FBI Asked Megaupload To Preserve Pirated Files, Then Used Them Against Dotcom 241
avxo writes "According to an article on the New Zealand Herald, Kim Dotcom says his team has evidence showing that the Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant on Megaupload in 2010, forcing it to preserve pirated movies. According to Mr. Dotcom, those preserved movies are the center of the latest legal battle. 'When the FBI applied to seize the Megaupload site in 2012, it said the company had failed to delete pirated content and cited the earlier search warrant against the continued existence of 36 of the same 39 files.' He added: '[t]he FBI used the fact the files were still in the account of the ... user to get the warrant to seize our own domains. This is outrageous.'"
Nowhere fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Informative)
That's where the FBI's case is going to go. Everything I've read tells me that the FBI, their Australian exponents, and the other parties involved broke too many regs to be able to bring a real case against Megaupload. This is just one more nail in the coffin.
Don't you mean NZ? Australia doesn't really have a role here. Which is not to say that the australian security services wouldn't jump at the chance to help the FBI in a case like this.
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Funny)
whoops. I got Dotcom mixed up with, uh, Julian Assange (who I believe is an AU citizen, yes?). I'll just go back to nursing this booze now.
Yeah Julian is one of us. In fact I know a guy who had the pleasure of having his system broken in to by Mr Assange. For a geek he is strangely concerned about what people say about him. Most of us don't give a shit.
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Don't be so quick to mea culpa. If this is **AA-bribe-fueled, then said **AA would happily the various govts to make them paint Dotcom and Assange, along with Anons and such, as members of the same Axis Of Anti-American Terrorist And Computer-Hacking And Also Job-Killing Piratical Evil.
It would be a big marketing coup for them to get that stuck in people's heads, and big marketing coups matter these days (instead of things like "competition", "compassion", "law", or "value of product").
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Where do I go to join the Axis?
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I'm not so sure that statement is true. Bearing in mind, there are three kinds of people in the world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and the biggest group, those who wonder what the hell happened.
I'm in and out of the first two groups, on this and other issues. That other group? They are the enablers, who permit big media to do what they do. They aren't big media, they aren't the Axis, they are just there, giving tacit support to whatever government and big media might do
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Funny)
Ehhh - someone will come along directly to tell me that I've lost all credibility with the word sheeple. Whatever . .
Sounds a bit like you're ready at a moments notice to don spandex and take to the rooftops of Gotham, to setup a laptop and tweet. The sheeple thing, while bring trite, isn't the main reason I'd suspect you of being just another armchair revolutionary. Telling us what you make happen is a start, and why you're different from the legion of V/Neo wannabes who lurk in the shadows, ever vigilant and poised ready to write a blog post or something similar.
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Don Spandex? Glad to meet you - although, I've never heard that name before. Is Spandex your family name, or did you just change your name to protect the innocent?
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Funny)
Changed the name. Don Hitler wasn't playing very well in my career writing erotic fiction for overweight women.
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Mr. Wovel - look around you. How many people in your home town even knows the name of their congress critter? How many have any idea what's going on with ACTA, NPAA, and a buttload other measures aimed at government and corporate intrusion on your privacy? How many are aware of the ramifications of the Patriot Act, TSA, and ongoing debate about curtailing rights even further?
I'm involved. How many of your homies are involved?
I'm pretty sure that if you're to answer honestly, your numbers will be pretty
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Funny)
Just download LOIC and you're sorted (considered part of the Axis, that is..)
Anything that requires you to use Mono is certainly Axis-worthy.
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Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Funny)
I think you'll find the Australian authorities had nothing to do with it, since New Zealand is a completely separate country to Australia! ;)
Yes, the ignorance around here is disgraceful. While New Zealand hasn't covered itself in glory here, that pales in insignificance next to Australia's crime of having given Adolf Hitler to the world. Not to mention Arnold Schwarzenegger...
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Insightful)
"Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken"
- Book of Chan
This is the new American Century. Get used to it.
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the new Corporate Pwned Century. Get used to it.
FTFY
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Informative)
It appears that your horizons might be expanded by visiting the New American Century site. www.newamericancentury.org/
What GP posted, and what you posted, are synonymous. In the past twelve years, the site has softened their sales pitch, sort of almost disguising it, but there is no secret that they represent corporate powers. It's only a thinly veiled secret that they intend to buy out the United States government to make their dream come true. The only secret is, how far they have progressed toward ownership of the government.
For the past five presidential elections, both candidates were owned by the corporations. If I really dug, I could probably demonstrate the same for elections further back in history.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Actually [nytimes.com], Obama spent more, which puts lie to that. Half of Obama's Super PAC donations were of more than US$1m, while those of Romney's made up only a third of his total. So that puts lie to that as well.
Do your homework BEFORE posting nonsense, not after.
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Informative)
If I read correctly the information on that page (i'm not familiar with the US election founding system), Super PAC for Obama is 7% of total while being 15% of total for Romney, so Obama got in total less donations above 1M than Romney.
Almost 40% of it's total founding came through small donations under 200$, for Romney that percentage is 10%.
if you do your homework, do it properly.
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Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Funny)
If everyone did this, the game would change.
Here is the formula for an average, per-citizen, rate of consumption of entertainment, in movies per year, as a function of geek rage:
cons(rage) := 0.999*10 + 0.001*(1/rage)
What is the limit of this function with rage going to infinity?
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Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Funny)
If everyone did this, the game would change.
Here is the formula for an average, per-citizen, rate of consumption of entertainment, in movies per year, as a function of geek rage:
cons(rage) := 0.999*10 + 0.001*(1/rage)
What is the limit of this function with rage going to infinity?
OVER 9000!
You failed to realize rage is an irrational number roughly equivalent to 0.0001111111111 (repeating).
The limit of your function expressed in the bironic form (Internet Math Notation), is approximately equivalent to: 1!!!11!!11!!!1one111111!11
(whereby "!" replaces zeros, "one" is the fractional separator, to the right of which is the binary exponent).
Protip: There is always a smarter smartass. Get on my level.
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If everyone did this, the game would change.
Here is the formula for an average, per-citizen, rate of consumption of entertainment, in movies per year, as a function of geek rage:
cons(rage) := 0.999*10 + 0.001*(1/rage)
What is the limit of this function with rage going to infinity?
9.99, of course.
More interestingly, given that the number of movies you can consume per year is limited, this formula means that geek rage cannot go arbitrary close to zero.
And those watching only few movies per year have a negative geek rage. For example, if you watch only 2 movies per year, your geek rage is -1/7990.
Not anymore. (Score:3)
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Interesting)
Having kids is no excuse. I do have kids and admittedly its more tempting to "give in" but I still manage not to support the MPAA or RIAA at all.
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Having kids is no excuse. I do have kids and admittedly its more tempting to "give in" but I still manage not to support the MPAA or RIAA at all.
I bet your kids are really popular at school and never get teased for never having heard of Hanna Montana, or whatever.
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Too bad you can't file abn anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the FBI. That seems to be what they're doing. The resources of the US against some dude in NZ.
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just one more nail in the coffin.
What coffin? X-(
We're speaking about the country that declared war and invaded Iraq under false accusations to kill Saddam, and violated Pakistan's sovereignty with a cover up operation to kill Bin Laden, all of that without any consequences.
(And I will not touch this Assange mess).
What make you think that the FBI should be worried for a so "small case"?
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it a bit challenging to feel any great remorse over Pakistan's violated honour, given that they (a) said "Yeah, yeah, UBL is teh evil, we want him dead, too" and then (b) harboured him, possibly for years...
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:5, Insightful)
That's where the FBI's case is going to go. Everything I've read tells me that the FBI, their Australian exponents, and the other parties involved broke too many regs to be able to bring a real case against Megaupload. This is just one more nail in the coffin.
What makes you think they are trying to bring a real case? Megaupload is gone and buried. Servers are confiscated. Even the legitimate paid users have lost access to the files and are getting no compensation. Mission accomplished
You think there will be any penalties assessed against anyone once this case predictably falls apart? I wouldn't hold my breath (though here's hoping he will at least sue someone...)
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What mission? You sound like you think megaupload was the only file locker out there.
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Only a few. It also discourages new ones very effectively. Unlike a p2p network, a person can't throw together a filelocker in their bedroom. It takes money to get it going, to set up the servers and pay for storage and bandwidth until the income starts - and only a fool is going to invest their money in a filelocker business now it's apparent that any successful filelocker is likely to be shut down and all assets siezed.
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Totally agree! /me drags file to his drop-box, uploads a file to his Google Drive and grabs a file from iCloud....
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Insightful)
You have just listed the beginning of damages, basically the US in-justice system will end up being the ones paying to create the newer, bigger and better MEGAUPLOAD, ohh the irony. Seriously what were the FBI thinking, this is so far beyond entrapment, it is conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Catch is number one in the line of fine of a multi-million dollar even hundreds of million dollar lawsuit is the New Zealand government, for New Zealands hope you enjoyed sticking your rear hooves into the US in-Justice System gumboots, baah baah because you'll be the one paying the price. Of course now Kim Dotcomm can have fun dragging the US through the WTO for obstructing trade through criminal acts.
Re:Nowhere fast (Score:4, Insightful)
Even so, that's all they need to do. Even if they drop the entire case, they've shut down MegaUpload for a year and put an incredible scare on everyone else. And former MU customers have files of much less value.
Digital data loses its value quick - if you're working on the next version of something and a competitor can get your computers seized for a year, that basically puts you out of business for that year, and probably completely out of business.
Likewise, all of MU's customers have been stuck without their files. All the legit files are a year older and probably not as relevant today as it was a year ago, thus worth a lot less.
Basically all that's happening is all of the MU assets are getting rapidly devalued, and a year or two down the road, even if it's returned untouched, plenty of irreparable harm has occurred. And that's all that matters.
Wow. (Score:2)
Just. Wow.
I guess that means that I shouldn't listen to what the government tells me to do...I could get sued--or arrested.
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Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, over 2000 users uploaded these files. Mega is trying to use the structure of their site where they hashed an upload and only kept one copy of the file to say that because there was only copy and because NinjaVideo had uploaded 36 of these files at some point (because NinjaVideo uploaded thousands if not hundreds of thousands of files), they couldn't delete those files because the order from the DHS instructed them not to. But that's a ridiculous assertion— even if they were told not to delete the files (really they were just told not to delete the NinjaVideo account, so they're using a liberal interpretation to include these files) they had an obligation to prevent the files from being used for further illegal purposes.
Phrased another way, a court order requiring preservation does not mean Mega is allowed to continue to allow others access to those files and continue to break the law. Those 36 files were accessed, downloaded, and shared illegally after the point at which they were required to be preserved, and access removed under the DMCA.
Mega cannot use a design component of the site which was done for cost purposes, as a defense against criminal liability.
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It could be argued that they could use the hash to more effectively police infringing content: Once a file is reported, they could have pulled all uploads of that hash and blocked new ones. But this would be a poor idea, because it'd be trivial for pirates to circumvent by just changing one byte (Like a padding file in a rar archive, or a new password), so all it'd really do is raise their cost of storage substantially in return for delaying pirates by about three minutes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't. MegaUpload DID make infringing links nonfunctional promptly upon report.
The indictment (have you read it?) is that they didn't take down the underlying files which were still accessible via other links which had NOT yet been reported as infringing.
I'm not sure how this gels with the language of DMCA 512(c) which states "remove OR DISABLE ACCESS TO" [emphasis mine], but that demonstrates bad faith on the part of the FBI.
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Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
they're the Federal Bureau* of Investigation. They are an office of the Government. Ergo, they are the Government.
*From the French, literally office.
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Maybe the usage is different in the US.
And? (Score:5, Informative)
The goverment bought and paid for by hollywood over the last decade would pull out every illegal dirty trick to get there way once again?
I'm not shocked. That's normal now.
Best get used to that kind of shit. This is the path we have chosen. Or someone did...
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The goverment bought and paid for by hollywood over the last decade would pull out every illegal dirty trick to get there way once again?
I'm not shocked. That's normal now.
Best get used to that kind of shit. This is the path we have chosen. Or someone did...
You bend over and get fucked, me, i'm going to fight it.
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The goverment bought and paid for by hollywood over the last decade would pull out every illegal dirty trick to get there way once again?
I'm not shocked. That's normal now. Best get used to that kind of shit. This is the path we have chosen. Or someone did...
You bend over and get fucked, me, i'm going to fight it.
I'll save you a spot in the chow line at Gitmo.
and in the new Century (Score:2)
The government will be bought and paid for by ...
1) Old Media
2) New Media
correct me if i'm wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:correct me if i'm wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly. It depends on how much truth there is behind both sides claims. Neither the Feds nor Kim have much credibility here, and both have a history of distorting as much truth as possible to get their way. I don't envy the ones who have to try and cut through the bullshit and figure out exactly what needs to be done.
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Possibly. It depends on how much truth there is behind both sides claims. Neither the Feds nor Kim have much credibility here, and both have a history of distorting as much truth as possible to get their way. I don't envy the ones who have to try and cut through the bullshit and figure out exactly what needs to be done.
There is a paper trail. Do you think the FBI just called up on the phone and said, "Kim, old buddy, please keep these files because we are investigating it?".
No, they send paper work. And combined with the paper work the FBI gave the court, is showing that something is funky.
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Possibly. It depends on how much truth there is behind both sides claims. Neither the Feds nor Kim have much credibility here, and both have a history of distorting as much truth as possible to get their way. I don't envy the ones who have to try and cut through the bullshit and figure out exactly what needs to be done.
How, exactly, you figured that Dotcom has no 'credibility'?
Pretty much everything he said since the case began was true, he didn't even need to distort anything.
Could you give me examples of the 'distortion'?
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And does it even matter if he's credible? He's the accused here. If the government's job to prove (legally) that he did something wrong. If they can't do that then they are in the wrong and should be punished for the damage they caused to his business.
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I wouldn't bet on that.
My guess is there's no laws that protect from this kind of BS because the gov't wouldn't acknowledge they are possible of that kind of stupidity. Not to mention if it goes to court do you expect a jury to actually find someone guilty because the FBI issued a warrant to do it? If I were on a jury I'd not only disregard that "evidence" but I'd start looking REALLY deeply at the evidence presented and start questioning the FBI's entire case.
So there may be no protections because it's e
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Re:correct me if i'm wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is something in the law that protects megaupload from this kinda BS. They complied with a search warrant and held the files on their system like FBI asked, now they are being shut down cause they kept them.
There is nothing in the law that protects them. The law is there to protect the FBI and enable it to do whatever it wants. For example, it's been legal for the past several years for evidence collected from a search warrant to be used even if the search warrant is later found to be invalid. Evidence collected without a search warrant is also admissable; The so-called "poisoned fruit" laws were struck down by our new, ultra-conservative, supreme court. And establishing probable cause has gotten a whole lot easier thanks to expansion of police powers -- for example, let's say your tail light is busted, your criminal record is totally clean, but the officer suspects you may have drugs in the vehicle. That suspicion alone is a reason to call over the K-9 unit and allow it to crawl all over, under, and around the vehicle. If it barks, that's cause to search the vehicle. And by search, I mean completely dismantle and leave on the side of the road in pieces. Oh... and you're responsible for the tow. Even if they still find nothing. Bonus: Dogs were found to only be effective about 2/3rds of the time in a recent study... and had a false positive rate of 1 in 8. In other words, 15% of the time, the dog indicated the presence of drugs when none were found (even in trace amounts).
Don't kid yourself... procedural mistakes won't derail the case. Maybe, in bygone days, the police were required to follow all laws and procedures and if they screwed up the guy walked, but not anymore. Getting tough on crime means that we now don't let little problems like a lack of evidence, or tainted evidence, get in the way of justice. And of course, then there's confessions... -_- Many of which are forced out of suspects.
The police don't care who their guy is; They just need a guy. There are no innocent people in the world anymore... there's just guilty, and not yet guilty.
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The so-called "poisoned fruit" laws were struck down by our new, ultra-conservative, supreme court.
[citation needed]
Seriously, I know you are not a troll, but when has the "poison fruit" law been struck down, exactly?
I think they are fine with the case falling apart, because DotCom has been punished and his business dismantled. Once his case falls apart, his servers and paying customers would still be gone as they are now. And unless someone in law enforcement is punished, such procedure can be repeated as many times as necessary (i.e. once he opens his new business venture)
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1 in 8 is 12.5 percent, not 15 percent.
Turn in your geek card.
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The police can't ask you to do something then arrest you for doing it.
NEVER step off your property to talk to a cop if they've asked you to after you've been drinking then. Cops can arrest you for whatever they want. Anything. Whatever they think of at the time. In the worst cases you might have some comeback against the police, but in the vast majority of the cases the charges are dropped and you're kicked to the street. In the worst of the cases, you're let out of jail 30 years later because a modern look at the evidence shows you had nothing to do with it. More then a few
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Entrapment? OK, maybe there was entrapment, but why would the FBI even need to do that? Megaupload was swamped with freely downloadable copyrighted material. Users paying for premium access to download that stuff was Megaload's cheif source of income.
Most likely because, any time someone gave them a correct notice, Megaupload would delete that stuff on demand. This means that what they were doing was legal under the terms of the DMCA and equivalent rules all around the world. The FBI needed a way to interfere with that process so that Megaupload would behave "illegally" so that by the time they found out about the trick, the FBI would have got some dirt on them (on the principle that everybody is guilty; they just don't know it yet).
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the FBI kept the investigation open. That they served the search warrant two years before they seized the computers stinks of entrapment, since it is an offence to destroy evidence pertinent to an investigation (it's called spoliation). MU didn't break the law in this case, the FBI did.
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But there is something in the law that protects megaupload from this kinda BS. They complied with a search warrant and held the files on their system like FBI asked, now they are being shut down cause they kept them.
The question, I suspect, is whether the files were still being offered for download.
In plain English, whether there was good faith compliance with the previous warrant, which was intended to secure the evidence, not to facilitate an on-going infringement by allowing Megaupload to keep the files on a public-facing server.
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Possibly, but since Dotcom isn't going to face the charges he can't really defend himself either.
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DMCA is a US law. Megaupload wasn't a US site.
The FBI is trying to charge him under US law. Without the warrant trick, the DMCA would stop them from doing that.
How can this happen in "The nation of Laws?" (Score:4, Insightful)
So is this how things are run in "The Nation of Laws?" If whatever was done is lawful, then I rather stay put.
Someone will have a lot of work to convince me to immigrate to the USA.
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The "Nation of Laws" got acquired in a leveraged buyout sometime in the 60s. In today's America, if the corporations take notice of you... you're fucked.
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No one ever showed Nixon committed crimes. He was pardoned before any trial or real insight to them happened. I know it's popular to claim he was a crooks, but even the real crooks claim Nixon wasn't involved and all but one claim they were going after evidence of a prostitution ring. IT should be noted, two of the agents behind the break ins were then and are still now democrats, only one of them claimed Nixon sent them or it was anything pertaining to the election. The only thing left is a gap in a record
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the current practice of democrat operatives infiltrating republican fund raisers and video or audio taping the strategies then releasing what they think might be damaging to the public.
I mean what is the difference other then technical when someone pretends to be a donor in order to gather campaign information that is secrete or embarrassing and breaking into an office for the same?
First off, "damaging" and "embarrassing" are not crimes.
I just thought I'd point this out since you mentioned the idea more than once.
And if information is being freely given to donors, then it certainly isn't secret.
Secondly, if you really don't understand the practical difference between trespassing and theft, then your opinion on anyone's crimes is probably less than insightful.
Lastly, I assume you were referring to Romney's comments about 47% of Americans being unwilling to take personal responsibility
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Then the only thing wrong in Watergate was the break in right? I mean that is what they would have found at best, damaging and embarrassing in the watergate break ins. They shared the information with their donors too. In fact, that was what the prostitution ring was supposed to have been about
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Well, in one case, the information is subversively being given by a con- a simple misrepresentation of person and intent. In the other, it's breaking and entering or as the law would claim, searching without a warrant which can be legal in certain limited situations. Up until recently, the thing that made it so important was the fact that campaign strategy was accessible. No one was ever caught with it, nor was any of it offered as evidence. It's one of the rare cases where a cop breaks the law and gets bus
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If this was a matter of preserving the actual files, the FBI could simply download them and preserve them themselves (they are allowed to do that kind of thing in gathering evidence). The only reasonable reason they would need to keep the files in place would be to prove who was downloading them. In this case, blocking access would be interfering with that.
Now, it's theoretically possible that they meant "please preserve the access information for the files and the data whilst blocking downloading becau
Newcrime (Score:5, Insightful)
The trial is the punishment.
Misleading. Hidden at the bottom of the story ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading. Hidden at the bottom of the story . (Score:4, Informative)
You expect me to believe that Megaupload couldn't not-link those other 1,999 people to those files? Really? Maybe they had to keep the files, but they certainly didn't have to allow a bunch of other people to create links to and download it.
source (Score:2)
Kim Dotcom says his team has evidence
To everyone who whined about how evil the law is: Keep in mind who said this. It's hard to think of a more biased source, isn't it?
This is newsworthy once the alleged evidence is shown. Prior to that, it's just "one side of a conflict claims the other is evil", which is probably the most non-newsworthy thing you can imagine aside from "sun rose this morning".
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Speculate much? Imaginative speculation anyway.
No. The content industry has a continuous campaign against internet companies which help to distribute material. The same players have gotten other country's law enforcement to act on their behalf even when what they were doing wasn't actually illegal. Getting the US enforcement agencies (note I did not call them law enforcement... just 'enforcement') to break the law in such an overt way is proof of the power and influence these content providers carry.
I will not miss them. They are a cancer on progress. Volunteer entertainers are popping up everywhere just to get a million likes instead of a million dollars. They can't compete against that kind of currency.
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I will not miss them. They are a cancer on progress. Volunteer entertainers are popping up everywhere just to get a million likes instead of a million dollars. They can't compete against that kind of currency.
The geek defines himself by the big media product, pop cultural artifacts like Star Trek, Star Wars. and The Lord of the Rings.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, yes--but who told you that? Just because Big Bang Theory says so, doesn't make it so.
More importantly, why do you assume that if true the situation will never change?
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The (true) geek defines himself this way to others, because this is what other people understand. Everybody knows of Star Trek. On the other hand, if I started talking about why I prefer Python over Javascript most people wouldn't have a clue.
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No. The content industry has a continuous campaign against internet companies which help to distribute material
Like Apple (iTuneS), Netflix, Amazon (eBooks) and such?
I dislike the MAFIAA as much as anyone here, but let's not get overzealous, irrational and stupid. What they dislike is people not paying them what they think they are due. You can love them or hate them, but at least that's a rational motive.
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The kiddie porn is on the darknet. You may have found something of that nature on Megauplaod, but that's not where pedobear hangs out.
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Well - you can check out I2P. It's easily found with a google search. First set up a virtual machine so that you can easily delete everything when you are utterly sick of seeing what's available. Set up I2P, and let it settle in, then start browsing. Depending on your tolerance for that sick shit, you can see just about anything you care to see - or don't care to see. Some time before you are ready to tear your eyes out of your head, just close it all down, and delete the VM, then write zeros to the fr
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Oddly enough, old webrings on shitty HTML3 sites can lead to some terrible places (but you often run into creepy things of any nature when you do this).
Proxies are very traceable, on the real internet. If I were a political activist or a CP guy, there's no way I'd trust any combination of proxies.
Well it seems to be working out pretty well for the sick
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I know it exists on Freenet. The major indexers refuse to carry links, and the pedophiles are polite enough not to post images openly anywhere, so as a typical user you won't run into it unless you go looking - but every now and then you'll see a link advertising a freesite as containing kiddie porn. If the cost of free, unregulatable speech is the existance of some unobtrusive kiddie porn sites, then I'd consider that an acceptable cost.
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It's evidence. You expect the FBI to tell them to destroy the evidence?
Read the summary.
Teh FBI wants to have it both ways.
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It's evidence. You expect the FBI to tell them to destroy the evidence?
Read the summary.
Teh FBI wants to have it both ways.
Of course they do, they're a government agency. They also want to believe 4 impossible things before breakfast. Problem is, I don't think they've got enough dope to smoke to make that happen.
Re:It's evidence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Legal requirements on technology companies are often poorly written, and not actually sensible, as the lawyers involved may not properly understand the internet.
It's quite plausible that they used standard boilerplate 'Do not delete, modify, or ...the file at http://.../ [...] which could not reasonably be read as allowing them to be pulled offline, as that would be a modification.
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What's to understand? It's a series of tubes, right? Let's craft some legislation!
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That's not to say that the article isn't misrepresenting the situation. Someone else here already pointed out that mega de-duped submissions, and that they may have continued making the files available. This would make the subsequent action taken by the FBI "reasonable" (in the sense that they didn't force them to retain something only to then legally pursue them for complyi
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I think there was a judge swallowing it in one of these movies that the article is talking about.
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Preserving evidence for criminal prosecution does not remove your criminal responsibility if you allow the elements you are preserving to be used for criminal purposes in the future.
Yeah, criminal purposes like... copying. This, the FBI, and the DMCA all seem extremely pathetic.
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So, kind of exactly like what the government does, then.
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The FBI are NOT above the Law! First and foremost, they are bound by the US Constitution. Secondly, they are bound by domestic Law, and for operation outside the borders, by International Law. Yes, they routinely break and violate and basically arserape all three jurisdictions, and they get away with it. Why? BECAUSE NOBODY IS SAYING TO THEM, "STOP! WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!"