MegaUpload Programmer Pleads Guilty, Gets a Year In Prison 188
An anonymous reader writes When MegaUpload was shut down a few years back, seven of the company's employees were indicted by the U.S. We heard a lot about Kim Dotcom's court proceedings, but not much about the others. A few days ago, we received word that programmer Andrus Nomm has been arrested in Virginia. This came as a surprise to everyone involved. MegaUpload attorney Ira Rothken said it was likely Nomm had made a deal with the Feds. Now, we know for sure: Nomm has pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. In a statement, the Department of Justice said they will continue to pursue his co-conspirators.
A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better go arrest anyone who developed a web browser, BitTorrent client, email client/service then. All of those have been used to violate copyright.
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So lets say, I work on an assembly line that builds a car, later used in an armed robbery. Does this mean my coworkers and I are accomplices in the robbery? No, we employees working on tasks assigned. Building a car does not make me an accomplice later in how the car was used.
Why should programmers be any different?
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should programmers be any different?
because computers.
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An assembly line worker is no more an accomplice then the maker of the computer Andrus used.
On the other hand, I suspect if you were a worker hired to take a car and specifically enhance it to be part of the armed robbery (e.g,. make it a better getaway car), then they could try you as an accomplice.
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:4, Insightful)
In theory, only if they instructed you to make it better for a bank robbery. If they said they wanted it fast and bullet proof, then no. If they presented that it was for a movie about bank robbers, then no.
In practice, these days they don't even bother to match the charges with your actions anymore. If they decide to get you they'll just charge you with everything until something sticks.
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If the programmer is responsible, then so is the uploader and downloader's ISP, and the manufacturer of their switches and hubs and the operator of the telephone lines, etc, etc.
The only way the programmer is responsible is if his boss said "we want you to
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But if you get paid to modify a car to help smuggle drugs across the border then you are an accomplice. It has to do if you should reasonably have known your actions were contributing to the execution of a crime.
And much like the manufacturer of a hammer, they have no way of knowing whether that hammer will be used to nail together pieces of wood or open up the back of someone's head, and so they are therefore not responsible when someone misuses the tool which is intended for beneficial use.
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And much like the manufacturer of a hammer, they have no way of knowing whether that hammer will be used to nail together pieces of wood or open up the back of someone's head, and so they are therefore not responsible when someone misuses the tool which is intended for beneficial use.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, but given the massive scale of the criminal conspiracy which was perpetuated by the financial industry with re-packaging shitty debt ... I think it's mostly just a demonstration that "the law", and the consequences for breaking it, and entirely dependent on how much you have paid your congressman.
Wall street ripped off the world for trillions of dollars, and not a single person was charged. And yet they're all "too big to fail" and we couldn't possibly charge them with crimes. And certainly the rank and file were clearly just following company policy.
Executives oversee illegal activity all the time, but somehow the fact that they're executives means the "corporate veil" protects them.
I think it's a complete crock that employees of corporations can be charged depending on, literally, how much slush money one set of corporations has given government.
Essentially the *AAs have bought themselves a different set of laws, and the US government are more or less their enforcement arm.
It's hard not to see these kinds of prosecutions as more or less political show trials. Because, they essentially are.
It's not based on the principle of law, it's based on the political desire to make an example of someone. And that someone ran afoul of major campaign donors who have bought off the government.
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Funny, but given the the massive scale of the criminal conspiracy which was perpetuated by the financial industry with re-packaging shitty debt
I wonder if any of those people use any microsoft programs to commit their crimes... perhaps we can get all the microsoft emplyees put in jail.
(but seriosuly, this is such a slippery slope i wouldnt even want that)
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once involved in a criminal conspiracy, which I am sure the Feds deem MegaUpload is, you are liable for all use of that which you created, even a program you coded if it was used for illicit purposes.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
There, you just participated in a web forum used for illicit purposes, and so are also guilty of criminal copyright infringement and criminal conspiracy.
Hope to see you in cell block six for the traditional fuck-beta gathering!
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Saying you were only following orders is never a defense for committing a crime.
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nomm is also accused of watching at least one copy of a pirated TV-show.
“On or about December 5, 2008, NOMM sent VAN DER KOLK an e-mail, which included a screenshot of NOMM’s account using Megavideo.com to watch an infringing episode of the copyrighted television show Chuck,” the indictment reads.
This sounds like going after Al Capone for tax evasion. Actually, more like going after one of his henchmen for tax evasion. It's likely they only are after Dotcom, and are using this guy as leverage to get to him. I mean, seriously? Watching one pirated TV show? At this point, they're just throwing whatever they think can stick at him.
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This sounds like going after Al Capone for tax evasion. Actually, more like going after one of his henchmen for tax evasion
Well, more like going after the secretary that works for his tax accountant.
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More like going after Al Capone's tea lady for putting a nip of whisky in her night cap.
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There's a difference between working for a company that does something wrong without your knowledge and working for a company that is knowingly doing something that is "perceived" as illegal. I use perceived because there's still a fine line between enabling distribution and distribution of copyright material in some countries.
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Isn't a programmer an employee doing what he is requested to do - and anyway making programmes does not infringe copyright laws. It seems everyone has to pay a price in this megaupload story, in order to send a strong and threatening message.
"I only followed orders" hasn't worked as an excuse for quite a while. If you write software, you know what it is supposed to do. And if it is used to help with copyright infringement, and you knew it, or you would have known it if you hadn't closed your eyes to it as hard as you could, you are guilty.
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So is the programmer that writes an ftp server guilty if that server happens to be used for copyright infringement?
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Like many coders, I too have written code to upload files, but I'm damned if I know what files were uploaded or what their copyright status is.
Je Suis Kim Dotcom.
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If you write software, you know what it is supposed to do.
I gather you have never worked as a software engineer, then?
At best we can infer what it's supposed to do based on a tissue paper scribbled by someone who has no technical expertise and was told about the project five minutes beforehand. Using lipstick or crayons as available.
Usually we get an artist's rendition of the above, faxed, and then re-scanned and embedded into a pdf file.
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Isn't a programmer an employee doing what he is requested to do - and anyway making programmes does not infringe copyright laws.
Not directly, but it does facilitate infringement which is what is needed in a conspiracy charge. It's similar to working as receptionist for a hit man or something like that. If your job activities facilitate crime, you can be charged.
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You mean sort of like how a chemist in a meth lab is just an employee?
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No, actually there's not. If you commit a crime you are guilty of it - regardless of if someone paid you to do it or not.
"Just doing what you're hired to do" is no defense if what you were hired to do is illegal.
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"Just doing what you're hired to do" is no defense if what you were hired to do is illegal.
Seems to work for the NSA and other three-letter agencies ...
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, technically. But if you're told "make a web site so people can upload stuff", and then for some esoteric reason, the feds decide that the uploading is criminal copyright conspiracy, that's hardly fair is it?
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Pretty much everyone knows dealing drugs is illegal. But when you've got drop box, youtube, and everyone else allowing everyone to upload stuff to their sites, how are you supposed to know it is criminal? Even more so when all you are doing is writing code, not making value judgments on what is going to be uploaded with it.
Re:A programmer arrested for © infringement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea, that's not a defense to anything. If I'm an accountant, and my boss tells me to do the books, I'm still committing a felony if I do it, and actually could be committing a felony if I don't immediately report the request to the relevant authorities. TFA clearly states that the defendant knew that what his employers were asking him to do was illegal, and he did it anyway.
Round one of "devil's advocate", now it's my turn.
Suppose you're a sysadmin for the NSA and you discover they are committing a felony. Should you then report it to the relevant authorities?
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Snowden didn't have to sell Putin anything. Merely being an embarrassment to the USA was enough to get him in the door.
Co-Conspirators? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, someone hires you to work on a file sharing network. And this is conspiracy? I mean there was a time when "file sharing" was a legitimate thing to do and didn't automatically imply copyright infringement.
Even if it did, I doubt Kim Dotcom said "hey, how'd you like to join a conspiracy to enable copyright infringement?" I think it was more likely "I want to hire a database programmer"
I know it's kind of hip to say "well what do you expect?", but really this seems punitive vindictive and disproportionate.
I mean if this can happen when you write code in good faith for someone who used it for purposes later deemed illegal ... that kind of puts us all in the frame. I mean, corporate ethics being what they are and all that.
Damn.
Re:Co-Conspirators? (Score:5, Interesting)
A) That the purpose (or at least one purpose of the site) was to aid copyright infringement (or other illegal thing)
B) That this guy knew about the purpose, even if he tried to pretend he didn't.
I'm guessing that they won't have any problem convincing a jury of (A), and he emailed someone a screenshot of his computer watching a pirated video on MEGAVIDEO.COM, so I don't think they'll have much trouble with part (B), either.
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From my understanding, the government will have to show that:
A) That the purpose (or at least one purpose of the site) was to aid copyright infringement (or other illegal thing)
B) That this guy knew about the purpose, even if he tried to pretend he didn't.
I'm guessing that they won't have any problem convincing a jury of (A), and he emailed someone a screenshot of his computer watching a pirated video on MEGAVIDEO.COM, so I don't think they'll have much trouble with part (B), either.
So, uh, guess I shouldn't get a drop working for Dropbox or Google, right? You do realize they let people share arbitrary files for download by anybody on the internet.
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Yes, but he wasn't arguing that letting people share arbitrary files for download was a problem.
What he said was:
So you'd have to argue that at least one purpose of Dropbox and/or Google Drive is to aid copyright infringement.
No
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I don't think anybody has established that one of the purposes of DropBox is piracy. It's one of its uses - in that some people use it for that - but not a purpose.
I see. So, I'm OK working for Dropbox if my reading of the company founder's minds is the same as a court's? Or maybe it comes down to whether Dropbox has better lawyers?
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I didn't realize that the court and/or the programmer read the minds of the people behind MegaUpload. That's utterly fascinating - please, do tell me more about this aspect of the legal process.
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I didn't realize that the court and/or the programmer read the minds of the people behind MegaUpload. That's utterly fascinating - please, do tell me more about this aspect of the legal process.
Got it, so I'm safe working for Dropbox as long as they don't store any copyright protected motion pictures on their system - ie I'm not safe working for them.
Seems like Dropbox is even taking a proactive stance to prevent the very thing that MegaUpload proactively facilitated.
Proactive facilitation of copyright infringement? Does that mean that when you sign up for an account with them they go ahead and load copyrighted material on it before you even get a chance to do it yourself? Or does it just mean that they comply with the DMCA and take stuff down when they're asked to?
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If you become rather aware of it (like that guy) and that they're not doing anything much about it (like megaupload) and you then continue to work for them (like that guy) - you're right, you wouldn't be safe working for them. Up until that point, though, I'm not sure what they'd have on you.
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As far as I know, both (MegaUpload and Dropbox) comply with DMCA requests. One was just a little more 'meh' about it than the other.
Thank you officer, may I have another?
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Having a legitimate use is not a justification by itself. Remember Limewire lost their court case because they were implying on its website that it could have illegal uses. Don't do that.
Re:Co-Conspirators? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether your intended use is legitimate or illegitimate has nothing to do with it. If you piss off the copyright cartel, you're guilty. Whether or not you actually broke the law doesn't matter.
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Personally I think it's insane that a civil crime such as a breach of copyright terms is treated as a criminal matter more serious than assaulting someone and leaving them with injuries that will be with them for the rest of their life.
Here in the US we have the best legal system that money can buy.
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From my understanding, the government will have to show that: A) That the purpose (or at least one purpose of the site) was to aid copyright infringement (or other illegal thing) B) That this guy knew about the purpose, even if he tried to pretend he didn't. I'm guessing that they won't have any problem convincing a jury of (A), and he emailed someone a screenshot of his computer watching a pirated video on MEGAVIDEO.COM, so I don't think they'll have much trouble with part (B), either.
I don't think they have to prove actual knowledge if your activities facilitated the crime. I think they need only prove a lesser "subjective test": that is "would a reasonable person have known that their work was facilitating crime?". This kind of reasonable person test is commonly used so that people can't use a "blind eye" defense. Willfully turning a blind eye to criminal activity doesn't absolve you if you were actively participating.
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I think they need only prove a lesser "subjective test": that is "would a reasonable person have known that their work was facilitating crime?".
Yeah, I think you're right. I tried to convey that idea, but you said it better than I did.
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That doesn't make any fucking sense.
And here someone who doesn't understand the law.
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There's a fine line here and if you are willing to knowingly risk walking it all bets are off when hammer time happens.
Re:Co-Conspirators? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty clear from the internal emails released that that's basically what went on. Everyone there knew the service was being used for massive copyright infringement, and on some levels they actually encouraged it.
The reason Kim Dotcom got off (or should get off) has to do with legal procedure and extradition treaties. Basically in their zeal to reel him in, the U.S. DoJ ignored its prior agreements with New Zealand, and pressured NZ police into taking actions which violated their own laws. That's why he's getting off, not because he didn't infringe copyright. Most people here hardly consider him a champion of their pet causes. They just happen to side with him in this case because they're opposed to Hollywood leveraging its political influence to commit illegal acts under the color of law enforcement.
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He knew that his Job was illegal, and he was making money for that. So dont be so naive. If you do a Job that something is fishy is up to you to continue
I'd like to see you trot that out the next time a cop or TLA employee is caught doing illegal shit as part of their illegal job duties and no one suffers any consequences.
Re:Co-Conspirators? (Score:5, Insightful)
This. One thing I have never understood this sequence:
1. Cop searches car illegal.
2. Court tosses out evidence.
So far so good. No qualms there with the court....
3. Cop is NOT charged with a crime, continues working
That never made any sense. If the search was illegal, he didn't have the authority to do it...so it was....by very definition....outside the parameters of his job. He was NOT acting as a police officer if he was conducting an illegal search.
In fact, if anything he was denying a person their civil rights under color of law....which is a felony. Why should he NOT be charged? Why should a prosecutor even be allowed to know about such an event and not bring up charges?
And no, I am in now way saying such evidence should be used.... I understand fruit of a poisined treee, I just don't understand allowing trees to be poisoned and hoping nobody notices next time.
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This. One thing I have never understood this sequence:
1. Cop searches car illegal.
2. Court tosses out evidence.
So far so good. No qualms there with the court....
3. Cop is NOT charged with a crime, continues working
That never made any sense. If the search was illegal, he didn't have the authority to do it...so it was....by very definition....outside the parameters of his job. He was NOT acting as a police officer if he was conducting an illegal search.
In fact, if anything he was denying a person their civil rights under color of law....which is a felony. Why should he NOT be charged? Why should a prosecutor even be allowed to know about such an event and not bring up charges?
And no, I am in now way saying such evidence should be used.... I understand fruit of a poisined treee, I just don't understand allowing trees to be poisoned and hoping nobody notices next time.
Give us a link to the law violated in 1. for starters. Is it state, federal?
Then give an example of one of us, random people on the street, breaking that law, and walk us through you bringing what charges against that person, in what court, etc. etc.
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What is it? An outdated concept that has clearly failed us.
I understand the academic argument, I just don't see how people look at the results and claim its still valid reasoning.
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Exactly this. How many other professions would look you right in the eye and claim its not their fault that they don't understand the parameters of their own job!
If there is ANYTHING a cop should be a fucking expert on, its when he can and can't arrest someone. If he isn't, then that really is negligence. On his part, on his departments part. If they really are that incompetent they don't deserve to be cops.
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See and this is why its bullshit. I can be charged for crimes even if I had no malicious intent. I cannot use ignorance of the law as my excuse. Mens Rea is a double standard that has no place here, and certainly no place being applied to the very people who enforce the law which doesn't give us the same benefit.
Mens Rea is a tyrants argument if it doesn't apply to everyone.
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However when police perform illegal searches they ARE people doing bad things, and this IS giving them a get out of jail free card. As far as I am concerned an illegal search is a terrible violation, and deserving of a felony conviction.
"I don't understand my job" is no excuse; and frankly, look where its gotten us, the only reason there are not many many more TONS of evidence tossed out by illegal searches is most people give up without a fight in the face of our abusive system which will do everything in
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Bullshit. The courts only "agree" because he took a plea bargain. You can't actually take anything of value from that, esepcially in a country where the law is structured to allow major trumping up of charges if one refuses to take a deal.... even people who believe they are innocent often plead guilty in the face of that.
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It never went to trial, so we have no idea what the courts think of it. All we know is that a prosecutor thinks it's a crime, but prosecutors these days think everyone but them is a criminal.
Stupidity at it's finest... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, blame the messenger instead of the sender. They may have create the service, but they aren't the ones who placed that copyrighted content there. They were even doing a relatively good job of removing copyrighted material.
By the logic of the US, all of Google employees should go to jail, considering how many copyrighted content there is on Youtube.
This is why nobody likes the US.
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Megaupload didn't have a reputation of being extremely compliant in that department. I would compare them to Youtube or Google's employees.
Wait, I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't copyright infringement a civil offense?
Democracy my ass.
Re:Wait, I'm confused... (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't copyright infringement a civil offense?
It's both. 17 USC 506 [cornell.edu] defines criminal copyright infringement:
(a) Criminal Infringement.—
(1) In general.— Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed—
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
The usual differentiation between criminal and civil infringement is 1A, for the purpose of commercial advantage of private financial gain. I think in this case, it had to do with the fact that MegaUpload made significant amounts of money through advertising associated with the pages on which they were sharing works under copyright.
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2. Not sure how that has anything to do with Democracy. We voted for the people that allowed the law, doesn't matter how influenced there were by the IP holders.
No matter what the pretext is, if the laws passed by the government don't generally represent the will of the people then it's not a democracy.
It's not the act of voting itself that makes a democracy. Shouldn't that be obvious? Everyone in North Korea voted for Kim Jong-un, so that's clearly a democracy, right?
WTH I don't get it! (Score:2)
Is everyone who ever wrote a file transfer program guilty of copyright infringement? Is everyone who ever wrote a protocol that makes a directory downloadable guilty? Arrest everyone who worked on Apache! And FTP. And Gopher. And telnet. And Kermit.
Say I move a file into a copyrighted public place using Windows. By this prosecution, the programmers at Microsoft should be arrested!
I don't get it. Is there no logic to prosecutions? No principle?
Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
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He didn't.
Before agreeing to leave to the US he was awaiting an extradition trial in a foreign country unable to leave and could not find work.
They don't care about him. They want him to roll on the others and provide them with enough evidence to convince foreign courts to extradite everyone to the US where they will get a "fair and balanced" hearing and then be sentenced to decades in prison as an example of how corporate money buys "justice" as well as votes.
It does not matter if the testimony of this per
Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
reminds me a lot of a guy who lives in NH. He was a pot dealer who was a member of a local political group that the feds wanted to keep tabs on. So what did they do? They offered a heroin dealer a wrist slap if he would help nail the pot dealer.
The pot dealer gets nabbed, and told he will be given a sweetheart deal if he spys on the policitcal group...he says no so they railroad the fuck out of him to make an example of what happens when you don't act like the sniveling peon you are.
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Same poster here...The police in NZ have lied their way through many court cases also.
My bro wanted to be one. Talked to 3 senior cops on holiday who were speaking freely.
They asked him why he wanted to be a cop.
He spouted some naive BS about justice and honesty.
They told him that he would be routinely be told to lie under oath by the brass and if he refused would be ostracized and bullied until he towed the line or quit.
And if he could not handle that, he should not bother applying.
He never bothered applyi
Not exactly how it works (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Can be sure as shit that Kim isn't going to part with his money to defend him even if he didn't have his own case to worry about.
You are correct but not for the selfish reason you imply. Kim Dotcom's assets have been frozen so they were not available to defend this programmer. He is only being allowed money for living expenses and his own legal fees. You may hate Kim Dotcom but he is not stupid. It would have been in his own best interests to pay for this guy's defense (assuming that fact couldn't be use to malign the defendant).
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ROTFL you mean an underpaid, overworked public defender who doesn't barely have time to actually represent you? yah that works real well. Public defeders are barely adequet for a plea bargain most of the time. Shit a friend of mine had one and when he sat down with her she hadn't even bothered to look at his case.
This "justice system" is 99% scam jobs program
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Shit a friend of mine had [a public defender] and when he sat down with her she hadn't even bothered to look at his case.
Well, if they get a fixed number of hours per case and reading the case file would come out of that, I'd be inclined to do the same as reading legalese takes time even for a lawyer. Just to get the gist of:
a) Why are you here?
b) What are they charging you with?
c) What evidence do they have?
d) What do you want to do?
From what I understand they get a lot of people who have been caught fairly red-handed and who's basically looking for leniency, far from everybody has a case worth going to trial over so if you
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The Devil knows his own, and will eat them last. So this effective banishment should be considered a badge of honor for Mr. Mori. And, conversely, doing well in the US - and, to be fair, many other places - is quickly becoming a different kind of badge altogether.
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But they won't.
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But they don't actually do it. For example, in some states they require proof of indigence. Not that you will end up indigent if you have to pay for a lawyer, actual proof that you are currently indigent. If you don't have that, and don't hire a lawyer, you are considered to be voluntarily pro se.
Even when you are 'provided a lawyer', what they mean is that some guy who passed the bar who has far too many cases to actually remember your name and what you were charged with will glance at your case folder for
Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, but life with a felony conviction is like being in a gulag without the State even having to spend money on you.
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Well, head off to some socialist paradise and see how that works for you. Try opposing the government in China. In Russia. In India. In African countries. Of course, you can oppose the government in places like Israel, but mentioning that is certainly not politically "correct". Sorry to inject reality here... lets go back to programming as usual.
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There goes my business plan for "GigaUpload"!
If I implemented it, I'd get a thousand times his sentence.
You and the TeraUpload guy are screwed.
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In court you only need to prove you weren't aware of the illegal activities which is generally fairly easy to do if you aren't a partner in the business. If you did know of the illegal activities the company did and continued to work for the employer without question, I say: "Deal with the consequences"
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If programmers can be held criminally responsible for the misdeeds of their employer (which they carry out), then what about all the assholes on Wall Street with the mortgage backed securities scams and all that...
The really scary part is: those securities weren't a scam. People actually thought they made sense. There are lots of other crazy, similar financial products those same people think make sense today. Approaching 1 quadrillion dollars (no joke) of CDSs. What a mess.
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Approaching 1 quadrillion dollars (no joke) of CDSs.
At some point, that's not money; that's Cookie Clicker.
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I understand the argument being used here, and having never used Megaupload I can't comment on what it's primary purpose truly appeared to be. But how is this different from the business of any other cloud storage provider? Don't they all make money by providing a publicly accessible "drop box" for people to put whatever data they want onto?
What is different between Megaupload and OneDrive, DropBox, Mega.co.nz, and all the others? Why shouldn't their employees be criminally prosecuted?
One step at a time.
Actually, after the legal groundwork and precedents are created for establishing the ability for the US government to do just that, they will be mostly left alone if they willingly cooperate with spying on their users for the NSA etc and maintain a relatively low profile.
The more people they can collect evidence of criminal activity on, the more people they have leverage over. Just as they threatened this guy with prosecution for watching one of the copyrighted movies unless he caved, thi
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Oh great - quoting a Russian as evidence about how democracy doesn't work. If Stalin planted Rand to fuck up US politics he couldn't have done a better job.
LOLwut!? You must not have done well with reading & comprehension in school. Either that, or you're too lazy to do your own reading and simply accept what others tell you.
AS rails against exactly the kind of authoritarian oligarchy that is now on the verge of doing what all the foreign enemies of the US could not accomplish in over 200 years: The destruction of the US as a prosperous and relatively free & open society.
Strat
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OK then, a Russian railing against capitalism. Happy now?
You've still completely missed the entire point of AS.
It's not capitalism Rand rails against in AS, it's those who would destroy capitalism and individual liberty by creating a crony-capitalist oligarchy.
You know, like what is happening currently in the US, and being carried out by both major political parties.
Strat
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As I suggested above, things are likely to have ended up just the same if Stalin had her on the payroll. A plea for fragmentation and disruption in the name of the individual, with "I've got mine" pretending to be a philosophy instead of mere selfishness. She took the poison from being damaged in the USSR and spread it in the west, railing against the very things t
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I thought the entire point was that you could "shrug" and do the job so badly that everyone would wish you never took it in the first place :)
Wow, are you trolling here?
Point was that the people who actually produce will stop producing if/when government takes away too much of the fruits of their labor and/or tries to assume control of their business.
Strat
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With respect, that's how capitalism started instead of the way it's going. It's why you have other things to temper it, first the Church and now government. The way Rand suggests that there should be a small and ineffective government without a rampant crony-capitalist oligarchy happening via some magic is part of her damage.
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With respect, that's how capitalism started instead of the way it's going. It's why you have other things to temper it, first the Church and now government. The way Rand suggests that there should be a small and ineffective government without a rampant crony-capitalist oligarchy happening via some magic is part of her damage.
Nothing magical at all. It, however, does require citizens who are willing to do their homework and make informed and reasoned voting choices.
Thanks to the decades of destruction I've watched being waged upon the US education system by the government and their teacher union accomplices, educated and informed citizens are most definitely the exception rather than the rule these days. Your take-away from 'Atlas Shrugged' proves the point.
To have a government powerful enough to provide all the social 'safety n
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I know the concept o
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One thing I'm curious about - how in a Rand society can "informed and reasoned voting choices help" when the government is so powerless in such a setting?
Government power can be "weak" without being powerless. There are degrees and scopes of power.
Ah yes, the society full of perfect citizens so that there is no need for citizens to work together.
Nice straw man. I never said anything about "perfect" anything, nor is perfection required. I'm not talking about some fantasy society in your head. I'm talking about the US and the ideas and concepts the authors of the DoI/Constitution brought to life.
If you truly want to understand what I'm talking about, I suggest you read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers as a good starting point to understanding these
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Sir Thomas More had a society that needed no lawyers because the law was so simple that everyone could understand it. He knew such a thing needed perfect people that wouldn't try to find loopholes and thus it wasn't put forward as a serious suggestion. Rand on the other hand has put forward something similar which IMHO shows little understanding (compared with even a high school student) of West
Standing of the victim's family (Score:2)
Why wouldn't the family of the victim of a successful murder or the victim of attempted murder have standing to sue for wrongful death or attempted wrongful death?
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unlink(2) is also known as rm(1).
They were removing the files as far as the general meaning is concerned.
The data on your disk is never purged unless you make an extra willing effort.
If their site was being modeled after a filesystem, it's reasonable to expect that it would only remove the links.
It is also reasonable that someone would think about taking extra measures for child pornography, given that mere possession is a serious crime and digital forensics are regularly used in its prosecution.
Code Simian