Comment Re:Is it an interesting question... (Score 1) 592
If you had a binding contract with MU, then it may still be a positive value proposition now that they are in breach. But you don't have a contract with them, do you?
If you had a binding contract with MU, then it may still be a positive value proposition now that they are in breach. But you don't have a contract with them, do you?
It deprives you of *rights*. Copyrights are rights. Copyright laws defend rights. There are major differences between rights and property, and of course rights and property intersect in some ways.
Money is property though, and most of the MegaUpload indictment is about money and illegal things that were done with money. There's more to the indictment than copyright infringement, and I wish more people would read it and understand this, and then form opinions.
If you outsourced your company's data storage to MegaUpload, I'm going to go ahead and say you were pretty much asking for it. If you honestly managed to avoid being aware that this was an incredibly risky proposition, I feel sorry for you. It also occurs to me that the copyright infringement elements of the case against MU are just one small part of a long list of crimes in the indictment, some of which would still be serious crimes even if they were selling milk or adopting out puppies. They are being accused of much more serious things than copyright infringement.
Seriously, who ever discovered MegaUpload and decided that it would be a great business decision to use it for corporate data storage? I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, being a copyright reform activist myself, but it is quite clear that the Mega folks made some monumentally bad choices.
I ask that everyone please read and understand the actual indictment before taking an activist position on any side of the MU matter. It's not anywhere near as simple as the press and the bloggers make it out to be.
In the indictment, if you bother to read it, you will find that this was directly tested, with respect to a specific server in Virginia, which contained certain specific files. The company agreed to remove them, and did not. That's one of the many charges in the indictment. I think a lot of people don't quite understand the nature of the charges against MU though. The racketeering charges are much more serious than the copyright infringement, and many of those would be valid regardless of the nature of the business.
What can be killed by boiling for 20 minutes that isn't dead in one minute?
I grew up on a farm with well water. We now sell our groundwater to the county. Because of the perpetual contract, drinking our free well water would be a crime. You make your choices.
I'd much rather have RO, pH buffered tap water than water trucked from springs. However, if I'm in the backcountry near the spring, I'd rather have the spring water (boiled for 10 minutes.) Context is key here.
The indictment itself does not equate copyright infringement to theft. I wish people would read the charges before taking an activist position with regard to the charges.
Have you read the indictment? The feds gave them ample opportunity to remove a few very specific items from a very specific server (which was in Virginia). They agreed to do so, and then failed to comply. And that material wasn't any sort of gray area -- it was full length feature films, 39 of them to be exact.
And that has little to do with the indictment. It's way more significant what they did with the money (how and for what reasons they paid people cash rewards, how and from whom they took payments, the steps they took to move cash into and out of US banks, etc.) The "piracy" aspect is not the most serious of the charges.
I used to be a cryptographer, then I took a crowbar to the knee.
You should read the indictment, and become aware of the actual charges being raised and the evidence on which those charges are based. A lot of people have already gone into protest mode without even taking the basic step of reading the actual indictment. What they did with money turns out to be far more significant than the "piracy" components. Some of the things they did would be crimes even if there was no question of the legality or the controversial nature of the business.
Okay, a useful business that stands accused of institutional copyright infringement, for which there is actual evidence.
MegaUpload apparently needed servers in Virginia, banks in the US, Paypal, etc. Read the indictment. If you read the actual charges and understand the evidence it might change your opinion on the case.
They didn't just want to shut down the site! They wanted to prove that the operators knew that what they were doing was illegal, and that they were taking deliberate steps to hide the money! That is central to the indictment, that they knew (because they were told!) that they hosted infringing content, and that they did not comply with removing (very specific) items from a (very specific) server. There's a lot more to the indictment, which I encourage everyone to read before they take an activist position.
What hath Bob wrought?