(I never said that Megaupload is innocent though, but I like well followed procedures, they are the guardians of our liberties)
This article is really about the merits of the case, which is separate from the question of following due process upon arrest and indictment.
But if the FBI loses this case and its image is tarnished then it could be a precedent and may change the way these copyright infringement cases are conducted. I am not american and I would hate to see the FBI take away my startup business on the ground that I am violating copyrights because of my users.
Now, since as you say, this was a large multi-national operation, I don't know if all those charged will be extradited to the USA, or if they'll be tried in other countries. I really have no idea about laws & procedures around the globe, but if they are extradited to the USA, I wouldn't count the MegaUpload folks out just yet. It's probably very dependent on how much of their assets are frozen, which will affect how much of their money they can spend on legal representation. (I say unfortunately, because it seems to me that in an ideal justice system, everyone should have the same level [high!] of representation, rather than some being able to "buy" better lawyers).
But outside of that, it's not up to the judge. It's a criminal case, and they will be tried by a jury. If they're convicted, the judge will determine their sentence. But it's not up to the judge to determine their guilt. (Unless the defendants forgo a jury trial and elect for a trial by judge, but I doubt they will.)
They took down individual links only, while still keeping the infringing files on the server, and all the other un-reported links to that exact file (they also hashed each upload, so to detect duplicates, and complete the upload instantly and have 1 data file... a fingerprint system they never used to prevent re-uploads of copyrighted material that was reported).
Then they conspired (shown in leaked emails) to only follow DMCA requests coming from large US entities (while ignoring requests coming from Mexico, for example).
Their entire business revolved around tricking people into signing up for paid accounts so they could download copyrighted material. And made 175 million from it.
Now we have a single file with the same hash, but two pointers, one legal and one illegal. If UberUpload deletes the file, it is deleting legal and illegal content. If it deletes the illegal pointer, the legal copy of the file still exists.
That's a good point. The legal principle that bits have colour[1] works -- or ought to work -- equally when it's against the MPAA as for them.
[1]: What Colour Are Your Bits? http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
Then you should use a service that:
1) Does not provide unauthenticated access or public links for anyone to use to your backed-up MP3s from Amazon.
2) Is not known as the internet’s hub of piracy.
3) Did not offer bounties for people to upload copyrighted material.
You would be committing copyright infringement at that point. The rest is irrelevant.
Also, those leaked emails, as you call them were actually emails that the feds obtained from MU's mail server, probably via warrant. Those emails were used as the foundation of the indictment that was later presented to a grand jury. So, there is a huge question as to what probable cause the feds had to search MU's mail server in the first place, given that MU was complying with the DMCA safe harbor provision. MU appeared to only honor DMCA requests that came from legitimate parties; the email snippit claiming that they ignored a request from Mexico does not state the name of the entity that made that request, probably because it was made by a guy named Jose from an aol.com account.
Anyway, this whole case is going to dissolve in front of the prosecutors' faces on Thursday when any trace of offending material is deleted do to discontinuation of service from Cogent & Carpathia. Dr. Evil appears to always get away with it.
From a Carpathia rep: “In reference to the letter filed by the U.S. Department of Justice with the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 27, 2012, Carpathia Hosting does not have, and has never had, access to the content on MegaUpload servers and has no mechanism for returning any content residing on such servers to MegaUpload’s customers. The reference to the Feb. 2, 2012 date in the Department of Justice letter for the deletion of content is not based on any information provided by Carpathia to the U.S. Government. We would recommend that anyone who believes that they have content on MegaUpload servers contact MegaUpload. Please do not contact Carpathia Hosting”
When there are 100 more links to it? Yes. It exists.
> So, there is a huge question as to what probable cause the feds had to search MU's mail server in the first place, given that MU was complying with the DMCA safe harbor provision.
The rest of your post is one assumption after the other, that goes against what is reasonable to assume based on everything we've witnessed in this case.
In the case of something that is always illegal (say child porn) there would be a duty to remove all instances of a file, but when it's a case by case basis of whether or not there is a copyright issue it does not make sense to take files down en masse. Remember that uploads to MU were private--you received a secret link.
Dropbox has a very clear concept of private files and public files. If a DMCA request was issued for a file you're storing in your public folder, I would certainly expect Dropbox to remove all instances of that file in all public folders on all accounts.
I disagree.
If you're hosting copyrighted material that I own, and I file a DMCA, I'd expect you to remove that material from the server / to stop hosting it.
You just don't get to keep the data file and hide it behind more links.
Color me ignorant, but this doesn't sit right with me. Does the DCMA have international scope? Does the FBI enforce Mexican law?
You're copyright and IP rights don't disappear the moment the data crosses into the USA.
And MU will have their day in a US court of law, based on a system that's the worst in the world, except for all the others.
Oh the humanity! How can these people be allowed to live. /s
The time for cyber villans is not now, when the streets are still full of their ancestors.
Now, seriously, comparing the amount of misery illegal drugs cause with the amount illegal file sharing does is, at best, ludicrous. It's like all the more serious problems are solved and now they have to turn their attention to the copyright infringers.
Even if, for some reason, this isn't getting Megaupload off the hook, it's worth remembering why exactly this isn't going to (gasp!) destroy that "cloud" thing everyone keeps writing about.
[1] http://www.vibe.com/content/worldstarhiphop-exposed-truth-be...
All of this is crazy, and the point in the article is very much valid in my opinion, on the other hand if the copyright holder allegedly affected were to sue Megaupload in a civil case in the country that Megaupload operates from then that would be perfectly fine in my opinion. I don't agree with the copyright laws that exist at the moment, but everyone should have the right to try to protect their rights in court, even if I don't personally agree with the law.
The reason I asked about what steps Megaupload made to comply with DMCA complaints, and what the law says about DMCA take downs, was out of curiosity about the legal landscape and the chances of Megaupload in this case, even though it shouldn't be a criminal case.
I am not sure if that is required by the DMCA. I know youtube has this "fingerprinting" system that stops copyrighted uploads, but is that the law?
Even other public links might be legitimate, and Megaupload would not have a way of determining that based merely on the presence of links.
Do I think they were aware that there were tons of illegal copies? Absolutely. But whether or not they could blanket delete content without in effect deleting content the people filing the DMCA takedown requests had no rights to request taken down is an entirely different matter.
They won and they are not required to operate a fingerprinting system.
But forget the download servers being hosted in Virginia - what is much much worse is that they hosted their email servers at the same colo. This entire case and almost all of the evidence is built up around the contents of that email server. The feds obtained a secret warrant to get the details and most of the facts in the indictment are based on what they found.
I wrote about this here:
http://nikcub.appspot.com/posts/how-megaupload-was-investiga...
I hope this case makes it to a trial because I would like to find out what probable cause was used to obtain the warrant to handover the email server.
I submitted it, but it looks like you already did so last week, and it didn't get much attention. I hope more people can see it from this thread.
I would also love to see some advances in client-side steganography that could be usable as easily as GPG. Probably the closest thing we have now is TrueCrypt hidden volumes but that doesn't really work for email.
http://www.hispalinux.es/sites/hispalinux/files/1-main.pdf
http://www.hispalinux.es/sites/hispalinux/files/order%20perf...
No sources for the rest, maybe someone knows something more.
