Megaupload Founder Dodges Jail Again; Wife Under Investigation 175
New submitter xenn writes "The linked article, titled by TVNZ as 'Kim Dotcom bail appeal dismissed, funds released,' somehow doesn't quite capture the drama the lies within... 'Meanwhile, it emerged today that U.S. authorities are investigating Dotcom's pregnant wife, Mona Dotcom, as part of a world-wide sting on Internet piracy. Toohey said she had received a preliminary application from the U.S. indicating that Mona could have been involved in Megaupload.'"
Torrentfreak adds that U.S. attempts to put Kim Dotcom back in jail failed, and he's been granted access to his bank accounts to cover essential expenses (to the tune of $30+k per month).
It's a witch hunt (Score:4, Interesting)
The feds should be going after the users that upload the content, not the hosts.
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Because that's less of a witch hunt...
Re:It's a witch hunt! (Score:5, Informative)
BEDEMIR: Tell me, what do you do with witches?
VILLAGER #2: Burn!
CROWD: Burn, burn them up!
BEDEMIR: And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1: More witches!
Don't worry, they'll be going after the other witches/uploaders/pirates once they go through Megaupload's servers.
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Regardless, I still think he should be locked away for a long time, honestly.
Not for the piracy, no, but because he was enough of a fucking douchenozzle to change his name to "Dotcom".
Seriously. That shit should've died back in the 90s with the tech bubble.
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:4, Insightful)
The Feds should be going after the MAFIAA execs for fraudulent accounting, withholding taxes, racketeering and corruption.
But it seems they've got a lot of dirty cops and bought judges on their payroll these days.
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No, the fed should not be wasting its time on something which should no longer be against the law and should go back to investigating actual crimes which have a negative effect on society.
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crimes which have a negative effect on society.
I think you're underestimating the consequences of the next Kardashian show getting canceled! lives are at stake people, this is serious business!
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:4, Insightful)
The feds should be going after the users that upload the content, not the hosts.
Megaupload was paying bounties for hot files.
That takes you light years distant from being an innocent host ----and it means that the uploaders whose rewards can be traced are toast --- the only question is how long it will take before they feel the burn.
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The feds should be going after the users that upload the content, not the hosts.
The uploaders did very little wrong either. They just re-uploaded data found elsewhere on the net, and that's basically just copying a lot of ones and zeros. They have no way of knowing it's actually copyrighted material - they have never seen the source and its attached copyright notices.
No, it's the scene groups that do the actually ripping - those are the ones with copyrighted material in hand that actually infringe on copyrights.
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is they're going after the shop keeper who might or might not have actually known that some of his customers were witches.
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more like them putting Sony Execs in jail because a Walkman might play non-licenced MP3s.
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As an afterthought, maybe they should do that?
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Or ducks. You can't always tell.
Re:It's a witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be a bit more sympathetic to their position had they not burned the shop down before even beginning to hold a trial.
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also, there is a lot of water between the country who's laws he broke and where the server is and where he lives. i can understand the shutdown, but the arrest is a real stretch of jurisdiction.
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I didn't know bits could fuck!
I'm sure he knew in the abstract that someone would abuse the service in the same way we know that not everyone buying a crowbar has good intentions, but that's not a crime.
Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:2, Insightful)
If this were a CEO, doctor, or lawyer who made less than half of what this guy makes and were arrested for something that wasn't related to infringing IP rights then the usual lynch mob would be out screaming about how all "rich" people are evil and we need to destroy Wallstreet and kill all the Republicans, ban Faux News, etc. etc. [insert administration approved Media Matters talking points here].
When the perpetrator is a guy who got rich by getting kickbacks to facilitate piracy, however, he's suddenly s
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we reading the same Slashdot? People around here love rich technologists whenever they do anything that the Slashdot crowd considers good/interesting/cool. Kim Dotcom is hardly the only rich person to get plaudits; people can't fall over themselves fast enough with praise whenever John Carmack is mentioned, and Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) has a large fanbase as well.
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Unless the rich technologist is Bill Gates.
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, the rich technologist Bill Gates who has blown his billions on malaria research, HIV/AIDS research, composting toilet technology, etc.
What an asshole.
Come to think of it, Windows machines might be used for piracy. Maybe they should be investigating some folks in Richmond...
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Funny)
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She cried Wolfe
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Yeah, the rich technologist Bill Gates who has blown his billions on malaria research, HIV/AIDS research, composting toilet technology, etc.
His billions or Warren Buffett's and other people's? The Bill Gates Foundation has spent billions. Besides the initial seed money of a couple of hundred million, I can't really find any record of the amount of his own money Bill has put into the Gates Foundation as well as the money that others have. If you have a link, I'd like it because I've been wondering how much exactly he has put in. Warren Buffett's donation of 1.5 billion is pretty well documented however.
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Bill gates is an asshole; all the charity work in the world doesn't change that. That doesn't mean I'm not glad he's doing it, but since there are plenty of charities that are not run by assholes, his foundation is never going to be in the running for my money.
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When, exactly, was Microsoft good, interesting, or cool?
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Insightful)
> When, exactly, was Microsoft good, interesting, or cool?
In the mid- to late 1980s.
In those days, IBM a monopolistic corporate behemoth that suppressed innovation to protect their market, and we all suspected that their long term strategy in the PC marketplace was "embrace and extinguish", in favor of the more lucrative mainframe trade that restricted computation to people who could pay a lot.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had a reasonably well-documented OS with lots of hooks to hang extensions on, and decent development tools that weren't too expensive. MS-DOS opened up the machine and gave you convenient access to it at many levels, you really felt like you could do anything with it.
You may vacate my lawn at your convenience.
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Do notr forget that IBM was one of the first companies distributing source code for all their software products. You licensed the product, you got the source code.
Originally, nearly all of it was in straight Assembler language. Except the Fortran IV complier which had substantial parts written in POP, a custom language for writing a Fortran compiler. Later on, they introduced PL/S which was far less usable.
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We like him because he is sort of our "Robin Hood". he takes from the big media companies and gives to the media-poor...
the audience of this site typically hates MPAA/RIAA they are like the sheriff. and we don't entirely like most IP laws and think they are too restrictive.
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The RIAA/MPAA don't seem much better than criminals themselves most the time.
can't say i feel sorry for them because some other criminal is ripping them off.
"There is no honor among thieves"
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30+k does seem excessive, unless this amount also includes money to be spent on legal council, at which case you could easily blow through that in a single month. Fucking lawers are expensive.
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Informative)
If he has a mortgage on his $5 million house that alone will eat into most of that amount. And there are good reasons the fabulously wealthy would have a loan rather than pay cash, namely the fact that once you get to a certain amount of money, using it to generate more money is pretty easy. You'll probably come out better off with a loan with a crazy low interest rate (since you have the cash and income to cover it times 10) and invest the same money in something else (if you make even a 7% profit you come out well ahead).
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Yeah, how dare they complain about wealth disparity that's barely higher than it was during the Great Depression, the nerve of those people.
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the justice system couldn't give two shits about prosecuting bankers for predatory loan practiced or curtailing insider trading among congress critters.
Two things: One, the predatory lending practices and other shady shit that wall street did prior to the financial collapse was for the most part perfectly legal. That was the problem, and we don't do ex-post-facto laws around here. AFAIK, in the cases where there were illegal actions, investigations are ongoing (also, congress managed to change the laws for next time. See Dodd-Frank).
Secondly, the justice department has no control over insider trading in congress. Again, that's a legal activity which some congressional members are trying to make illegal by passing a bill. Separation of powers, my friend.
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in the cases where there were illegal actions, investigations are ongoing
Well, yeah, but they didn't seize all their assets and shutdown their business before beginning the investigation did they?
congress managed to change the laws for next time
Yes, that's part of a problem. The difference between law and morality is becoming more and more obvious to more and more people.
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your argument is this: you assume that those who see a problem with the distribution of wealth think that we should not reward merit at all.
This is not the case.
What is the case is that the disparity of wealth, when it grows too extreme, does not drive industry; it does not build a middle class, and it rewards existent wealth as opposed to rewarding hard work, diligence and innovation. Especially when so much of it is hoarded in offshore accounts.
An extreme disparity of wealth leads to a third world economy (see also Mexico) and destroys the middle class. And historically, when it gets bad enough, it causes a nation to rip itself apart.
Furthermore, it leads to corruption of democracy, as we've seen in this country. From Citizens United to the "private fundraisers", too much of our system is bought and paid for by the concentration of wealth that we've allowed to develop in the hands of the very few. It warps both the social fabric, and
Are all successful people in the 1% evil? No. Are all of their gains always ill gotten? No. However, the concentration of wealth in this nation, the disparity of income for effort, has grown so extreme that it no longer furthers those things that capitalism is supposed to be good at promoting: hard work, merit, innovation and the rest of the values that it is supposed to drive.
Here, here (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did the last US generation shop? Sears, Montgomery Wards, JC Penney. Where does this generation (have) to shop? Walmart and Best Buy. That ain't progress, people.
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Yeah actually kim schmitz is a complete prick and he probably deserves everything he gets. I suspect this is why he was targeted *first* because after he gets convicted then it will set prescient to destroy other more ethical characters in the same business,
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... because after he gets convicted then it will set prescient to ...
How the !@#$ did you end up with prescient there?!? Are you idiots using auto-completion now? Well, STOP IT!
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I think the "prescient" was in reference to his knowing how the trial will end, the rest was just bad grammar. ;)
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Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Interesting)
Kim Dotcom isn't a hero, he's a fraud artist. That said, if he has the resources and visibility to pry the lid off the copyright system and its hordes of legal goons, I'll at least give him partial credit. It's less about the actual money, and more about what you do with that money. Right now, copyright is largely used as a "rich get richer" weapon, in part because it is an expensive system to maintain and enforce. If someone halfway around the world decides to upload my app to RapidShare, I have to pay some suit-wearing prick a few thousand in legal consultations, just to get the ball rolling. So for the sake of a $20 piece of software, enforcing copyright makes my lawyer $2000 richer, and me $1980 poorer - assuming I even get my $20 back which is very unlikely.
Your Robin Hood comment is spot-on. Yes, I think Dotcom is a scumbag, but he's less of a scumbag than the thousands of executives behind Disney, Viacom, Sony, Time Warner. He'll also be much easier to take down, even after he takes a bite out of those media cartels. Or, as we radicalist nutbars say: "the end justifies the means".
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Doctors and most lawyers aren't rich. Many are well off, but few are rich.
--Jeremy
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they are the 15%! and make their money off of the backs of the other 95% of us! (+- 10%)
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If this were a CEO, doctor, or lawyer who made less than half of what this guy makes and were arrested for something that wasn't related to infringing IP rights then the usual lynch mob would be out screaming about how all "rich" people are evil and we need to destroy Wallstreet and kill all the Republicans, ban Faux News, etc. etc. [insert administration approved Media Matters talking points here].
When the perpetrator is a guy who got rich by getting kickbacks to facilitate piracy, however, he's suddenly some Robin Hood hero who takes from the evil rich music & movie companies to give to uh... himself. Suddenly he's no longer an evil 1%er and is our new personal hero just like Michael Moore & Bill Maher.
It's more a case of why isn't he being prosectuted for breaking New Zealand laws. As a New Zealander I couldn't give a toss if our courts sentence him to 50 years, being Americas lacky is what grinds my gears. I bet David Lange would turn in his grave, the only leader we have ever had to tell America to go fuck itself.
re: kickbacks to facilitate piracy? (Score:2)
I don't know that a lot of people are holding Kim Dotcom up as an example of a hero or "Robin Hood" figure, really? But having followed this story for a while now (wrote a few articles about it on a blog I contribute to, in fact), I'd say it's complicated.
For starters, just before Megaupload was raided, there was a whole case underway regarding his right to upload a song ("Megasong") he paid a bunch of big-name artists to put together for him, advertising the service. In that instance at least, it sure see
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Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] while changing the rules of society in order to gain more and more and more.
To be fair, rather than changing the rules he just chooses to ignore them, or at the very least interpret them in a way that allows him to make millions of dollars at other people's expense. I completely agree that the current copyright and patent system is broken and unrealistic in a modern world, but that doesn't mean I think people should be able to become multi-millionares by helping people distribute other people's work.
Re:Uh oh-- it's a 1%er! (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree that the current copyright and patent system is broken and unrealistic
that doesn't mean I think people should be able to become multi-millionares by helping people distribute other people's work.
That *is* the current copyright system.
Premature (Score:2)
Have to wonder if the US over-played its hand in this case. Seems very little is going the way they've hoped.
Anyone know the score, btw? Is piracy, err.. unauthorized online archiving stamped out yet?
Re:Premature (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't think so. The desired result has already been achieved -- they have wrecked his business.
All that is happening now is after-the-fact justification for wrecking the business and to avoid accusations that the sole purpose was not to go after a criminal, but to wreck a business that some powerful people did not like.
$30,000 a month (Score:3, Funny)
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You know, it's because he has Diabetes or something like that right, not because he eats a lot? (He has lost 16kg in jail though, for what it's worth).
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It's been reported in one or two articles from the early days of the trial.
Let's play a game of "what if" (Score:2)
What if the entertainment industry had never contributed money to the Obama campaign?
Would Megaupload have been shut down? Would Kim Dotcom have been arrested? Would ACTA have become an international agreement? Would ISPs have volunteered to adopt a "six strikes" policy against customers accused of copyright infringement? Would the culture of IP maximalism so evident in the Obama administration exist at all?
The Real Story (Score:4, Funny)
Guys. Guys.
The real story here is the name of his wife. Kim Dotcom. Really? She was willing to take that last name?
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Hell, it probably isn't the worse thing she's done for money.
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Guys. Guys.
The real story here is the name of his wife. Kim Dotcom. Really? She was willing to take that last name?
*He* is Kim Dotcom, she is Mona Dotcom. But yes, she did take his last name, apparently.
Re:The Real Story (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The Real Story (Score:5, Funny)
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The original - a classic. [youtube.com]
So where are the dozens of replacements? (Score:2)
Wasn't the big argument against going after hosts like these that when they brought one down, some 20 or so others would pop up all around the world to take its place (what happened right after napster at the turn of the century being a prominent example of this), and trying to stop them all would be like playing an eternal game of whack-a-mole, where the total number of moles keeps getting larger every time you hit one down.
Not that I've gone looking particularly hard - I never had any reason to use meg
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The replacements already existed before MU was shutdown, they just get used more.
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Funds (Score:2)
While he got 30K US$ released for the next 3 weeks, he has asked for 180K US$ for "expenses" ;-). Not a shy guy...
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While he got 30K US$ released for the next 3 weeks, he has asked for 180K US$ for "expenses" ;-). Not a shy guy...
"This sum included $24,000 for security, $29,000 for staff wages and $28,678 for general costs. Among the general costs was a monthly power bill of $8500 and $6000 per month in phonecalls." http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/6501320/Dotcoms-expenses-through-the-roof [stuff.co.nz]
criminals (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that we root for a scumbag like Kim Dotcom. It's sad, because he's an underdog criminals in a system of super criminals. Chris Dodd is no less scumbag criminal mastermind than Kim Dotcom, but Chris Dodd bribed the right people to make it seem like he's legit. Don't get me wrong, I also root for Kim Dotcom, but let's not forget he's a scumbag... he's just not as big scumbag as the "legal" scumbags that currently rule the world.
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
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People on my side must be perfect (Score:2)
Progress is not worth having to read about or even mildly support if there are flawed people with shared interests fighting on my side.
My business should fail and we should be laid off because 1 of my coworkers is a jerk; that is only fair! Why should I work to prop up a business which employs a jerk even if it costs me my job? I have to set the threshold somewhere... so it might as well be at ZERO. ;-)
Not as much as you think (Score:1, Interesting)
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If only there was a cheaper way to communicate over great distances...
One of his bail conditions is no Internet, and thanks to the evil Alan Cox and friends, that may rule out carrier pigeons as well.
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he could have payed the fine, they are controlling his money so its very difficult for him to mount an effective defense.
Gee, That's Too Bad... (Score:2)
Sounds like a case of "Gee Citizen, you're fighting us legally and winning. It's too bad that now we'll just have to go after your pregnant wife, and possibly force her to give birth in jail. It's not very safe in those places. We certainly hope she doesn't get shanked! We also hope the prison doctor doesn't "accidentally" drop your son/daughter on their head.
Why don't you fire those bothersome and expensive lawyers, stop fighting our charges, and we can sit down and have a cozy little chat about it? If you
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New Zealand isn't America. For anything beyond a painkiller or two, our prisons just stick you in a van to the nearest city hospital - she'd give birth the same place as everyone else just under guard, and the baby would likely be taken into protective services custody immediately after.
When two TLDs love each other very much... (Score:2)
Am I the only one who secretly hoped his wife was named Kim Dotnet?
You have to hand it to Kimble: He sure has balls. (Score:2)
You have to hand it to Kimble: He sure has balls.
I've rarely seen such an obviously über-egocentric perpetualy mischief touting fraud get away with so much in such a succession. Ever since he appeared as the poster boy of the 2000s dotCom Bubble he's been continuosly rubbing his IT business non-sense and fraudulent practices into peoples faces and always has gotten away with it. To this very day. In a strange way, I'm actually impressed.
Re:30K/month is probably "essential" (Score:5, Funny)
Given the summary "$30+k", it depends on the value of "k".
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30+1.3806488(13)×1023 is not a lot really. Odd stipulation though, was it though up by the same people that Google had bidding on patents?
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1.3806488(13)×10^-23
Silly formatting.....
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Someone think of the child!!! (Score:2)
Everyone knows being pregnant makes it impossible for you to commit a crime. Your hormones won't let you. Therefore it is an outrage that she is being investigated. Won't someone think of the child!
It works the same with being disabled in any way, or being a grandmother. They are not so much "get out of jail free" cards as "certifiably pure as driven snow innocent" cards.
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that, or excessive investigation by federal police could be traumatic to the mother which could cause problems with the baby.
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Isn't it obvious? She's Pirating Kim.
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I use mega too,
now the thousands we spent on marketing the link to our program has been wasted.