Update on DOJ vs Dotcom/Megaupload

[Mousey]

Link Removed

If Department of Justice officials were hoping that extraditing the leaders of Megaupload from New Zealand to the United States would involve little more than a judge rubber-stamping their request, they were wrong.

Four of the defendants in the Megaupload case--founder Kim Dotcom, along with Mathias Ortmann, Bram Van Der Kolk, and Finn Batato--had filed a motion requesting access to the evidence that prosecutors were using to make their case. The men argued that their inability to access that information made it impossible for them to contest the charges, and by extension the U.S. extradition request ....

 

[Mousey]

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....Lawyers representing the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia asked a federal court on Friday to deny Goodwin's request for the return of his videos, most of which are of high school sports events. He said that the court has already heard Goodwin's request and that the videographer has already received all the relief to which he is entitled. ....

 

[vinylweatherman]

DOJ tries to kill faith in the ability of cloud based data storage services to protect users from data losses

How can any user now contemplate having the ONLY copy of their precious data entrusted to a cloud based storage locker. No matter how well run, a court could arbitrarily seize and destroy ALL data on the basis that SOME data on the service is illegal. No user can know what other users are storing on such services, therefore it's back to the old days, make damn sure you keep your own archives as back up to any cloud based storage.

This position will NOT prevent the continued circulation of the pirated content, since unlike the data of inocent users, there will be many copies floating around, and the loss of a few copies from Megaupload will be nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Had Mr Goodwin not shown such blind faith in cloud services, he would have burned a couple of archive copies on data DVD, and would have faced only a few minutes work in getting access to his data, and not much longer finding an alternative cloud service with which to share it with customers.

Some of this data cannot be replaced by any amount of damages, such as pictures and videos of your children growing up. The issue here is that the data DOES exist, but is locked away destined to be destroyed by the stubbornness of the film industry and government.

The whole basis of this fight was to protect the owners of such content, but clearly small time film makers are NOT being protected, and if anything are being shat upon from a great height by having their artistic content confiscated and destroyed so that the big conglomerates can protect their multi-million dollar income stream.

How would THEY like it if every copy of their greatest blockbusters were to be seized and destroyed, and their only remedy was to claim damages and shoot the films all over again.

This has the potential to make the industry even more unpopular than when it was dragging "granny" to court and suing for $1,000,000 for 5 songs one of her grandchildren downloaded on her PC. The entire cloud storge industry should be fighting this, not just Megaupload. It sets a precedent that makes the entire concept unworkable as a means of ensuring critical data is securely stored with almost no risk of loss.

I have always doubted putting my data into the hands of a cloud service and not bothering to do my own backups, and this case has vindicated my view. The big question is which data locker gets hit next, as they ALL contain significant amounts of data that would be deemed "pirated".

 

[Mousey]

I had a big row with Rapidshare a couple years ago.... I buy digital scrapbooking kits. Most run 200mb and larger. These are downloaded from the designer online to my hard drive after purchase. A couple years ago, my main hard drive was beginning make that ominous clickety click sound. Critical data I backed up to a smaller external. But there was no room for many of my kits... so I uploaded them to Rapidshare.

Yes, eventually, the hard drive went kaflooy. I bought another, installed it and the OS and was up and running. Then I went to Rapidshare to download my kits. Gone. Every last one of them. Hundreds of dollars and gigs of kits had been deleted.

What had happened was this. Someone out there in interweb land had been sharing purchased scrapbooking kits they had uploaded to Rapidshare. Even though I'd never shared mine, they were deleted as they had the designer name in the filename. Well, yeah... I wanted to be able to tell what they were.

Long story short... Rapidshare would not restore the files as they were copyrighted materials, even though I sent them copies of my purchase invoices. The designers wouldn't/couldn't help as these were purchases made over a couple of years.

Now... I have 6 externals.... LOL

As for Megaupload, I had some files uploaded there from work, for easy access from any location, any computer, for anyone in the company who needed them. Poof!

Now I just buy 16g flash drives by the bucket and hand them out to the boss and a couple others like candy - and tell them they'll be fired on the spot if they lose one.

Screw the cloud and the DOJ, too.

 

[harrys99]

Excellent post Mousey. And kudos to you for the way you are managing the crappy hand you were dealt.

 

[vinylweatherman]

I had a big row with Rapidshare a couple years ago.... I buy digital scrapbooking kits. Most run 200mb and larger. These are downloaded from the designer online to my hard drive after purchase. A couple years ago, my main hard drive was beginning make that ominous clickety click sound. Critical data I backed up to a smaller external. But there was no room for many of my kits... so I uploaded them to Rapidshare.

Yes, eventually, the hard drive went kaflooy. I bought another, installed it and the OS and was up and running. Then I went to Rapidshare to download my kits. Gone. Every last one of them. Hundreds of dollars and gigs of kits had been deleted.

What had happened was this. Someone out there in interweb land had been sharing purchased scrapbooking kits they had uploaded to Rapidshare. Even though I'd never shared mine, they were deleted as they had the designer name in the filename. Well, yeah... I wanted to be able to tell what they were.

Long story short... Rapidshare would not restore the files as they were copyrighted materials, even though I sent them copies of my purchase invoices. The designers wouldn't/couldn't help as these were purchases made over a couple of years.

Now... I have 6 externals.... LOL

As for Megaupload, I had some files uploaded there from work, for easy access from any location, any computer, for anyone in the company who needed them. Poof!

Now I just buy 16g flash drives by the bucket and hand them out to the boss and a couple others like candy - and tell them they'll be fired on the spot if they lose one.

Screw the cloud and the DOJ, too.

So, they pick on some Scrapbook kits, yet they STILL host the "hard stuff" like films and TV Series, which are pretty obvious from the filename, and sell a premium service that allows you unlimited download to all 4 seasons of Fringe (for example).

Had it not been for my sister in law, I would not know WTF you were on about, but I have received an education that there is indeed this murky underworld in the scrapbooking scene. It also shows that like online casinos, sites like Rapidshare can arbitrarily delete the data of innocent users on a whim, based on nothing more than the fact that other users have shared similar data types.

Where work files are lost, this can have a serious impact on business. I bet it would be different if some big conglomerate with expensive lawyers had lost key files from Megaupload that had cost them millions to put right. They would have set some big dogs with big teeth on the DoJ, and I bet they would not have had such a cavalier attitude to data owned by non infringers as they show towards the "little man" like Mr Goodwin.

I bet all the really important data will not so easily be entrusted to such cloud based companies, and they would become even more dependent on the pirates for customers.

At least when your drive plays up you have a chance to do something about it, but when the DoJ or a cloud storage company acts, by the time you find out it is too late.

Given the digital nature of the data, I don't see why the original designers were so unhelpful, it is not as though they had to produce a replacement set of physical materials, just a copy of a digital file, which you would have to download and archive at your own expense.

It is the same reason I never went for the original iTunes model, since you never really owned the music, you merely rented it for the lifetime of your PC, since it was tied to that device because of the DRM

 

[harrys99]

Kim Dotcom's current lifestyle doesn't appear to be too bad.

Megaupload's Kim Dotcom Admits to 'Racketeering' in Tweets


Dotcom has been tweeting about his activity, meeting Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and hinting about the launch of a music cloud storage application called MegaBox. In particular, he's been showing off his humorous side with zingers aimed at the U.S. government . (taken from HR 6/22/12)



Conspiracy to commit racketeering!


At the police. 3 times a week. Bail condition. Flight risk minimization.


A little sneak peak of my upcoming website. The truth will come out.


Hilarious cartoon about Kim Dotcom and the US Government. I need to lose weight (at least in cartoons).

 

[Mousey]

New Zealand court rules Megaupload raid was illegal

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New Zealand police acted illegally when armed officers raided Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion earlier this year, a High Court judge ruled on Thursday.

Judge Helen Winkelmann said the search warrants police used when they raided the Internet millionaire's property as part of a US probe into allegations of massive online piracy were too broad to be considered reasonable.

The ruling will not end the case against Dotcom -- who is on bail awaiting a bid to extradite him to the United States -- but the judge said that next week she would consider ordering some seized material to be returned to him.

She also found computer data seized by police during the raid had been unlawfully copied and sent to authorities in the United States, who accuse Dotcom of racketeering, money laundering and copyright theft.

"The police relied on invalid warrants ......

 

[Mousey]

Feds say MU subject to US laws

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....
And even if the company is not currently subject to US jurisdiction, the government argues, there's no time limit for serving papers on Megaupload. Therefore, it argues, the courts can put the case against Megaupload on hold until Kim Dotcom is extradited to the United States. Then, the government can personally serve papers on Dotcom as a representative of Megaupload.


....

 

[Mousey]

NZ judge removes himself from MU case

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The New Zealand judge overseeing Kim Dotcom's extradition fight has removed himself from the Megaupload case. At a recent conference on copyright, Judge David Harvey stated that "we have met the enemy and he is US," a reference to tough US intellectual property policy. Critics argued that the statement called his impartiality into question, and the judge apparently agreed.

"He recognises that remarks made in the context of a paper he delivered on copyright law at a recent internet conference could reflect on his impartiality and that the appropriate response is for him to step down from the case," said the district court's chief judge, Jan-Marie Doogue, to the New Zealand Herald.

The comments came last week.....

 

[Mousey]

NZ launches inquiry into spying in Megaupload case

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key has launched a inquiry into "unlawful" spying by government agents leading to the arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the United States where he faces charges of internet piracy and breaking copyright laws.

The probe may deal another blow to the U.S. case after a New Zealand court ruled in June that search warrants used in the raid on Dotcom's home earlier this year, requested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, were illegal.

Key has asked the government's Intelligence and Security division to investigate "circumstances of unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau", his office said ....

 

[vinylweatherman]

Well, the US government feel it is fine to punish the innocent users of the service who did not use it to store and distribute copyrighted material without consent by refusing to allow even non infringing data to be returned. Even though Dotcom clearly made money from those who DID use the service to break copyright rules, he needs to get away with it in the interests of the innocent users getting their data back. The US could then launch a more targetted investigation against the infringing uses, and once Dotcom wins, require him to wind up the service in an orderly manner, and redesign it to prevent infringement in the future as well as bear the cost of vetting the data to separate the infringing data from the innocent, such that only non infringing data is returned.

If he is found guilty, and the US succeeds in ordering the destruction of innocent users' data just to protect big corporations by deleting just a minority of the illicit copies floating around the internet, it will be a battle won, but a war lost, for the big media companies. It will be an end to trust in cloud services for protecting critical data, and back to "old school" making one's own backups on CD, DVD, pen drives, external hard drives, etc.

I had serious concerns about such cloud services before this happened, and now a similar service provided by my ISP has caused users to be unable to access their data due to an unforseen technical issue, even though assurances have been given that access will be restored and no data lost. Fine in the long term, but no good where access is required immediately, such as for making tax returns, business accounts, etc.

 

[Mousey]

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand's spy agency illegally carried out surveillance on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, an official report showed on Thursday, prompting an apology from the prime minister and dealing a possible blow to a U.S. bid to extradite him.

Washington wants the 38-year-old German national, also known as Kim Schmitz, to be sent to the United States to face charges of internet piracy and breaking copyright laws.

Thursday's report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the official watchdog for New Zealand spy agencies, found the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) had spied on Dotcom, despite a law prohibiting it from spying on New Zealand citizens and residents.

The flamboyant Dotcom attained New Zealand permanent residency....

I find this funny in a way... Here in the US such an 'investigation' into the actions of the FBI or similar agency would take many months and half a dozen committees .....

 

[conker]

I can't get my head round this case, it seems like such a joke. I really like NZ and the people from that country and they seem to have a much different view this Kim's crimes compared to the Americans.

 

[vinylweatherman]

I can't get my head round this case, it seems like such a joke. I really like NZ and the people from that country and they seem to have a much different view this Kim's crimes compared to the Americans.

How come the FBI can seize and destroy the data from users that is very clearly NOT infringing any copyrights, such as the small businesses that used the service to send stuff to their clients, or users who backed up their important files there thinking "the cloud" is going to be more reliable than their hard drive and a couple of CD/DVD backups.

In a normal police investigation, the property of bystanders is not forefeit, and must be returned to them at the earliest opportunity. It shows that when big corporate entities are involved, a different set of laws applies that allows the weak innocents to be trampled underfoot in the rush to catch the guilty with no appeal nor recourse to damages for those trampled innocents.

I wonder if these big coporates have stopped to consider how damaging it could be to their reputations if innocent users' data did end up getting destroyed, sending businesses under and putting ordinary people out of work. They could find they win this last battle, but lose the war because people will see that the law does not apply if you are big enough to bully the administration, and the people will feel they no longer should "play fair" by avoiding freely available movies and music and pay the bloated corporates through the nose for content that is designed to prevent them enjoying it as they wish by insisting they can only use overpriced "approved hardware" to view/listen.

Their battle is pretty pointless at this stage, any content they manage to get destroyed will not make the slightest difference to the availabilty of their pirated content from other sources, in fact, it is the users who used the service to house their library of pirated content that have probably already reconstructed it from the various sources still available. Only users who had unique data that was ONLY stored on Megaupload will suffer, as the data would be their own creation, a bespoke "one off" which cannot be found on any other pirate service.

If anyone still thinks a cloud based file locker is the safest way to preserve data, they need their head examined. All it takes is a big conglomerate to find other users have used the service to house illegal copies of their content, and they can engineer a "take down" with no right of appeal for ANYONE to get their data back.

It will mean FEWER people will entrust such services for their own unique data, leaving them even MORE the preserve of those using the service as a means to distribute pirated copies without having to clog their own bandwidth by seeding torrents.

If they think they will win the war, they should ask "have we won the war against malware yet?". The answer will give them a clue to how likely it is that pirated content will soon be a thing of the past.

The answer may lie in flooding the internet with legal content that is much easier to use, and more reliable in delivery, than pirated content could ever be. Users would then go for safety and reliabilty, and will find all their needs met by the legal sources, so would not spend time and effort trying to track down a pirate copy, and then risk it being a malware ridden fake.

 

[Mousey]

Megaupload founder unveils file-sharing sequel

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Like a good Hollywood sequel, Megaupload is back.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of the shuttered file-sharing site that housed everything from family photos to blockbuster films, on Thursday announced a new online storage service called Mega that will give users direct control - and responsibility - over their files.

Mega will launch in January 2013, just before the internet entrepreneur is scheduled to face an extradition hearing to the United States where he and other Megaupload operators face charges of online piracy, fraud and money laundering.

In a snub to U.S. prosecutors, the site will not utilize U.S.-based hosting companies as partners in order to avoid being shut down by U.S. authorities.

The U.S. government alleges that Megaupload, once one of the world's most popular websites, was directly responsible for illegally uploaded content on the site and that it netted $175 million from unlawful activities.

....