From File-Sharing To Prison: The Story of a Jailed Megaupload Programmer (arstechnica.com) 126
An anonymous reader writes: "I had to be made an example of as a warning to all IT people," says former Megaupload programmer Andrew Nomm, one of seven Megaupload employees arrested in 2012. Friday his recent interview with an Estonian journalist was republished in English by Ars Technica (which notes that at one point the 50 million users on Megaupload's file-sharing site created 4% of the world's internet traffic). The 37-year-old programmer pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement in exchange for a one-year-and-one-day sentence in a U.S. federal prison, which the U.S. Attorney General's office called "a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in US history."
"It turned out that I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go from the Netherlands to the USA..." Nomm tells the interviewer, adding "I'll never get back the $40,000 that was seized by the USA." He describes his experience in the U.S. prison system after saying good-bye to his wife and 13-year-old son, adding that now "I have less trust in all sorts of state affairs, especially big countries. I saw the dark side of the American dream in all its glory..."
In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."
"It turned out that I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go from the Netherlands to the USA..." Nomm tells the interviewer, adding "I'll never get back the $40,000 that was seized by the USA." He describes his experience in the U.S. prison system after saying good-bye to his wife and 13-year-old son, adding that now "I have less trust in all sorts of state affairs, especially big countries. I saw the dark side of the American dream in all its glory..."
In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."
Intellectual Property Madness (Score:4, Interesting)
The USA sees its future in intellectual property. Non-tangible goods. With that directive the pendulum is swinging towards the absurd side right now. Eventually, say 10 to 15 years or so - government time, it'll swing back to a sane-middle.
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Just-world fallacy.
Intellectual property == delivery system (Score:1)
Everything I create is non-tangible intellectual property. All biomedical genetic advances are in the end described by sequences and methods. Completely replicable. And without patents or copyrights they would never ever reach their potential as there would be no money to deliver them to people or companies. Companies would not base product lines around things they can't monetize or would expect to be undercut by an overseas manufacturer. SO they rot in the lab.
Re: Intellectual property == delivery system (Score:5, Insightful)
By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
â"Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 August 1813
Re: Intellectual property == delivery system (Score:2)
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Actually, I agree. Jury trial is an 18th Century idea,
so I'm sure you're willing to give that up as well...
CAP === 'intrepid'
R.I.P. Jefferson (Score:1)
There is a problem in quoting Jefferson on IP.
Jefferson was an aristocrat wholly dependent on slave labor. He spoke for a pre-industrial agrarian society that would ultimately be destroyed by the Machine --- and the Machine was the creation of those who did believe in IP.
Jefferson had the good life handed to him on a plate. The kid up North? He had to work for it.
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AND being intellectually creative at the same time if you think you don't know what *work* means.
Let's not forget that he also found time to fuck his slaves, too. Truly an amazing man.
Re:Intellectual property == delivery system (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything I create is non-tangible intellectual property. All biomedical genetic advances are in the end described by sequences and methods. Completely replicable. And without patents or copyrights they would never ever reach their potential as there would be no money to deliver them to people or companies. Companies would not base product lines around things they can't monetize or would expect to be undercut by an overseas manufacturer. SO they rot in the lab.
Because there's no money in selling medicine, like there's no money in selling groceries right? Most things end up as some form of actual product or service that does have value to people. Yes, we need incentives to make people come up with new ideas but we don't need to let them own them. I'm glad I don't have to pay royalty to the guy who invented the wheel and if you discover the cure for cancer, sorry I don't want to pay you and all your descendants in perpetuity either. It's humanity's knowledge and I'm willing to give you some time limited, exclusive rights as kickback for creating it but it's not yours like a man owns a shirt. Copyright, patents, trademarks yes but ownership no.
The difference is fundamental, if it's my car I can choose when, where and how you get to drive it. I can add a GPS tracker and cameras and microphones (with info signs, so it's not covert) and alcolock and speed clamps and whatnot. If it was Hollywood's movie, they could do the same but it's not, they just got the copyright. They can make copies and sell copies, not dictate where, when and how people watch it or at least they shouldn't. I'm not against intellectual rights, but I'm against intellectual property rights. It's newspeak to create owners and an aura of permanence and right to control that doesn't and shouldn't exist. Particularly when you want to shorten copyright and they talk as if that would be stealing from them.
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And without patents or copyrights they would never ever reach their potential as there would be no money to deliver them to people or companies.
You mean like, without patents or copyrights, insurance companies would refuse to pay for treatments?
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Intellectual property is the only hope left (Score:5, Insightful)
for the USA: manufacturing is done elsewhere, so it tries to monopolize the worlds intelectual property and tries to turn it into something protected and ever more valuable, extending copyrights indefinately and bullying any country that doesn't play ball.
We can only hope for and wait for the total downfall and collapse of the US economy, before this madnes ends.
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Intellectual property is the only hope for anybody anywhere. Shipping thing is so efficient that manufacturing is a race to the bottom; nobody is as efficient as a robot or as cheap as a Shenzhen factory slave.
Re:Intellectual property is the only hope left (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's so, then perhaps the system itself needs to be changed. If food, clothing, and other items can be produced efficiently for pennies on the dollar, then perhaps we need to figure out how to give those things away to those who need them.
Re: Intellectual property is the only hope left (Score:1)
Right! Society should figure out how to take from each according to his ability, and give to reach according to his need. That kind of economic system would fix what ails Venezuela, to name just one country.
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No, we don't, because if stuff becomes dirt cheap, then even the poorest can afford them without handouts.
The problem we are facing is that people keep lobbying to make stuff expensive: the price of basics like housing, transportation, food, education, medical care, and utilities is kept artificially and astronomically high through lobbying, both by corporations, unions, and other lobbies.
Re:Intellectual property is the only hope left (Score:4, Informative)
There's an economic system to keep this in check, tariffs and trade barriers.
Unfortunately "free trade" sounds sexy and people are falling over them selves to screw western economies in an attempt to enter the eastern market.
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Not really. At this point Russia has the ability to deliver a crippling first strike on the entire west and they will do everything possible to maintain this position. You can think of the US as a toxic parasite nailed to a table. It can of course still spew forth toxines, when injured but there are so many antidotes to its products in place, it can be slowly killed without fear of retaliation. We can choke it off economically by trading without dollars, we are in absolute control of it militarily.
The US, as well as other countries, have second strike capability with its nuclear subs.
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Intellectual property is the only hope left ... for the USA ...
So the USA ('s 1%) is hosed.
Interesting that it's come full circle:
Royal "patents", limiting the manufacturing of certain goods (needed by the colonists) to British companies, were a big part of the system for keeping the colonists dependent, low-priced, commodity producers for the enrichment of British companies. The colonials (at least in New England), in turn, subsidized the immigration of engineers, mechanics, tanners, shipwrights, and such
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Manufacturing is often done elsewhere at the prerogative of American companies, it isn't just magically done elsewhere for no reason, or because some other company won a blue ribbon at the UN.
You can hate and wish us ill, but it won't make us ill. Or you rich and healthy.
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We can only hope for and wait for the total downfall and collapse of the US economy, before this madnes ends.
Disney can produce a film like Zootopia, distribute it globally, and sell a billion dollars worth of tickets. Disney can repeat and do it three times in one year You think just maybe India, Japan, China might be wondering why the lightening never strikes them --- and if they had a marketable export product in the Arts and Culture, where do you think they would come down on IP?
I am betting that it would be right where we are now.
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The US keep on trying to do that and came close a couple of times so far in just this century but didn't quite pull it off. Maybe those people who want Trump as President (with Hillary being not much better) are pushing hard for a third time.
Personally I think the US economy collapsing would be a huge fucking disaster for everyone.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Harm vs punishment (Score:4, Insightful)
...In U.S. court documents Nomm "acknowledged" that the financial harm to copyright holders "exceeded $400 million."...
Wouldn't the relatively light jail sentence handed down belie the level of financial harm claimed?
Re: Harm vs punishment (Score:2)
Was MegaUpload itself responsible for the $400M damages, or did it just knowingly profit from the infringement? Was this defendant largely responsible for MegaUpload's share of the damages, or did he just aid and abet the principals of the scheme? As I see it, he is at least two layers removed from the full damages that he "acknowledged" as part of his plea agreement.
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He pleaded guilty for a reduced sentence. If he'd fought the charges he faced up to 55 years in prison. That's how they get you. They throw every charge at you that they can, so you don't ever dare fight back and instead accept their lesser mercy so they can use you as an example for the next person they target.
It's no wonder he "acknowledged" $400 million in harm. If I was faced with the rest of my life in prison and they demanded I acknowledge that Bigfoot is costing hunters billions of lost dollars in re
Re:Harm vs punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
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My first rule is: "Don't voluntarily go to the USA", and I'm not doing anything unlawful.
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"American Dream"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Large-scale copyright infringement is a felony in many countries, and we got our current draconian copyright system in large part at the urging of European publishers. Copyright law is still more permissive in the US than elsewhere. References to the US or the "American Dream" are utterly gratuitous.
Someone seems to be criminally naive.
I don't either. Your point being?
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So when are we going to arrest all the enron employees for the ceo selling some barges to himself? Oh, they didn't know the executives were criminals? Sounds criminally naive to me.
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You must not be paying attention: "we" already did, and "we" sentenced them to multi-year prison terms: http://tinyurl.com/gpkbabm [tinyurl.com] http://tinyurl.com/jd58qqz [tinyurl.com]
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So it is purely coincidental that this Estonian national, that was living in the Netherlands, ended up in prison in the US? While the law may be more permissive, this will do you absolutely no good as the prosecutors will pressure you into accepting a plea deal that barely involv
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No, it's not coincidental at all: he violated US copyrights, and under international agreements, that is something that the US legal system is entitled to deal with. Other countries are free to cancel those agreements any time they like. The Netherlands, Estonia, and Turkey could end extradition treaties with the US, or even break off all relations. Of course, there are unavoidable econ
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Today there are more barriers of movement to talented people into America and distribution is not so difficult today which means you don't need Fox or Disney behind you to get your stuff out there. The Hollywood advantage is vanishing. A major reason is self-inflic
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Well, good luck with that. I wouldn't hold my breath. Right now, continental Europe's output is pathetic.
How? Places like France and Germany have large government subsidies and go
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Exactly my point. Are you arguing just for the sake of it?
And with computers Dell had the management and distribution so they thought the people who made their stuff would ne
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No, but you obviously are. Njovich asked why the US brings all these copyright infringement cases against non-citizens, and I explained why. End of story.
Well, and you can bet that those "guys who talk to the bank" will make sure that they own the copyrights, that their movies will
File sharing causes absolutely no harm whatsoever (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who "share" files were never the ones that would buy content.
A file shared is not a media stolen.
A file shared is not a copyright violated - no money exchanged hands for the "media".
File sharing isn't "pirating" - no sabres were rattled, no ships were stormed, no lives were lost.
File sharing isn't "theft" - the original source of the file still exists and still belongs to the owner.
When will we, the people, kick our collective government representatives in the nuts until they wake the fuck up and stop listening to these RICO act violators, these Mafia-like entities, these black-mailing con artists who continue to make record profits while whining that they aren't making more, while continuing to withhold payments to the artists, directors, actors, stunt-people, gaffers, mixers, computer artists, musicians and whatnot.
Why are all of those that get the fruits of their labor stolen from them by the RIAA, MPAA, and other major criminal organizations like them, supporting these asshats? Why aren't they storming their strongholds and shoving spears through their collective entrails until they find the .1% of those organizations that aren't just greedy fuckwands willing to do anything just to make yet even more money.
File sharing causes absolutely great harm (Score:3, Insightful)
Your arguments sound sane but couldn't be further from the truth.
When 'theft' of imaginary property takes place, that causes the loss of imaginary sales. Which causes damage to some rich f**s bank account. As in: imaginary money that does *NOT* appear in said bank account. Whether or not that imaginary money would have appeared otherwise, is irrelevant: it's the not-showing-up-of-something-expected that counts here.
For the 1%er concerned that's a very traumatic, life-changing event, and causes grave im
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A file shared is a copyright violation, since it involves creating another unauthorized copy. It isn't commercial copyright infringement, but it's still against the law, and still can be a criminal matter (as opposed to a civil matter) in the US.
Copyright serves useful purposes, in allowing people to create things more or less on spec, and profit from them according to the popularity. We do want to compensate creative people who create things for our use and/or enjoyment, and I haven't seen a better wa
down with the USA (Score:2, Interesting)
sick of this authoritarian shithole
Standard behaviour (Score:1)
I had to be made an example of as a warning ...
This is standard behaviour for all governments and goes double, no, triple for the USA.
I was the only defendant in the last 29 years to voluntarily go ...
And that wasn't a red flag to him, especially since he knew was was being "made an example of"?
I saw the dark side of the American dream ...
There's no mystery how the US DOJ treats foreigners: Like the Australian who was imprisoned for 7 years before being charged with a crime.
Should have become a banker (Score:4, Insightful)
Ruin a lot of lives, seriously damage the global economy. It's all fine, as long as you don't make it easy for anyone to share a song or movie.
The scariest part of his story (Score:5, Insightful)
We keep using the phrase "The US is the world's policemen" without realizing that it is literally true, that even if you are not a US person and you do something that happens to be an offense in the US, even a nonviolent one, the FBI can come and get you in every part of the world.
This story needs to be trumpeted (or hillaried, if this is possible) in this year's political campaign. This is a lot more serious an abuse of centralized power than those banana regulations in the European Union.
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No, your assertions are simply wrong. Made-up. Talk about your own culture, or listen about mine; don't dictate my culture to me from presumption.
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The "American Dream" doesn't have anything to do with copyright infringement. It has to do with owning your own home and building a nice life for yourself, free of all but the minimal government interference.
One major form of which is copyright, so copyright infringement penalties and the "American Dream" are actually very closely (and negatively) correlated, especially in this case. Copyright is a strong contender for the primary manner in which many governments currently interfere with the everyday lives of private citizens.
A society with only "minimal government interference" would have no copyright laws.
Andrus Nõmm, not Andrew Nomm (Score:1)
Andrus is a very frequent Estonian first name.
The strange umlaut in "Nomm" / "Nõmm" is this letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
No Estonian would be named "Andrew" nor "Nomm".
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We have changed his name, pray that we do not change it further.
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Who gives a shit about some third-worlder's hilarious alphabet?
You are correct.
Slashdot, please keep ignoring UTF.
Must be an important part of the Murican world domination plan.
Meanwhile, (Score:2)
Why do you all accept that file sharing is illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
I've read all comments, and it seems everyone here accepts that providing a file sharing service is an illegal activity.
Did this man actually uploaded copyrighted material? He did not.
Did he worked on it with the purpose of others uploading movies? He did not. He just provided a file sharing service, which I have used it myself to distribute family videos that were large enough to not be sharable by email.
So why do you all accept this ludicrus position that file sharing is illegal?
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Never going to happen. The younger generation doesn't give 2 shits about the old farts complaining about some fat woman working at Eaton's speaking to them in English more than half a century ago.
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