2 Men Who Helped Run Popular Pirating Website Megaupload Sentenced To Prison in New Zealand (apnews.com) 60
Two men who helped run the once wildly popular pirating website Megaupload were each sentenced by a New Zealand court on Thursday to more than two years in prison. From a report: The sentencing of Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk ended an 11-year legal battle by the men to avoid extradition to the United States on more serious charges that included racketeering. The men last year struck a deal with prosecutors from New Zealand and the U.S. in which they pleaded guilty to being part of a criminal group and causing artists to lose money by deception. Meanwhile Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is continuing to fight the U.S. charges and threat of extradition. He has said he expects his former colleagues to testify against him as part of the deal they struck.
U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million -- mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -- before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers. Ortmann was sentenced to 2 years and 7 months while van der Kolk was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months. Each had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison but argued they should be allowed to serve their sentences in home detention.
U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million -- mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -- before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers. Ortmann was sentenced to 2 years and 7 months while van der Kolk was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months. Each had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison but argued they should be allowed to serve their sentences in home detention.
They're not an active threat to the community (Score:5, Insightful)
Prison really should be reserved for active threats to the community that can't be mitigated through other means.
Re: They're not an active threat to the community (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh I understand (Score:2)
And if anyone doesn't think prison is torture, then how is it supposed to be a deterrent? We're not debating if prison is torture, we're debating how much torture is OK.
I mean, if you want a deterrent we could hit them with a pain ray 15 hours a day. Zero physical harm, horrifying agony, do that for their entire sentence and I bet that would d
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The 2000s phoned (Score:2, Interesting)
They want their tech crook stories back.
"Meanwhile Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is continuing to fight the U.S. charges"
Seriously, how on earth can this still be ongoing? What point of law can it still be stuck on after a decade and who's been paying for the lawyers all this time? Unless he's won the lottery it certainly won't be Mr Schmitz.
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and who's been paying for the lawyers all this time?
People have a right to representation in criminal trials even if they can't pay for it. But you're making a mistake in assuming the lawyers are costing much at all simply because the case is ongoing over 10 years. They aren't working full time on this. Having been through a legal battle myself that progressed well over a year the ultimate final billable hours for the lawyer ended up being less than 2 weeks worth.
the public defender has an high case load and bail (Score:2)
the public defender has an high case load and some times it's to your advantage to bailout to better fight your case
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Well, it takes a while to grind down that lardball.
Probably because New Zealand (Score:2)
It's an open secret and one that several European countries have been increasingly refusing to take part in.
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Nothing relic about it. Dead men don't reoffend and don't cost the state anything. And if you won't to go down the moral route of killing get back to me about the military.
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"The US military (and most others) are predatory scum"
And I suppose you think the ukrainians should just let putins things invade their land? Maybe throw flowers at them?
" I'm a pacifist."
There's a shock.
"What the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan was disgusting"
Yeah it was, but it doesn't mean killing is wrong full stop. It depends on the circumstance.
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can i talk to whoever is in charge of the "temperatures too so cold or hot they kill people" department? id like my office adjusted.
Shut down? (Score:2)
They let Mega.nz keep on running, though according to Kim the New Zealand government seized enough shares they own the company now.
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Exactly. I have little sympathy for anyone who hosted with Dot Com's deliberate pirate site. That's like handing your wallet to the local meth head for safe keeping, because he has announced he's switched to bath salts.
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'Cloud' is just a buzzword that means "you don't control it". A "data hoarder" is just someone who understands that.
Would I push an encrypted backup over the Internet to someone else's backup service? Sure. But in terms of working data if it's not on a server under your control, you're just asking for trouble. And if you have enough users all in one location, it is, in my opinion, stupid to use cloud computing and add an Internet connection and someone else's infrastructure as additional points of failu
Re:Shut down? (Score:5, Informative)
They let Mega.nz keep on running, though according to Kim the New Zealand government seized enough shares they own the company now.
Except that's not the company in question. Megaupload very much got shut down and all their assets seized. Mega.co.nz is a completely different website with a completely new code base, a different way of operating (with client side encryption), and was started by Kim Dotcom after the Megaupload shutdown. Megaupload was shutdown in 2012. Mega Limited was was a company founded in 2013 and is not part of this legal proceeding and seizing it would have to be the subject of a completely separate legal process.
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They let Mega.nz keep on running, though according to Kim the New Zealand government seized enough shares they own the company now.
So when does the US justice system go after the New Zealand government for it's criminal activities?
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Kim had Megaupload servers in Virginia and that was enough. The whole story behind him is fascinating. He was a world class player on some video game and noticed a bit of latency on his side and that was because they were intercepting his traffic in NZ.
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They let Mega.nz keep on running, though according to Kim the New Zealand government seized enough shares they own the company now.
So when does the US justice system go after the New Zealand government for it's criminal activities?
Never. Because an international legal scandal isn't raised off the back of a Slashdot comment by a former burned associate with an axe to grind. And it IS a Slashdot comment. The entire history of this was a throwaway line that Kim Dotcom shared in a Slashdot interview in response to an Anonymous Coward and precisely no where else, and is a claim that basically everyone else has refuted.
To say that is lacks credibility is an understatement.
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Reference for above: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Remember the SOPA wars (Score:2)
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I must ask. What film was cancelled for not being woke?
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I don’t supposed you’ve worked in a large business or maybe took some business classes at some point?
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Someone define "social Marxism". Is that the belief that the value of social interactions is derived from their labor and not the capital invested?
If you're gonna make up words and phrases to describe your incoherent ideas about culture and society, can you at least make THOSE coherent
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Censoring and controlling publishing rights are two different things. If you really want a copy of Song Of The South there are hundreds of laserdisc copies available.
The only reason Disney wants forever copyrights is monetary. It has little to do with peoples imagined culture wars.
Taking Disney at face value. (Score:2)
There is a reason why Disney wants copyright to last forever, so it can retroactively rewrite history.
Lmao Disney wants copyright to extend i definitely because it makes them a ton of money. They don’t release certain media because it would hurt their brand.
If there was good money in pornographic animated lynchings they’d be right there. Maybe you’re fooled but there isn’t any such thing as a woke megaconglomerate.
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no. they would not be. that is part of their brand, you know the thing they just said wasnt related to money at all. retard.
Their brand will be whatever they think will sustainably rope in profits.
Disney has published Insane Clown Posse, Coyote Ugly, Tombstone, and Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo and that's just off the top of my head. They're not some woke with a board of uplifting cartoon protagonists who break into song about trans rights, they're a soulless corporation that does market research and appoints someone with a pink mohawk to a communications position when their analysis shows consumers need to see them in that light.
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There's no money in broke hicks because the liquor stores, Megachurch evangelists, bingo halls and video lottery terminals have already taken all their money.
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Last week the classic film The French Connection was retroactively edited. What you see now is not what won the awards.
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Oddly enough it’s the Criterion Collection who is streaming the edited version.
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LOL yeah if you have DVD copies of those old racist gems I guess you can watch them at home.
Disney is a capitalist enterprise and capitalist enterprises are concerned with making money. That you don't understand this just demonstrates how incoherent your worldview is.
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But good old Rhonda Santis says Disney is the enemy!
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This is ONLY ongoing thanks to big corporations (Score:2)
The Federal copyright law in the U.S. is "over the top" ridiculous and has been for quite some time. If they can show you redistributed copyrighted material to people at least 10 times and there was an "intent to gain financially" from doing so? You're subject to stiffer punishments than we often give rapists or some murderers.
So you can bet they're out for blood from guys like Kim Dotcom who made over $170 million doing it with a full-blown business.
Re: This is ONLY ongoing thanks to big corporation (Score:1)
Don't see a problem (Score:2)
These two had no authority to sell or redistribute any of the music, videos, or software on the site. It wasn't their product. They did not own the license to any of it.
If people think this is a raw deal, you go create something then I'll go sell it to make money for me. You get nothing from it. Sounds fair, right?
1% News (Score:3)
Pirates are more likely to go to prison than consumer spammers & scammers because corporate deep pockets make the lawmakers and enforcers dance to their Money Tango.
Maybe I should attach a pirated movie to the spammer's content to frame them so that the cops will do something this time.
Ahh the Lance Armstrong approach (Score:2)
They want the one big name for the headlines .. and their egos.
They will give all of the other folks little to no punishment for their testimony to help come down hard on their one true enemy.
Pirating? (Score:2)
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Hydra (Score:1)
Extradition? (Score:2)
From KimDotCom (Score:2)
"Why was the US DOJ so eager to get this deal done? Because our US Judge Liam O’Grady never disclosed that he was a Disney lawyer and shareholder until we discovered it. He removed himself from the case and every decision he had made is tainted and the case should be dismissed."