Except in this case, the content is created in America by Americans, and the underlying property rights are widely recognized internationally. So yes, if none of those things were true your example might not be a strawman, but as it stands...
Except that Megaupload was not selling duplicated CDs of albums of US musicians or some other obviously infringing activity.
They provided a file hosting service, like Dropbox or Google Drive or Skydrive.
Judge Mooner, I'm pretty sure, doesn't own rights to Sinead O'Connor's music and yet DOJ is not currently suing YouTube because of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t77DexLMjOU
The rules for determining if a file sharing services like YouTube or DropBox or Megaupload violates copyright are not as clear as you seem to imply which is why e.g. Viacom lost it's case against YouTube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Yo...)
It's far from clear that Megaupload violated U.S. law, let alone New Zealand's.
MegaUpload did not sell copyrighted material, but they did PAY users for hosting obviously copyright infringing material so that other users would pay MegaUpload to get fast download speeds on those files.
I'm continuously amazed at how the Internet defends a certified scumbag who profited hundreds of millions of dollars off other people's work. Everyone does like free stuff I suppose.
So lets refine the arguments a bit. I could respond to the mudslinging, but that just get boring to read/write.
If I understand you right, then the issues is not with the service that MegaUpload offered, but with the way that they marketed their services and encouraged new users.
And marketing is important. Where I live (Sweden), we have quite strong laws regulating marketing activities. For one, marketing directed at kids (like games) are strictly unlawful, as it is deemed to have a negative impact on society. Same for advertisement regarding alcohol or tobacco. By the early 2000, they considered if they could enforce the same laws against international cable networks that sold and broadcasted inside Sweden, but decided that such enforcing of Swedish law could not be enforced outside the national border.
What he's saying (I think) is that MegaUpload wasn't simply a service provider.
They got their hands dirty and actively participated in paying to "seed" their own service with popular copyright-protected movies, TV shows, etc.
IIRC they also paid for data center services hosted within the U.S. to ensure Americans had quick access to those services (including the deliberately-seeded IP-regime media files).
You'll note that the Feds aren't going after Google Drive, Youtube, Dropbox, iCloud, whatever Microsoft's cloud offering is called, etc., and yet those services are just as capable of uploading media and hosting it publically.
My issue is that I find MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom actions fundamentally immoral. Whether it is or should be illegal is a separate matter.
I am continuously surprised by the number of internet users who are typically opposed to his type of behavior, but support his immorality because he helps them get free things.
>support his immorality because he helps them get free things.
What a terrible argument. I have to support government thuggery, or else I'm a freeloading terrorist? I've never had a MU account, and I definitely don't look to Kim Dotcom's actions for moral guidance; but, I reckon I support the notion that the DOJ ought to follow the law. If that means that Dotcom gets away with something, well then so be it. Fix the law, don't just ignore it or make it up as you go.
Youtube does not operate with knowledge of actual specific infringement on their site. The DMCA creates a two-pronged obligation on hosting providers: they must respond to takedowns, and they can't operate with knowledge of actual specific unaddressed infringement. Not only did MegaUpload do that, but they (a) paid their users to upload content they knew to be infringing, and (b) themselves used the service to upload and download content they knew to be infringing.
Are you suggesting YouTube turns a blind eye towards copyright infringement? My experience has been that they aggressively patrol the site for infringing content to the point where they remove many videos that are clearly not infringing.
YouTube itself does no patrolling. It can't have actual knowledge of specific acts of infringement if it wants to be protected by the DMCA; it's by turning a blind eye to it that they gain legal immunity from the infringement. You can be aware it's happening somewhere (even a lot) as long as you're not aware of the specific instances.
The media companies themselves do the patrolling and their actions, through a special dashboard YouTube provides them, result in the widespread takedowns you see. They can do their own flagging and also review potential matches by a ContentID-type system that checks uploads against signatures of files the media companies upload to claim as theirs.
