
Kim Dotcom’s first TV interview: ‘I’m no piracy king’ - NZ_Matt
http://www.3news.co.nz/Kim-Dotcoms-first-TV-interview-Im-no-piracy-king/tabid/817/articleID/244830/Default.aspx
======
rasur
I think some of the points Kim makes are interesting:

\- He complies with the DMCA. \- He provides direct 'delete' access to his
servers for the content companies. \- The content companies that claim to be
losing billions, with direct access to his servers so far have failed to file
any legal complaint with his lawyers.

I'm sure as much as we want to dislike him for his previous flamboyant
behaviour, he has some legitimate points and a legitimate company providing a
legitimate service (and one that is similarly provided by other companies,
some of which are household names).

Call me cynical, but this smells of being such a monumental set-up that it
makes the farm full of cows just down the road from me seem like a breath of
fresh air.

~~~
brazzy
_\- He complies with the DMCA. - He provides direct 'delete' access to his
servers for the content companies._

The way I heard it Megaupload was basically designed to perfunctorily comply
with the DMCA while actually not deleting content and keeping it accessible.

~~~
Karunamon
The way any sane company would. Imagine you host a file locker service, and
there are ten copies of a given music video on your service, which due to
deduping (also what any sane enterprise would do), all point to the same
physical data.

You recieve a DMCA for one link, and do your duty and take it down. You _do
not_ take down the other 9 links, because you are in no position to know if
the other 9 are infringing are not.

~~~
Nelson69
Why exactly wouldn't you know? Couldn't you see who shared them, how they were
shared and pretty much know? Or at least know enough to send an email or
something to find out. A private backup that is only accessed by one customer
could sanely be considered a backup, a link that has been downloaded 10,000
times by lot's of users of the exact same content, what should that sanely be
considered?

What is the proper legal solution to this problem? Just "fuck 'em" and the
lawyers search and write letters for each and every copy?

~~~
Natsu
> Why exactly wouldn't you know?

It's only infringing if it lacks permission. The URLs could be kept privately
and while 9 of the 10 were put up by pirates, the last one might have been the
copyright holder's own copy which they were doing something with privately.

And then you delete it on them. Oops.

~~~
Nelson69
Well back to my premise, could you not sort of figure that out by the access
patterns? Subsequently the people that give the permission have contacted you
about it, what else are we needing? Perhaps you could have the notion of
"private" shares.

Would it be reasonable to identify your users? Perhaps require and SMS or
something to gain membership and then when there is this deduplication case
why couldn't you contact them to find out if it's valid or not?

~~~
Karunamon
>Well back to my premise, could you not sort of figure that out by the access
patterns?

You "could", but you could be wrong and cheese off your users. Who's to say
that an indie label isn't using your service for cheap file hosting? Just
because $file is getting a lot of hits (and "lot" needs to be defined here)
doesn't mean that those uses are necessarily infringing.

And then we're back to the links + deduping problem anyways. Let's say you've
determined that 3 of the 9 non-DMCA'd links are coming from CoolHotWarez.ru
(first remembering that the law doesn't require you to do this research, and
second remembering that any warez site worth a crap uses an anonymizer to
strip referrer URLs ANYWAYS...) - You take them down.

The 6 left don't have much traffic, so your metric kind of falls apart. And
all this would result in would result in warez kiddies uploading two copies of
each file, keeping one secret and sharing the other.

------
jakeonthemove
Interesting situation, indeed. Let's not forget he has yet to be found guilty
for any of the charges. And if he's tried and found not guilty, who's going to
repay all the time and money lost because his site was down?

It's like the FBI came in and demolished his store to take away the bricks as
evidence - if he's found not guilty, I doubt they're going to rebuild it for
him.

They just needed someone to make an example of - there are dozens of other
sharing sites out there (hell, many of them even have "warez" in their name),
and yet they chose Megaupload, one of the biggest, with a brazen in-your-face
owner (last time I checked, that wasn't a crime).

It seems to have worked, though - Filesonic disabled sharing, for example, and
other sites must've done something similar...

~~~
Hexx
Not to mention future damages. I think even if Megaupload is brought back up
the chances of it reclaiming it's past glory anytime soon will take quite a
while. Who's going to trust the site to store their files now?

~~~
lmm
Would a non-Megaupload site be any safer? The message I take away from this is
to never host anything in the US, and if possible live in a country without
diplomatic relations with the US.

------
tweak2live
In my unprofessional legal view, it seems that what the copyright clique is
really hoping to gain from this case is a precedent for making website owners
responsible for ensuring that content uploaded to their site is copyright
kosher.

Currently, the copyright holder has to crawl the internet to make sure their
copyright isn't being violated somewhere and if so - file a takedown order.
This is very whack-a-mole and when it comes to cyberlockers - intractable,
since many external links can resolve to the same file. Locker admins have to
only remove the offending link to comply with a takedown request, as it is
impossible (without knowing the internal code structure) to prove whether two
links resolve to the same file or different copies thereof. The linkers can
simply check periodically to make sure their links are current and update as
necessary, which can be easily automated.

The copyright holders cannot automate the discovery process (not without huge
resources, anyway), while the copyright infringing parties can easily automate
their side. This inherent unbalance creates a difficult policing problem that
copyright holders (naturally) don't want to be responsible for.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If UGC site admins become
legally compelled to monitor what they are hosting, the overhead will kill
most ad-only revenue models. If not, copyright holders will have to hire some
sort of copyright police (does it already exist? if not -->
startup_idea_masterlist.add() ).

Opinion question: what is the "ok/not ok" line for encouraging your users to
use your (online) service for illegal activities (esp. copyright
infringement)? Paying them to do it seems to be clearly "over the line", as
far as US gov. is concerned. What about publicly announcing that you are not
going to police their data?

~~~
vidarh
It could potentially kill _all_ UGC. There is no foolproof way to determine
the copyright status of a given piece of content, unless it happens to be a
piece that you can demonstrate was published long enough ago that copyright
must have expired.

E.g. if website owners are made liable for the copyright of uploaded content,
a successful (illegal) attack on _any_ site hosting copyrighted content would
be for two parties secretly cooperating (secretly, because conspiring like
this would almost certainly in itself be illegal):

One party operates an offline (to prevent it from showing up in Google
searches or otherwise being easy for the copyright owners to identify as
possibly infringing) newsletter that publishes assorted essays that might for
example include responses suitable for the forum of a specific UGC site. They
might be written specifically for that purpose...

The other party uploads a copy of said content to the site.

The first party sues the website.

You could do this without someone cooperating with you to write custom-written
content, but it'd be easier to spot that something was off, and since you
wouldn't hold the copyright on the content you wouldn't have standing to sue
so you'd be dependent on making third parties pissed off. Since you'd be
infringing on copyright in the first place, it might be easier to just use an
accomplice.

All it takes is someone who dislikes you strongly enough, and you're
potentially out of business if you depend on UGC in this kind of scenario...

------
HalibetLector
I'm confused - A large part of the discussion here is around the legality of
deduping and "infringing" files. I was under the impression that files
themselves don't violate copyright - people do. As a result, there will never
be a way to accurately determine who can download a particular file. Or am I
missing something?

If I own a copy of the DVD and want to download a dvdrip, am I commiting
copyright infringement? Is the file, in and of itself, an illegal file? or is
the act of downloading said file illegal?

(and to short circuit the 'you should rip your dvd yourself' discussion, it's
quicker to download and the end result is the same)

~~~
clark-kent
Downloading it or distributing the file is considered illegal activity. It
doesn't matter if you own legit copies of the same file.

~~~
vidarh
Depends on the jurisdiction, especially whether or not they have provisions
for backups or other personal use.

------
boyter
Say what you will about him he does come across as knowledgeable in terms of
the legalities and makes some very good points. His points about the outdated
business models of the content companies are IMO totally true.

------
dutchbrit
Extremely slow - so I uploaded a mirror (downloadable or streamable):
<http://serve2.com/file/kim-interview>

(And, a sneak preview into one of my startup projects)

~~~
alt_
Instead of limiting streaming to Chrome and Firefox, use HTML5 video tags
and/or just link directly to the byte-ranges enabled URL
([http://serve2.com/uploads/a6312121e15caec74845b7ba5af23330d5...](http://serve2.com/uploads/a6312121e15caec74845b7ba5af23330d52d4ac0/cl_dotcomexclusive123_010312_700K.mp4))
and you'll reach a lot more browsers and devices.

~~~
dutchbrit
Upvoted - Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated! Serve2 is essentially
still in Pre Alpha & am aware of this issue. I also need to convert videos to
ogg etc... (FFMPEG) - Serve2, when "launched" will work on desktop & mobile
devices.

------
stevenbrianhall
This is incredible PR, in my opinion. Prior to this interview, all I had known
of Kim Dotcom were from photos and videos of him in private jets, on the
beach, in expensive cars, etc. He seemed like a playboy who was above the law.

In this interview he strikes me as highly intelligent, metered, and well
versed in the various copyright laws. It seems like he has managed to operate
his business from within a legal loophole, and it will be interesting to see
how that plays out in court.

------
corin_
I really hope he wins this case, but there's an awful lot of naiveity going
around.

Comment I read on that video page ended "Leave the poor guy and his wife
alone!" They're millionaires, and there's really no way to paint this as "poor
Kim" - I can very well believe that based on his knowledge and his legal
advice he expected to be safe legally, and was perhaps right, but the idea
that he actually didn't know what MU was being used for, or that he cared
about preventing it, is laughable. Look at his track record as a person, he's
always prioritised himself (money, ego etc.) over legality.

~~~
thoradam
> but the idea that he actually didn't know what MU was being used for

Is that a reason to be held liable? Isn't the whole point of the DMCA that we
realize that every open service that transfers bits will be used illegally by
some, so as long as the service provider acts on takedown notices they cannot
be held liable for the actions of their users?

> or that he cared about preventing it

They had a special tool for content creators which gave them direct delete
access to everything on MU. This goes above and beyond the DMCA.

~~~
corin_
See cbs' comment below (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3651914>)

If he had knowledge of the illegal activity then DMCA doesn't protect him.

~~~
vidarh
Having general knowledge of illegal activity is not the same has having actual
knowledge that specific instances of specific files infringe on copyright.

The entire point of the DMCA safe harbour provisions is that a provider should
not need to act on the mere general knowledge that some people sometimes use
their services for illegal purposes.

------
sandieman
Am I the only one that is finding him surprisingly convincing?

~~~
zotz
I find him more convincing than an armed raid on a nonviolent man.

------
zyeljanee
What I like most about Kim Dotcom is the way he stands out bravelly. He is
realy a convincing person.

~~~
brazzy
Con men tend to be convincing, it's kind of a job requirement.

Seriously, read up on his past.

~~~
zyeljanee
There is time for everything in the life we are living today. Its a life issue
and we all are given chances in life. Its not once a sinner always a
sinner.......we learn by our past mistakes. Its his chance.............

------
realschool
Seeing all those videos that came out when he was first arrested gave the
impression that he was a 'bad' person who deserved to be in jail. Hearing him
speak gives a completely different impression, obviously he'd have to be smart
to have the success he has, but this video goes to show he's articulate,
convincing and well versed in the industry that he is a part of. Clearly the
early propaganda served a purposes, but this video shows reality.

~~~
brazzy
Since when does being articulate, convincing and well versed in the industry
make you a "good" person?

The guy has several previous convictions for fraud, insider trading and
handling of stolen goods.

~~~
realschool
I'm not saying that he is a good person, just that he's not so bad as all the
information that came out made him seem.

------
Joakal
There's precedent for anti-piracy extraditions:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths>

An Australian was extradited to USA despite having never been to USA or
profited from piracy. Then was subsequently jailed, eventually finished
sentence and became an illegal alien. Then deported back to Australia and
banned from visiting USA.

Edit: Corrected deport-back

~~~
xlevus
That's a precedent for the Australian courts. Not the New Zealand courts.

------
bbsabelli
Sigh. If MegaUpload was still up, 3news could have used it to take the load
off their servers. Just like the ad servers are doing.

------
Thomaschaaf
Can someone please provide a mirror? It's interessting that I looked at the
commercial and then expected the clip to load in a timely fashion. And because
I can not do it, I will probably not watch that clip to the end.

~~~
dutchbrit
Mirror: <http://serve2.com/file/kim-interview>

------
jamesu
Just goes to show there is always more than 1 side to a story.

------
aremie
The Kevin Mitnick of piracy. What a shame.

------
quellhorst
Some megaupload stats from the video: 1.5 terabits of data transfer and 800
downloads completed per second. If my math is correct: 493 petabytes data
transfer per month with an average download size around 237 megabytes.

------
maeon3
Meanwhile, there are 50 exes from AIG that got millions of dollars in bonuses
after having stolen (removing the original type) of billions of dollars in
cash money. AND taking down the global economy while they were at it.

I think it's funny how Kim Dotcom's gets treated like a terrorist, but the AIG
Execs get bonuses and a stern slap on the hand. Justice in this country is
really bizarre. Some grand larceny is completely OK, and other "technical
larceny" is punished with jailtime.

I guess the moral of the story here is that It's not the Grand Larceny that
makes it a deed worth punishing, it has to do with other qualities.

~~~
joering2
> Justice in this country is really bizarre.

Although I upvoted you, I don't get you. You seemed to be fully aware that the
system in US was designed to collapse and the country is pretty much owned by
offshore banking cartel with privetly owned banking system and Federal Reserve
that has as much to do with "Federal" as "Federal Express", but yet you brag
about "justice being bizarre".

Kim, as I read somewhere "flew too close to the sun". He was too big, grew too
fast and "wasn't the part of the family". You not choose to be a part of a
family because you are wise and know how to make millions, as this example
shows.

~~~
betterth
>and Federal Reserve that has as much to do with "Federal" as "Federal
Express"

This is a patent falsehood. Federal Express (now FedEx) is a private shipping
company.

The Federal Reserve System is a "private" bank created by an Act of Congress
and managed by a Board of Governors, all of whom are placed by the President
and confirmed by Senate. Additionally, the Chairman is chosen by the President
from the Governors.

The list of checks and balances between Government and our central bank is
long, but it misses the biggest point: What the Congress creates, the Congress
can take away. Congress could end the Fed tomorrow or dramatically change its
oversight and decision making capability.

To imply that the Federal Reserve is private in the same way as FedEx is about
as disingenuous as you could possibly be.

I'm going to have to assume here that you are simply woefully misinformed and
not actively trying to spread disinformation...

~~~
joering2
By comparing names, I was just showing that because it has "Federal" in its
name doesn't mean its a part of the US Government like most people think.

Checks and balances you say. Like here?

[http://www.opednews.com/articles/Representatives-Were-
Threa-...](http://www.opednews.com/articles/Representatives-Were-Threa-by-
Patrick-Henningsen-081004-301.html)

or here:

[http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Banker-s-Trick-
Americ...](http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Banker-s-Trick-Americ-by-
Patrick-Henningsen-081003-514.html)

------
Devilboy
So this NZ court decided to let him out on bail and give him access to his
bank accounts for 'essential expenses'. I think that's pretty decent. Unlike
what the US did with his entire company before even starting a trial.

------
funkah
Kind of annoying how this guy is becoming a media darling.

~~~
smokeyj
The guy who had his business destroyed before ever going to court? Yeah, what
a jackass that guy is.

------
hengli
Notice that when asked about the content provider's direct delete access he
was very careful to say that he would remove any _link_ they requested.

I'm sorry, but there's only 1 reason why you would remove a link to an
infringing file but not the actual file. Aiding piracy.

~~~
Sumaso
"It’s like mail, it’s private, we cannot just go in there and police what
these users are uploading."

This has been mentioned before, but I'll say it again.

If I upload Batman to my personal storage locker, and never share it with
anyone else, and then a pirate uploads Batman and shares it with everyone, why
should I lose my digital copy of Batman due to the actions of someone else?

Maybe I don't have a thorough understanding of now Hashes work, but if we both
rip the same movie with the same software, won't that file have the same hash?

~~~
rasur
It depends on the hashing method, above all.

A cheap-and-nasty MD5 (for example) of the exact same film stored in different
file formats will yield different hashes.

A more sophisticated hashing methodology (for example something akin to the
audio-fingerprinting tech used by Shazam) might yield a match.

~~~
Sumaso
_Might_ doesn't sound like I have the right to remove someone's potentially
pirated movie.

Could have MegaUpload have done more to prevent pirated movies from being
uploaded on their servers? Maybe, maybe not.

Should they still be protected by the DCMA? IMHO, I think so.

~~~
rasur
I agree - "might" does not cut it for me either, but these are political games
being played, not technical.

Could MU have prevented "piracy" by blocking uploads of copyrighted material?
Again, I'm inclined to agree with you and say "DMCA", there are too many
privacy issues involved for sites to go jack-booting their way through
everyones files (which again, Kim D-C mentioned in the video), especially when
he's holding out an olive branch to the content companies by allowing them to
delete millions of "illegal" files without any due-process.

~~~
unseen
Most people wouldn't ever upload anything illegal directly anyway. They
compress it, split it up and then put a password on the whole thing. Theres no
way to tell whats in the files then. MegaUpload was already going way beyond
DMCA by letting them delete everything per their wishes.

------
forrestthewoods
I don't understand the HN community stance on this.

MegaUpload was blatantly profiteering off of copyright infringing materials.
DMCA take down notices affected only a single link to a file and not the file
itself. Premium users could spend money to "clone" files by generating a new
link without having to upload a single byte. MegaUpload paid users based on
the number of times their file was downloaded. It is claimed that MegaUpload
accounted for four percent of all internet traffic. They did all this to the
tune of several hundred million dollars in profit.

There are numerous websites that are 100% dedicated to the streaming of
copyrighted material (TV shows and movies). They stream content from
MegaUpload directly to your browser with no download needed.

MegaUpload blatantly and clearly did not care about hosting and serving
copyright infringing material from their servers. It does not require an IT
genius to detect that the file Game.Of.Thrones.S1.E01 which has been
downloaded hundreds of thousands of times may possibly be copyright infringing
material.

Someone who actually cared would look at which websites are streaming content
to MILLIONS of users. If that website is 100% solely dedicated to serving
copyright infringing material then you should probably take down the files
they are streaming.

The wiki DMCA Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act states
"To qualify for the § 512(c) safe harbor, the OSP must not have actual
knowledge that it is hosting infringing material or be aware of facts or
circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent." IANAL but it was
pretty damn apparent that MegaUpload was being used for infringing activity to
me.

I seriously don't understand why this community supports Kim Dotcom and
MegaUpload. I really don't.

~~~
Natsu
> The wiki DMCA Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act states
> "To qualify for the § 512(c) safe harbor, the OSP must not have actual
> knowledge that it is hosting infringing material or be aware of facts or
> circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent." IANAL but it was
> pretty damn apparent that MegaUpload was being used for infringing activity
> to me.

I believe it applies to specific acts of infringement, not a general knowledge
that a certain service is used for infringing activities. Otherwise, the
entire internet you're using right now would be illegal.

(EDIT) More on that point here:
[https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Copyright:_Digital_Millennium_...](https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Copyright:_Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

Scroll down to "Actual or “Red Flag” Knowledge" and look at the cases
interpreting it. (END EDIT)

Almost everything online is copyrighted. It only becomes copyright
_infringing_ when you lack the copyright holder's permission. Unless the
copyright holder has said otherwise, you don't know what has and has not been
authorized by them. You can probably guess for things like Hollywood movies,
but that's why the DMCA puts the burden on them to identify data they have not
authorized.

It's their property and they're the only ones who actually know what they have
and have not authorized. It may be an impossible burden, but shifting that to
people less able to bear it won't help anyone.

~~~
Natsu
Also, can you provide a source for the claim that "Premium users could spend
money to "clone" files by generating a new link without having to upload a
single byte."?

I find that allegation more troubling than the rest because I can't see a need
for it, while all the other parts have substantial legitimate uses. I mean,
there's nothing wrong with letting people monetize their own files or with
driving traffic to MU, it's only when the content is infringing that there's a
problem. But I've also never been a premium member of that (or any other) site
so I've never seen that sort of clone feature before. And if there's no good
use for it, it would support the claims that it was designed to skirt the
DMCA.

I find the claim surprising because I read the indictment against him and I
don't remember seeing it in there. But it was a very long indictment and I
might have missed that part, which is why I'm going to ask for a source.

------
Mythbusters
He is trying to hide behind DMCA but I think the FBI found out that he
actually solicited pirated copies of music/movies which might land him in
trouble. YouTube still is a treasure chest of pirated content but is doing
well being protected by DMCA. That's because they don't go around asking
people to upload pirated stuff to their site. It's another thing that people
willingly do that ;)

~~~
JoshCole
Do you have any links or evidence which backs up this claim? And why, even if
he were to ask someone to upload a file to MegaUpload, would it be just for
the site to be taken down without any sort of trial?

~~~
Mythbusters
Looks like you are too lazy to go to youtube and search. Here, let me find you
some entertainment:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedZ2Vw7Fqk>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g1xIub8wNA>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3wUeraIDw>

And I am not justifying what the FBI did to him. I am saying that he might be
liable if he asked people for pirated content and then hosted it for others to
download.

~~~
JoshCole
I wasn't asking for links to youtube. I was asking for (a) links to Kim
explicitly requesting people to upload copyrighted material in bad faith and
(b) the point at which the law states that asking for things to be uploaded in
bad faith means you should be jailed/have a site taken down.

To the best of my knowledge many sites like Youtube actually go beyond the
DMCA in trying to empower media companies to manage there content.

