrity.

~~~
Amadou
_I think it 's an unavoidable fact that if you create something you are
allowed to dictate the terms of using, consuming, or experiencing that thing._

I have to disagree 100%. Once you _publish_ something you lose all effective
control over it.

It is only this legal fiction we call copyright that gives copyright owners
any sort of control. But even maximalist copyright regimes are full of more
holes than swiss cheese - if anything, the more they ratchet up the controls
the more people seek out the holes. It is human nature to share knowledge,
modern copyright is about fighting human nature and that never works out (c.f.
the war on drugs).

~~~
throwawaykf
"Legal fiction" is the only thing that gives anyone any control over anything,
tangible or otherwise. Without various "legal fictions" that society imposes,
what's to stop someone stronger, faster, sneakier or smarter than you from
making off with any of your property?

 _> human nature to share knowledge_

Oh boy, where do I begin...

1\. First of all, [citation needed]. Humans have been exploiting information
asymmetry since the dawn of time.

2\. It is also "human nature" to want to want to have sex with people one
finds attractive. Are rape laws also never going to "work out"?

3\. Entertainment counts as "knowledge" now? That's even more of a stretch
than calling it "culture"!

~~~
Amadou
_" Legal fiction" is the only thing that gives anyone any control over
anything, tangible or otherwise._

No, tangible items are inherently controllable because they are rivalrous and
excludable. The law just structures how we deal with those characteristics.
For information, copyright attempts to make it rivalrous and excludable, to
stuff it into the same box as tangible items when it shares none of the same
properties.

 _1\. First of all, [citation needed]. Humans have been exploiting information
asymmetry since the dawn of time._

Sure they have, but just because it happens sometimes does not contradict the
self-evident fact that people love to share. Next time you send someone a
lolcat, remember that.

 _2\. It is also "human nature" to want to want to have sex with people one
finds attractive. Are rape laws also never going to "work out"?_

Rape, murder, theft, these are all behaviours that are (1) not the common case
and (2) inflict harm because the objects of the crimes are essentially
rivalrous.

 _3\. Entertainment counts as "knowledge" now? That's even more of a stretch
than calling it "culture"!_

Arguments about quality of the information are completely orthogonal to the
topic. Copyright law does not attempt to discriminate on the quality of the
material copyrighted so quality isn't a factor in discussing the merits of
copyright law either.

~~~
throwawaykf
_> No, tangible items are inherently controllable because they are rivalrous
and excludable._

You missed my point. Tangible things are only as inherently controllable as
the capacity of the owner to control them. Without "legal fictions", what's to
keep someone more capable than you to simply take it from you? After all
that's your argument against copyright: people can just take it, so owners
have no control. What stops a bully from taking your school lunch?

 _> Sure they have, but just because it happens sometimes does not contradict
the self-evident fact that people love to share._

"Sometimes"?! It happens _all_ the time! It's been happening since the
existence of competition over limited resources, even before humans
consciously realized knowledge is power! Think of all the "priests" throughout
various cultures in history. Think of why encryption exists. Think of why the
CIA and NSA exist. Saying something is self-evident doesn't make it so.

 _> Next time you send someone a lolcat, remember that._

Heh, I don't send lolcats. Guess I'm not human, then :-P

 _> Rape, murder, theft, these are all behaviours that are (1) not the common
case and (2) inflict harm because the objects of the crimes are essentially
rivalrous_

Wait, by (1) you mean if rape, murder, theft ever become the common case, it
will be OK? You know, like when it happens during wars? And (2) what's so
rivalrous about sex? You can have sex with multiple people simultaneously, and
once somebody has had sex does not mean they cannot have it again. And heck,
we have the technology to make it so people don't even remember having sex, so
there's no harm done!

But you know what is rivalrous? The food, shelter and clothing creators need
to live to create new works.

 _> Arguments about quality of the information are completely orthogonal to
the topic_

The characteristics of the information _do_ matter matter in determining what
protections are afforded it. Would you share here all your private
information, financial accounts, photos, and so on? That's just knowledge
after all, and it's human nature to share. Or say you get "doxxed" and it's
all out on the Internet, you'd be OK with people sharing it? No? Oh, it's
_your_ private information, and suddenly you feel it should not be shared?
Thank god for privacy laws but down with copyright laws! Funny how that works.

~~~
Amadou
_Without "legal fictions", what's to keep someone more capable than you to
simply take it from you?_

Laws don't keep people from taking tangible items, they only punish
afterwards. The only thing that stops someone from taking something tangible
from you is your ability to stop them. _Nothing_ stops someone from making a
copy of information they already have.

 _Think of all the "priests" throughout various cultures in history. Think of
why encryption exists. Think of why the CIA and NSA exist._

Secret versus public knowledge. They are two entirely different things. This
discussion is about intentionally published knowledge.

 _Wait, by (1) you mean if rape, murder, theft ever become the common case, it
will be OK? You know, like when it happens during wars?_

Even during war none of those is the common case. That's why we prosecute
people for those crimes in times of war too. If those things _actually_ become
the common case, we can cross that bridge when we come it.

 _But you know what is rivalrous? The food, shelter and clothing creators need
to live to create new works._

Yes sir, Mr Valenti!

 _Would you share here all your private information_

Again, secret versus public.

~~~
throwawaykf
_> Laws don't keep people from taking tangible items, they only punish
afterwards._

So now all laws are "legal fiction"?

 _> The only thing that stops someone from taking something tangible from you
is your ability to stop them. Nothing stops someone from making a copy of
information they already have._

And my point is, your ability to stop them, absent the so-called "legal
fictions", is about as weak as a creator having their work ripped off. If you
doubt this, ask yourself how many people in the world are more than capable of
taking stuff away from you.

 _> This discussion is about intentionally published knowledge._

Actually, it's about control of information. You don't want your private data
published because you fear it may harm you. Creators want to publish their
works because they hope to profit from it. If you expect your "rights" to be
respected even though little stops people (coughNSAcough) from taking it, why
should creators not expect respect for theirs?

Essentially, most works are intentionally published with the expectation that
something will be given back in exchange. Otherwise you might as well say
people are "intentionally publishing" loaves of bread in supermarkets and you
could just take them. (And since about 40% of supermarket perishables are
wasted on the shelves anyway, hey, they're only about 60% rivalrous anyway!)

 _> Even during war none of those is the common case. That's why we prosecute
people for those crimes in times of war too._

War is an atrocity precisely because this does become the common case. And
that we (make feeble attempts to) prosecute for war crimes means that even
then it's not OK.

 _> Yes sir, Mr Valenti!_

I guess that means you think non-consensual sex is perfectly fine!

 _> Again, secret versus public._

What does that have to do with the "human nature to share"?

~~~
Amadou
_I guess that means you think non-consensual sex is perfectly fine!_

If there is one thing anyone else reading along should take away from this
discussion, it is that you wrote the above. It perfectly sums up the
intellectual rigor of the arguments you've made here. And yes, that statement
means I am done wrasslin' with a pig.

~~~
throwawaykf
Apologies for pointing out the flaws in your "taking non-rivalrous things
causes no harm" argument. Oink!

------
angersock
_" Big rarely means agile. Even so, there remains in New Zealand a fast-moving
fat man who is causing an immense amount of trouble to anyone who ever
troubled him."_

Good opener.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I found it a little out of place to mention the subject's size in this
article.

He's going to beat the copyright industry with his brains, not his girth.

~~~
mahyarm
I think Kim uses that joke punchline himself anyway, I don't think he is very
sensitive about it. He probably knows it contributes to his PR branding anyway
as a unique character.

------
downer96
Time to wade through all the forum slide and astro turf of another two minute
hate.

    
    
      Blah blah blah, he's fat. 
      Blah blah blah, music thief. 
      Blah blah blah, copyright law.
    

Okay. Yeah, we get it. That's great. We get it. The fat man has a website, and
it's very bad. He's a fat, ugly, stinky man. Boo hoo! Make him go away!

I'm still not clear on what it is about his website, and all the implicit data
transfer it's responsible for, that's so radically different from any other
website that hosts massive amounts of any data I want, shared with the world.

Flickr, for example, let's me share Terabytes of data, if I should choose to
do so. Why isn't flickr villified like some genocidal dictator?

~~~
Malstrond
What is your counter-argument to the fact that he turned "on us" in the past
when he gave all information on users of the House of Coolness BBS to the
authorities, the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, and just about anyone
who would pay?

How can "we" be sure he won't just cave in again?

~~~
downer96
I fail to see the difference between your complaint and the reality of all
large tech companies, as we now know them to be. Secret agreements for wire
taps and traffic analysis. National security letters and eavesdropping.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft. All of them.

I say again: Why is this guy more evil than anyone else? Why is he worse than,
say, Steve Ballmer? Why is he smeared, but other corporate parasites, not so
much?

------
1010011010
Copyright should be rolled back to 4 years, no renewal, retroactively.

------
xzel
I would say this article was surprising well written for a tech piece for the
Guardian, though, I think it could have been a little deeper.

Love (do people love him?) or hate Dotcom, he is an interesting man. Aside
from a heart attack, I seem him being a pain in side of the music industry for
years to come.

------
criley2
Kim's story is interesting and I enjoyed that part of the article but I think
the analysis of the music industry and Kim's new venture is very wrong.

Firstly: his monetization strategy is a browser extension that strips ads out
of sites and places his own. This is appalling and I'm shocked the Guardian, a
site that undoubtedly relies on internet advertising, doesn't realize that his
monetization strategy _would prevent even them from monetizing users who used
both services_.

Getting past the grossly immoral monetization, the article casts the music
industry as, once again, some unchanging monolith that refuses to change in
light of modern ideas.

Last time I checked, I can buy mp3's one by one, without DRM, and load them on
any device I want, from any number of online stores. Last time I checked, I
can use Spotify or another service and listen to the vast majority of popular
music free with ads, or for $5/mo.

I don't get it, I can go to bandcamp or soundcloud right now and see thousands
of indies who aren't signing labels and who are putting their music out there,
selling it and giving it away.

It's not 2001 like that article desperately pretends, and our music reality is
not what it was. (And if they think Kim or any web music site can upend the
entertainment business of nationally popular celebrity/artists, then I charge
that they don't even understand the basics of why it's successful).

~~~
erikpukinskis
I respect your beliefs, but I disagree that it is immoral to give people a
tool that swaps ads for your own.

It's not _nice_ but I think once you send someone some bits, you give up any
claim to control what they do with them in the privacy of their own home. Even
if they swap out the ads.

In fact I would argue using physical violence (police) to enforce what you
deem to be "proper private use" of distributed bits is immoral.

------
Guthur
For me the pertinent part of this and related stories is that the governments
will undertake any action no matter how abhorrent at the beckoning of whatever
lobby dollars come their way. That is the real criminality; text book
protection racketeering.

Whether or not what Kim is doing is right or wrong, or if he is a nice person
or not is a red herring and is used to deflect people away from the real
issue.

This article had so many character assassination elements I would not consider
it impartial journalism at all.

------
JumpCrisscross
> Dotcom built Mega so it was technically impossible for anyone, including the
> site’s operators, to know what content users had stored. It means one result
> of the FBI’s action is the creation of a rogue website which exists outside
> the intrusive surveillance technology exposed by Snowden.

Are these claims accurate?

~~~
anon4
I think they might be if you're outside the US. That is, the NSA monitor all
communication within the US, so a US citizen uploading a file to MEGA would be
recorded. A non-US citizen uploading a file to Google Drive would be recorded.
But a non-US citizen uploading a file to MEGA would not be recorded most of
the time, unless the NSA happen to be listening in on the right underground
optical cables that day.

The claim is not completely false.

~~~
pantalaimon
Actually, the file is encrypted on the client side using JavaScript, so even
the NSA listening wouldn't see it's content.

~~~
beagle3
... unless the NSA has already trojaned their computer[0] or is doing an MITM
attack.

[0] [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/11/quantu...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/11/quantum-of-pwnness-how-nsa-and-gchq-hacked-opec-and-
others/)

------
bhewes
If anything this is going to make copyright law more efficient. If one man can
cause so much havoc what happens when a few people that own a ton of
copyrighted work wise up and use the same tech?

------
leeoniya
very similar to the Pirate Bay guys, just seem to keep on truckin'

