Your comment reminds me of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I don't know when it will become unreasonable, but I don't want to get to that moment, just to realize there's no one to speak for us. They may start with piracy (OK, they are violating copyright), then why not libel, seems fair enough. And while we are there, why not stop this, and that.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had an excellent phrase that I always remember:

The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

I liked the Alpha Centauri quote a lot so I searched it and I think the beginning of the quote is just as interesting: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century..."

You are absolutely right. But I didn't write that sentence, because I think it applies to everyone, not only American.

In one example, take the Arab Spring for example, making governments fall thanks in part to the free flow of information (via internet).

Or Spain's Sinde Law (which brings SOPA-like restrictions to Spain).

We are a global community now. So it applies to everyone, everywhere.

I agree completely, I just thought it was awesome that right now many of the headlines are focused on the U.S. which aligns with the "Painful" learning of the Americans in the context of the game ;)

It's disgusting that you chose to reappropriate that quote in this context.

If you read the indictment, it's clear that this was the purposeful monetization of pirated material. It wasn't a few users who uploaded some things. It was a criminal site, operating in bad faith, committing a multitude of crimes.

You should seriously be ashamed of yourself for comparing those famous words to seven criminals (who have strong evidence against them) who are about to get a jury trial.

You wouldn't say that if, in years ahead, you find yourself looking back and realizing acts like this were the beginning of a tight grip on information and freedom from a world where you're afraid to do much of anything anywhere in the world for fear of your business being shut down, being arrested, and treated as guilty until proven innocent, you probably wouldn't feel this was a disgusting comparison.

I understand that it's easy to get swept away in fearful hyperbole, but it's not a bad thing to keep a cynical eye on the actions of a government, and not a bad thing to look to history at its worst for warning of a future we'd like to avoid. It's not a 1:1 comparison he's done, but it's a valid concern.

Nothing about this case makes me fear your future.

I read the indictment. The cause for fear simply isn't there.

It's useless to pretend you're keeping an eye on the government when all you're really doing is getting a tiny shred of information and then getting hysterical because of it.

Please don't pat yourselves on the back simply because you're able to get hysterical with your willfully ignorant, less-than-half-baked ideas about what happened. You aren't doing something noble, you're doing the opposite. You're making it hard to fight REAL fights because you're using energy on bullshit.

I don't feel anyone is getting hysterical, and I feel his quote wasn't invoked for the benefit of the MegaUpload execs but rather at the current climate in general. Part of paying attention is to digest every 'shred' you do get.

Also, this is an online forum, I doubt anyone feels their conversations here are noble acts or something to pat oneself on the back over, so painting broad ugly pictures of people you know very little about is just rude and not helpful to the discussion.

I think you don't realize that my comment was a response to noonespecial: First they come for the sites that are 90/10 pirate to legit. ... When will it be too much? When does it become unreasonable?

So, I think the quotation was very fitting for the occasion, because it means exactly that. They may start taking people in custody because of a seemingly legit reason (in this case, copyright infringement, in the case of Nazi Germany, the Dolchstoßlegende). But power corrupts, and if they start passing laws to control more and more and more the Internet, who will be the next? It can be Reddit, an editor of Wikipedia, or even You.

But of course, if you wish to honor your nickname, that's not my problem :) have a nice day.

> I think you don't realize that my comment was a response to noonespecial: First they come for the sites that are 90/10 pirate to legit. ... When will it be too much? When does it become unreasonable?

If you'd read the indictment you'd know that the problem wasn't the percentages. We aren't standing on a slippery slope. Well, we are... but this case is not part of it at all. This case is a distraction from that problem.

This is, at it's heart, a completely traditional bust of a large-scale for-profit copyright infringement regime. Nothing particularly new about it at all, except that instead of finding a warehouse filled with tapes or discs, it's all on spinning metal disks.

They're not "criminals" until after the trial. This is the problem people here are having with this.

Site confiscated -> branded criminal -> trial. Is assbackwards.

KIM DOTCOM is a convicted criminal. (securities fraud, embezzling, and some other crap)

He's about to be tried again, for another crime. But he's already a criminal.

The person I responded to was comparing mass genocide to the orderly trial of a criminal who is suspected of committing more crimes. That disgusts me. It casually trivializes massive horrors.

For your information, half of my father's family died in Auschwitz. Luckily, my grandparents came here before war started and they saved their lives. So that's why I have very present what that quote means. But I also live in Argentina, where 36 years ago a Dictatorial Government killed people passing laws, just to arrest and disappear the ones who opposed to them. And what was the reaction of the rest of out society? Just say to their children: "Don't get involved in that." "Just leave well enough alone."

So no, I don't compare piracy with holocausts. That would be mad. But I have present that passing laws that allow the government to monitor everything you do online, may gradually and eventually lead to a dark future. And I dont want to get there seeing this moment as where it all started, and having done nothing about it.

If you'd read the indictment you'd know this has nothing to do with the government monitoring the Internet.

Sadly you were too busy comparing the enforcement of long existing laws to creeping genocide to read the actual case.

Kim Dotcom has, according to his claims, a clean slate.

For your information my criminal record has been cleared under Germany’s clean slate legislation. Officially I can say I am without convictions.

https://torrentfreak.com/from-rogue-to-vogue-megaupload-and-...

Neither German nor US government have the right do define or power to define language beyond its use in government affairs. In the English language shared by millions of people, Kim is in fact a convicted criminal.

It seems unproductive to society to treat "criminality" as a write-once binary switch, which once flipped can never be erased. There are far too many confounding factors. Someone is benefiting from the desire to brand human beings for life for something in their past, as well as the immediate assumption that accused is as good as guilty, but it isn't society.

In fact, I know someone who used to like Megaupload to an extent, but even before a trial, thanks to this cultural tendency and inflammatory news coverage, said, "It turns out they were guilty of racketeering and money laundering, so they were some pretty bad guys." Despite being a reasonably well-informed person, he too fell victim to the urge to equate accusation with guilt.

At this point it doesn't matter what Kim Dotcom did a decade ago in Germany, or whether Megaupload is guilty of all the things they're accused of and more. The damage to the public's perception of legitimate file sharing has been done, and what I think was the most important thing to come out of Mega, the MegaBox music service, is most likely dead.

Using the term "criminal" to describe somebody has already paid their debt to society for the crimes they were convicted of last decade is, to put it lightly, not polite.

There were indeed some awful things that happened back then, but if we act as though nothing else can possibly compare to them then we won't have learnt anything from them. It could be that things continue to get worse, and eventually are as bad, but by the time we get there it's too late - which seems like exactly what Niemoller's quote is trying to point out.

I don't think he was comparing it to mass genocide. He simply said "Oh that reminds me of this other text read".

I thought exactly the same thing. The text is structurally very similar, possibly on purpose, or it may just be an obvious structure.

What's the difference if you create a blog with ads, and your users started to upload ocr of books?

Would you like to go to jail even though 70% of your users are honest and giving you a profit?

If you think this is different, pls specify where the line is drawn

Slopes aren't always as slippery as you may believe. The point of this is that the site actively promoted and profited from piracy. This isn't Facebook with someone posting a few lines from a song, this is The Pirate Bay.

Think of it like this: have you ever successfully argued to a cop that you only drive over the limit 10% of the time? What matters is the deliberateness of the speed you were doing when you got caught.

The deliberateness has never once mattered when I was stopped for speeding. It didn't matter if I was aware of my infraction, or if it was intentional. Just the speed. It didn't matter if I only drove over the limit 0.001% of the time, I was still busted.

That's what I'm afraid of. A world where 1 user-posted file that someone claims is protected results in arrests and the total loss of my site.

Setting aside minor traffic infringements, intent is a very basic part of criminal law.

As a counter-example, what if you hit someone with your car? Do you think it should matter if evidence exists that it was an accident or if there is evidence that you hit the person purposefully?

Every time I've been pulled over, the officer asks "do you know why I stopped you?" If I claim I honestly don't know, there's a better chance that the fine may be reduced. Or going in the other direction, 10mph over while driving might garner a warning, while 10mph over with another car next to you doing the same speed would get your car impounded for street racing.

How exactly has Megaupload "promoted" piracy?

Rewarding people for uploading popular files does not constitute promoting piracy.

Actually the Press release claims that they nefariously DID NOT promote piracy and therefore promoted piracy, in some weird Kafka-esque turn of phrase. They purposely don't show download leaderboards, of (I have no doubt) infringing files. Interesting complaint.

>"This isn't Facebook with someone posting a few lines from a song, this i"

No, this is YouTube with people posting whole movies.

I agree with your thought process-- however, there is no reason to talk about what % of the service was used for piracy and what % wasn't. Non-owner/operator users should be viewed as completely separate from the owners and operators' and their actions. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the users are pirating content, as long as the owners & operators were not engaging in illegal activities (including knowingly aiding pirates). The issue is that MegaUpload does't have the ability to determine what a user legally owns.

With that said, even if MegaUpload complied with legally-sufficient take-down requests, I imagine those who were arrested could easily be nabbed for simply having pirated content on their personal/work boxes... that's probably the fallback plan.

Side note- Google hosts a lot of pirated content on Gmail. It would be interesting to know how much pirated music is sent through Gmail in a day.

I'm pretty sure that the Feds didn't get copies of emails from Eric Schmidt saying that they need to fix the audio/video synchronization on the Sopranos... or that they need to rate-limit DMCA takedowns so they don't interfere with growth... or that they should ensure that when they do takedowns that they don't take EVERY copy down.

It's a specious comparison, made possible only because almost nobody on HN bothered to read the indictment before they got mad.

Thanks for letting us know; you are correct- I didn't see the indictment. I read the article quickly and came here to see what people were saying. I saw a lot of debate about "% of piracy," so I commented.

Wow the executives were deep in blatant piracy. It's fair that the site was shut down. Amazing, not surprising though.

Thank you. It's nice that at least ONE person recognized that maybe their uninformed reaction to a short article might not be 100% correct, and was willing to go read the indictment and learn a bit more.

Have you looked at how all the popular open source media players handle bug reports? Pretty much all of them don't care whether the file in the report is pirated or not and a surprising amount of bugs seem to be found and fixed because they break pirated content...

Also, trying to take every pirated copy down has a huge false positive problem.

You are grossly misconstruing the nature of the emails whilst avoiding the other points entirely.

Read the indictment.