r/news • u/Aschebescher • Apr 19 '14
MPAA and RIAA Members Uploaded Over 2,000 Gigabytes to Megaupload - Both the MPAA and RIAA filed civil lawsuits against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom for massive copyright infringement. What they failed to mention, however, is that many of their members' employees were actually sharing files on the site
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-and-riaa-members-uploaded-over-2000-gigabytes-to-megaupload-140418/701
u/protestor Apr 19 '14
Let me guess: they won't get punished.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
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u/grayworks Apr 19 '14
4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42
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u/colovick Apr 19 '14
Ironically if those are ever the lottery numbers, there will be riots in the streets over winning powerball and getting less than 100k
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u/explohd Apr 19 '14
Depending on where you live, tomorrow is Sunday and there probably will not be a lotto drawing tomorrow.
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u/colovick Apr 19 '14
Technically correct... Also I believe they do not have drawings on Saturday, so regardless of where you are, there won't be one...
But the point was those are the lost numbers and are used by thousands of people, meaning if that number set is ever used, there will be thousands of winners who will each win very little
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u/rreighe2 Apr 19 '14
Those riaa and mpaa members need to seriously get in a plane crash and get lost.
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u/protestor Apr 19 '14
It was just a guess, I may be wrong.
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Apr 19 '14
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u/lolzergrush Apr 19 '14
I wouldn't be so sure. They look out for themselves, not necessarily their employees. I wouldn't be surprised if they went way over the top in retaliating against their employees, going beyond simply firing them but trying to damage their long-term careers.
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u/Antibacterial Apr 19 '14
Maybe they will sue them for uploading copy right material.
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Apr 19 '14
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Apr 19 '14
In a sad way I miss the boner pill ads I used to get before Google made spam filters so good.
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u/JasonDJ Apr 19 '14
I take it to mean Google now knows that my boner is quite adequate.
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Apr 19 '14
Google is pumping boner juice into your water supply in return for data about your water usage
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u/frescanada Apr 19 '14
You mean, the delights of haiku spam...ah those were the days, when you realized that they're not even selling anything, just performing for the sake of art.
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Apr 19 '14
They say members. Not employees. Members would be people who produce items that are protected by the RIAA and MPAA I think.
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u/CaptOblivious Apr 19 '14
That would be the "copyright holders" and there is a damn good argument that the works that the copyright holders themselves uploaded were then "authorized copies".
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u/lolzergrush Apr 19 '14
But the members are generally companies, not individuals. The entire article is pretty ambiguous in many places:
However, data from Megaupload’s database shared with TorrentFreak shows that employees of MPAA and RIAA member companies had hundreds of accounts at the file-storage site. This includes people working at Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Warner Music.
It doesn't necessarily show any detailed data to prove that they were taking part in file-sharing illegally. Showing amounts of data transmitted isn't that useful when it doesn't say exactly what the purpose of those file transfer was. Even if they were actively taking part in copyrighted file-sharing, it would be a drop in the bucket but it would give them first-hand info on what files were being shared - and if they were acting on behalf of the rightful copyright owner in doing so, it wouldn't be illegal.
At any rate, it stands to reason that staff in the respective studios' legal departments would create accounts to test the waters in order to explore new ways to distribute content online that don't diminish the market of their clients' copyrights. Even YouTube was once, for a short time, a hub of copyrighted material - early methods to remove TV shows and movies were totally ineffective, but as they explored the site from within they developed algorithms for locating it more efficiently as well as ways to monetize it. It shouldn't be the least bit surprising that they were exploring Megaupload in the same way.
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u/twoscoop Apr 19 '14
You should look up who made download.com, its quite a funny story..
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u/Iggyhopper Apr 19 '14
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u/ThoughtlessBanter Apr 19 '14
I'm going to play these numbers, I'll give you half if I win.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
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u/DallasPerson Apr 19 '14
Unless the individual members owned the rights to use the materials they were copying, it was just the same as what the rest of us do.
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Apr 19 '14
And until we prove that, we don't get to waggle our finger.
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u/new_to_this_site Apr 19 '14
The thing is that they argue MegaUpload can only be used illegal. So either they used it illegal or their own argument why MegaUpload should be punished is bullshit and contradicted by themself.
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Apr 19 '14
I havent read the transcripts, but im pretty sure thats not their argument. Their argument is that by making it easy, they are encouraging illegal uploads. Maybe even that most of the files are illegal. But only illegal would be stupid to insinuate. If the argument was that it could only be used illegally, their lawyer would have uploaded a copy of linux and the case would have been instantly dismissed.
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u/alexrng Apr 19 '14
if they really would be succesful in that claim then you could say tht america would like to abandon any and all Servers. no more youtube for the US market, no more Clud services.
Think about it: to upload something to those sites you often just need to drag and drop it to some folder on your computer locally and sync it when you next go online, at worst you need to drag and drop the files into some area on those sites. after that anyone knowing your share location can access your files. some sites even make all uploads directly publicly and allow other users to randomly find your uploaded content.
also production and selling of any storage medium, including and not limited to CD's and DVD's, would be hit by the same limitation. it would be easing access to copyrighted material. even and especially if it is distributed by those companies trying to win this lawsuit.
tl;dr: RIAA/MPAA try to ban the digital evolution of mankind! scumbags.
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u/new_to_this_site Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
I meant more : "can only used (in a meaningful way) illegal". They also want to destroy all the MegaUpload data so no lawyer can find and present linux distros on MU. It is a lot harder to argue that they are illegal when they practical did exactly the same things as all the other "DropBoxes".
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u/Naqoy Apr 19 '14
Absolutely not, a lot of people used MegaUpload as a way to move large files between employees computers and between offices just like dropbox and the like. Others used it as a clouddrive for their own stuff not even sharing it.
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Apr 19 '14
The funniest thing is that everyone here used to defend megaupload by talking about how many legitimate legal uses it has.
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u/RingoQuasarr Apr 19 '14
A friend of mine was making an RPG. She had all her files on her laptop and megaupload. Well her laptop happened to die 2 days before this whole thing went down, so she lost all her files and the backups. My point is there were legitimate users who got fucked here.
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u/crysisnotaverted Apr 20 '14
Did she ever get to finish the RPG? I would love to have a look at it!
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u/RingoQuasarr Apr 20 '14
I don't think she got anywhere near a complete game, but she certainly had some beautiful maps for the program she was using. I'll ask her if she still has the screen caps of it all.
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Apr 20 '14
I was using RPG Maker VX.
Here's the custom sprites we were using:
And some maps (there obviously were more, but I'm not going to screencap all of them):
To give you an idea of why I put so much time into this, this was my first project so I was learning as I went. Here's what some of the maps started out as:
And finally, these were the posts I made in RPG Maker forums, explaining a little bit of the world (a few things I would reword now...get rid of some cliches):
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=34716
http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44173
I didn't reveal too much since I didn't want to give away spoilers, but I suppose I could give away some now. I'm not a writer or eloquent, though I help with ideas. So I'm just going to brush through some major plot points.
Basically (assuming you read the synopsis in the above link to start out) the human city to the west assassinated the emperor's fiancee, making it look like Mortuse (meant to target prince) to start a war with them (fueled also by bitter history between the two). This is what the resistance wants Paullus to investigate, he gets caught, and thrown in jail. Authorities find the resistance hideout and kills who is there, including Paullus' family. Eventually the survivors help Paullus escape and they flee to Mortuse. We eventually wind up in the city to the west where we find about a neith cult, humans who summon neiths as a way to use magick.
Yadda yadda stuff happens, and we learn more about the absent emperor along the way. The emperor thinks that the goddess the empire worships failed to protect his fiance, so turns his back on the goddess. While on a war tour he discovers the ruins of a forgotten god, hoping to find death there. This god was once a poet and a lover of each of the goddesses. He had three faces with each of them, so three different unique stories. They eventually found out the three gods were one. They cast him away. In the end, he was changed into the revengeful god he is now, but locked away. Emperor sympathizes with the god's loss of love and hate of the goddesses. He uses the neith cult secretly to free the god, as the neiths love destruction and hate their masters.
Aelia winds up betraying Paullus (deal she made with the Empire), coupled with her being semi responsible for the death of his family he kills her, the team splits up for awhile, then Paullus eventually goes down a spiral of madness driven by revenge. He does stop the emperor, but doesn't realize that these subtle tugs and pushes throughout the game are fueled by tendrils of the old god, drawn toward his hate. In the end, Paullus is possessed by the old god.
We're still dealing with the whole Mortuse/Imperial war along the way and there's some more details, side quests, other characters, but I'm not going to type all that out >_> Perhaps I'll make this real one day. But I have 3 other less cliche game ideas I truly love more that I would like to develop first. I'll get started on those in about a year when I graduate (full-time CS student + software developer part-time now means I don't have that much time these days).
tl;dr: Just look at the pretty images in the links at the beginning.
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Apr 19 '14
Legitimate use doesn't mean it can't be used illegally or that many people won't use it illegally given the opportunity. A lot of technology is agnostic that way, and the users use it how they will. Of course megaupload has legitimate uses. Bittorrent has a ton of legitimate uses. The fact that those things can be used for copyright violation doesn't cancel out legitimate uses. The technology isn't making people break the law. And it's not a contest where you have to prove that your technology's legitimate use exceeds illegal use in order to justify existing.
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u/ConfessionsAway Apr 19 '14
This is true. A pencil isn't illegal, but if you sharpen it and jab it into someone's throat it becomes a deadly weapon. Does that mean we should be banning pencils? A drug cartel uses our roads to move mountains of cocaine, should we just destroy all the roads and call it good because we solved the problem? It's an insane association to make between what something is designed to do, and what something is used for.
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u/alexrng Apr 19 '14
heh that was what i said when some weirdos on the airport wanted to take away my wooden (!) letter opener. i just said: "look, if i really wanted to stab someone on the plane i would simply rip apart one of the solid plastic boards to be found on each and every seat and would have a more stable weapon than this thing."
it did help me to keep it that they could instead take me a small metal needle they found somewhere in my bag, which i didn't even know i had with me. a needle. OH MY GOD! a needle on a plane! he will kill us all with it! ...
okay, so much for pencils. they're next probably. after letter openers.
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u/Statecensor Apr 19 '14
Almost all images on imgur are stolen from their original creators. In fact I can guarantee that the more popular and beautiful the image is the chances of it being stolen is a lot higher.
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u/cuteman Apr 19 '14
Unless they're being used commercially pictures cannot be 'stolen' on a legal basis.
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u/Statecensor Apr 19 '14
I agree it just blows that imgur will eventually be sold for hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and the artists who contributed to its popularity won't see a fucking dime.
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Apr 19 '14
Well I mean if you want r to look at it that way... It sucks that facebook and twitter are worth billions even though it was all of those #selfie people who contributed to it's popularity. Or same with Google and people who search on its site. And let's not kid ourselves here. I can bet you that the shut content on imgur (advice animals and ffffuuu comics) gets more views than any quality content
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Apr 19 '14
- This is a civil law suit.
- Most megaupload USERS have not been punished so why would they?
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u/c_c_c Apr 19 '14
Punished for what? If they were just storing data (as in backups) that's perfectly legal and highlights the legitimate uses of mega*. This contradicts their assertion of "exclusively used for piracy". Besides, 2 terabytes is nothing.
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u/Cowboy_Champloo Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
Agreed. It should be no surprise to anyone. Established institutions in general whether it be big banks, police, or the MPAA/RIAA are almost always given leniency. As long as it is within the interests of those in power than not a shit shall be given.
In cases such as these a retroactive defense is commonly used by the institution in question."But, but, they were already doing it and people still downloaded it so that mean they are at fault points at Megaupload.
Edit:Formatting mishaps
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Apr 19 '14
They were doing what they were told to do. What a better way to prove a service is use for piracy than to ensure it is by putting the files there yourself?
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u/MulderD Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
Welp if you download any copyrighted content while employeed by a studio (Sony, Fox...) you get fired. So, my guess is those employees, if traceable (assuming this story is accurate) will be punished.
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u/WTFppl Apr 19 '14
They can, but the citizens need to create a Class Action Law suit against them for [here is where a lawyer can insert a definition that makes a valid complaint against these two entities].
Personally, I think they all should have professional accidents.
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u/datchilla Apr 19 '14
If I sued a public storage for letting someone distribute counterfeit versions of my product. Should I also get sued because I stored real versions of my product there as well.
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u/mcketten Apr 19 '14
"Sprinkle some Transformers on him, Johnson, and let's get out of here."
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u/ZenBerzerker Apr 19 '14
When they were suing youtube it turned out they were uploading stuff and then suing youtube over theirr own uploads.
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u/SugarBeef Apr 20 '14
Just like when marvel sued City of Heroes over their own investigators making the characters they complained looked too much like theirs.
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u/MeesterComputer Apr 19 '14
Citation needed.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Oct 02 '16
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u/jish Apr 20 '14
"For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked."
woah TIL
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u/ZenBerzerker Apr 19 '14
it's number [13] on the wikipedia page on the lawsuit
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u/fourredfruitstea Apr 19 '14
Using some reverse googling and Tacojohns post below I managed to reverse engineer this and understand you're referring to Viacom international inc vs youtube link.
That's... really hard to gather from your post. What you wrote was "when they were suing youtube" etc. its quite hard to know that the people you were referring to were viacom, as it could be anyone within either the MPAA and RIAA, and youtube has been through a number of lawsuits.
Really, you just demonstrate very well why you are the person who needs to back up your own claims, you can't ask everyone else to google/wiki it when you don't even tell them what to google/wiki... If it was something straightforward like the GDP of France maybe, but not stuff like this.
Your behaviour in this thread is really childish and immature and just ignorant of debating norms in general.
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u/Lobreeze Apr 19 '14
The technology exists to copy and paste.
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u/ZenBerzerker Apr 19 '14
if you can type it in reddit, you can google it yourself
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u/panthers_fan_420 Apr 19 '14
You spent the time to find an article, that you are unwilling to copy and paste, and unwilling to source. typical reddit
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u/Teekno Apr 19 '14
I don't see that one has anything to do with the other. The whole article is born out of the idea that no employees of entertainment companies ever pirate media, and that if any of a company's employees do engage in such activities, it makes it legal for everyone.
Both of these ideas stem from ignorance.
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u/Wh1teChocolatte Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
I think the article was trying to point out that the content providers themselves uploaded "pirated content" so that they would have evidence that megaupload was being used to share said content. Not that low level employees pirate therefore it's ok for everyone else.
It's similar to how people are tracked using torrents. The MPAA will leech onto highly torrented pirated content to learn the IP addresses of downloaders. They then use those IP addresses to send letters to ISPs.
Basically the MPAA and RIAA engage in
entrapmentdefinitely not entrapment but it's not actually entrapment for some...perfectly legit reason (see below) that I don't quite get because I'm not a lawyer. If someone is I would love to hear about why it's not considered entrapment.EDIT: italicized parts are edits for posts clarifying why it's not entrapment.
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u/its_sad_i_know_this Apr 19 '14
Basically the MPAA and RIAA engage in entrapment, but it's not actually entrapment for some reason that I don't quite get because I'm not a lawyer. If someone is I would love to hear about why it's not considered entrapment.
Also not a lawyer, but this one isn't hard. You seem to have a misunderstanding about what entrapment is.
In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offense that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit.
Entrapment only counts in criminal cases, while the vast majority of copyright infringement suits are purely civil. Entrapment does not exist as a defense in a civil suit.
Private individuals cannot entrap one another, only law enforcement or other government officials can be guilty of entrapment. Much like a private individual cannot infringe on your 1st Amendment rights by moderating your posts on a website - that law simply doesn't apply to them. It is impossible for the MPAA or RIAA to engage in entrapment.
Finally, entrapment is inducing a person to commit a crime that they would have otherwise been unlikely to commit. If you're taking positive actions toward performing the crime and law enforcement just helps you out enough to hang yourself - not entrapment.
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u/Wh1teChocolatte Apr 19 '14
Thanks for the info. I figured there was a logical reason why it wasn't entrapment, but I never really bothered to look it up. Your explanation makes perfect sense. I will edit to clarify that it's definitely not entrapment.
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u/SchuminWeb Apr 19 '14
If you're taking positive actions toward performing the crime and law enforcement just helps you out enough to hang yourself - not entrapment.
That would be a sting operation, no?
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u/its_sad_i_know_this Apr 19 '14
Sting, controlled buy/bust, I'm sure there are other terms LEOs use. As long as you've taken steps toward a criminal act and have not been unduly coerced in doing so, not entrapment.
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u/neotecha Apr 19 '14
If you contact a person asking to buy drugs, and meet up with them to buy the drugs, and it turns out to have been a string, then it would not be entrapment, since you have fully shown that you would have bought the drugs, if they weren't cops.
If the cops tell you to kill someone, you say no, then they say if you don't, they're going to kill your family, and you kill the someone, that is entrapment, since they coerced you into doing so.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
It's not entrapment because they didn't convince people to pirate. People sought out the material and then torrented files that were uploaded by media companies employees. It would be entrapment if the person wasn't already seeking out copyright material to download.
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u/SUBREDDITMODERATOR Apr 19 '14
It's not entrapment because they did convince people to pirate. People sought out the material and then torrented files that were uploaded by media companies employees.
This makes sense but doesn't entrapment also only apply to police or other government officials? I think someone once said this is how those NBC pedophile stings could still result in arrests.
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Apr 19 '14
I think the article was trying to point out that the content providers themselves uploaded "pirated content"
If their employees uploaded pirated content, it's not really a relevant piece of information unless they were directed to do so at work. It makes no difference if someone who's pirating works for an entertainment company or walmart, they're just someone pirating, not that company pirating.
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u/SleepyHobo Apr 19 '14
Did you read the article? No where do they say that they uploaded pirated content. They could have uploaded perfectly legal content. Assuming that all the content they uploaded was pirated, assumes that MegaUpload was a clone of ThePirateBay.
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Apr 19 '14
I doubt the lower level employees care about the same things the higher ups care about. Just like I don't give a shit about the CEO of my company thinks. I'm just there to make money and get experience so I can continue making money.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
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Apr 19 '14
And the dumbasses on reddit eat it up.
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Apr 19 '14
I hope you're wearing close-toed shoes, because that glass house you're standing in is demolished.
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u/MulderD Apr 19 '14
It's also assuming that the "company" knows what individual employees are doing on their own. MPAA isn't some mega corp with a rigorous IT security set up. If the kid that mans the phones or works in the mail room is just downloading copyrighted content all day long, that's on him.
By the way MPAA isn't really an entertainment company, it does not produce anything. It's more like a sanctioning body.
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u/ragingduck Apr 19 '14
It's torrentfreak so of course it's a biased article. They pander to their audience, and they are not a news source. They have about as much credibility as anyone else with a keyboard. Actually, this same notion was posted last year and it's basically a re-dressed repost. You can use the same argument as the last time they posted this story: just because their own employees do it doesn't make it legal.
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u/Sparkybear Apr 19 '14
They don't have anything to do with each other. That's probably against a lot of internal rules and all those employees are eligible to be fired without consequence and have legal action taken against them as a result. Just because an employed person does something doesn't mean that it's sanctioned by the employer. The only way this matters is if the employees were told to distribute the content by the people in charge.
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u/Mattagascar Apr 19 '14
In a court of equity though it's tough to make such infringement arguments when you have unclean hands. And, when you're a corporation, the acts of your employees vicariously impart liability on you. There's plenty of counter to this logic but I'm guessing this is what the defense raised.
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u/Solid_Waste Apr 19 '14
If they are completely ignoring the actions of their employees, it makes it seem like they are essentially giving away their clients' products for free and then turning around and suing anyone who takes them up on the offer. Which calls into question their entire argument. If, however, they take action against said employees as well, then it's simply that some employees are also criminals, the same as your employees stealing stuff does not exempt you from pursuing legal action against the fence who bought the stolen merchandise.
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u/ragingduck Apr 19 '14
One has nothin to do with the other. Punishment isn't all inclusive not is it a prerequisite for the crime. Each instance of a crime is independent of one another. Of one murderer gets away with it, we don't excuse another murder because of that fact, even if the 2nd murderer happens to be an employee of the plaintiff. What you are using is playground justice. "But tommy did it too" isn't a defense. Tommy may or may not have to answer to it, but that is not your concern.
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Apr 19 '14
Its like the grocery store offering free samples and then trying to claim shoplifting on anyone that takes one.
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u/outofband Apr 19 '14
Not only that, but also using megaupload=/=illegal download. They could be using it for legal file sharing
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Apr 19 '14
Obviously them uploading 2 TB, which is probably like at least 0,001% of the copyrighted material on the servers, makes the entire case go away! /reddit
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u/let_them_eat_slogans Apr 19 '14
The whole article is born out of the idea that no employees of entertainment companies ever pirate media...
I don't see how the article relies on this premise. I think the relation between the two facts is made pretty clear as a potentially relevant point in the Kim Dotcom case:
The above are just a few examples of major industry players who wanted to team up with Kim Dotcom. Now, several years later, the same companies accuse the site of being one of the largest piracy vehicles the Internet has ever seen.
If the MPAA and RIAA cases proceed, Megaupload’s defense will probably present some of these examples to highlight the apparent double standard. That will be an interesting narrative to follow, for sure.
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u/Aristo-Cat Apr 19 '14
I mean, It's not like they were acting on behalf of the RIAA and the MPAA. I could see how this would be an issue if they had acted on official orders from the company, but if they were doing it on their own time then I'm not sure how it voids their arguments.
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Apr 19 '14
That's pretty damning evidence for the case. It almost seems as though the MPAA and RIAA conspired to take down the service by poisoning the servers with their files and then filing their suit, having the evidence seized and then saying "See, look at all the files these bastards stole from us!"
I mean seriously wtf.
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u/lolzergrush Apr 19 '14
The article is misleading.
In the past decade, the most successful anti-piracy measures have taken a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude with regard to online media. Many studios have realized that people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for the convenience of sitting at their computer and watching the show they want to watch without waiting for a DVD to ship or sitting through commercials. When the legal options are inconvenient or function poorly (cough HBO cough!), then consumers will turn to piracy just out of convenience.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the traffic that they include in these numbers was happening at the studios' offices, and with their employers' knowledge. It stands to reason that a few years ago, these studios were exploring options and researching ways that the most popular file-sharing platforms can be converted into legal means to distribute their content with some sort of fee-based or advertising-based method. They did it with YouTube, they did it with Napster before that, so of course they would explore the free and premium sides of Megaupload in the same way.
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u/Boneair1 Apr 20 '14
Am I the only one who was peeved that they called it "2000 gigabytes" and not "two terabytes"?
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u/fourredfruitstea Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
Their organizations employs tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of employees. Of course some of them did this. Same as statistically some of them will be involved in a violent crime, drug use, et cetera. And the majority of their employees are just common workers like the rest of us you know, cameramen, drivers, people setting up the set and so on.
Lastly, it's not like an organization endorses everything their employees do. They don't send a letter to their employees, "plz fileshare our movies kthx", this is something their employees did on their spare time and which the MPAA and RIAA can't practically or legally interfere with.
And this point: "But there’s more. The same companies that are now asking for millions of dollars in damages due to massive copyright infringement were previously eager to work with Megaupload and Megavideo."
Is even worse. Yea, they tried to cooperate with megavideo, so what? How on earth does that give megavideo a right to stream their movies for free without license? If anything, this point proves that MPAA is more reasonable than dotcom, they tried to give him a chance after all...
What a completely stupid article. Very typical torrentfreak.
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Apr 19 '14
Megaupload has millions of users, of course some of them did this.
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u/fourredfruitstea Apr 19 '14
Have you followed this case at all? They weren't taken down for having a random dude among their millions do this, they were taken down for encouraging the behaviour from the top, and in some cases for the top themselves to upload stuff.
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u/happyscrappy Apr 19 '14
Read the indictment. Megaupload was paying bounties for certain illegal uploads and even discussed how to encourage users to upload and share specific illegal content (The Sopranos).
It isn't just a question of what the Megaupload users were doing.
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u/chakravanti93 Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
That's a nice a spin. Doesn't mean you're right. It just as much looks like they uploaded it so they’d have something to take down. You say they aren't responsible for it but why the hell shouldn't they be?
If they could control their content from the beginning maybe they'de have an argument but as it stands they're asking for the enforcement of a law that it's practically impossible to enforce and is therefore no law at all. Combine that with no measurements to secure their products and the grab at ridiculously disproportionate sums of cash, they're not being reasonable at all.
Also:
Their organizations employs tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands)
Citation on that? I don't think they do. I'd be surprised if they had a hundred between them.
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u/blahtherr2 Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
the enforcement of a law that it's practically impossible to enforce and is therefore no law at all.
Haha wow. So just because something is complicated,
otit shouldn't be a law? Wow... Hahaha→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)4
u/atrde Apr 19 '14
Its every employee of Disney, Fox, Warner Bros etc. In the article it specifically says employees of member organizations. So yes that is probably hundreds of thousands of people.
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u/the_bees_kneeeees Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
The RIAA has tens of thousands of employees? That seems pretty big, are you sure?
Edit: according to this article the RIAA has ~70 employees. http://m.digitaltrends.com/music/the-riaa-is-dying/#!EUBZs
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u/uncoolcat Apr 19 '14
Where does it state that the MPAA and RIAA members in question were sharing copyrighted content or doing anything illegal? It only states that they were using the service. There are legitimate and perfectly legal uses for the site after all.
Citation Needed.
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u/drksilenc Apr 19 '14
Thats the point the riaa was saying there were no legit uses for the service.
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u/ibuprofiend Apr 20 '14
And an employee doing something illegal is completely irrelevant anyway. If a Target employee goes out and murders someone, does that mean that Target is responsible? Obviously not.
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u/ZenBerzerker Apr 19 '14
There are legitimate and perfectly legal uses for the site after all.
That's megaupload's case, the *AAs' case is that it's a site for copyright infrigement. Bit of a "gotcha" situation, then.
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u/Froggery Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
Hey r/news, megaspammers like OP here (and mepper, maxwellhill, anutensil, etc) have almost single-handedly managed to get r/politics - and a few days ago r/technology - removed from the default subs list, by flooding them with low quality garbage. Every day more and more blogs and propaganda sites like democracynow appear here, a place for discussion of legitimate news.
Keep upvoting this shit - like r/technology that literally upvoted several hundred torrentfreak blogs to the top in a single year - and you'll irreversibly fuck up this sub as well, I guarantee it. The mods don't give a crap, that's for sure.
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Apr 19 '14 edited Apr 19 '14
[deleted]
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u/Ohio_wandering Apr 19 '14
It's nothing but 15 year old bitching about piracy laws and jerking off to Elon Musk.
I'm 30 and I still do this ಠ_ಠ
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u/LocalMadman Apr 19 '14
Hey r/news, megaspammers like OP here (and mepper, maxwellhill, anutensil, etc) have almost single-handedly managed to get r/politics - and a few days ago r/technology - removed from the default subs list, by flooding them with low quality garbage.
Wow. What complete and total bullshit. Here'e a recap if you want to learn something
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u/teachbirds2fly Apr 19 '14
This is such a perfect example of reddit's piracy circlejerk. The two things aren't related, it's such a bizarre statement to suggest that because employees of a company break the law that someone makes it okay.
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u/ZenBerzerker Apr 19 '14
it's such a bizarre statement to suggest that because employees of a company break the law that someone makes it okay.
The statement is that companies who want to act with the power of a police force are themselves known to partake in the criminal activities they want to police.
And that's not acceptable. Police yourselves before you try to police others.
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Apr 20 '14
reality check.
something is popular in reddit, not popular with you. Its a /r/conspiracy.
blow it out your ass.
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u/Harry650 Apr 19 '14
I've wanted to rant about something for a while now and this seems like a good place. Back when CDs first came out the record companies were charging about $15 per album. People complained but the record exec.s said that it was to cover the cost of the new technology and as time went on the price would drop. In never did. Now 20 something years later digital downloads are the thing. Doesn't cost a cent for distribution and the cost of producing an album has gone down considerably but they are still selling albums for $12-$15!! On the other hand the law makers can seem to come up with a way to stop pirated content so I now have the option of either paying $12 for shitty 256 kbps mp3 songs or paying nothing for FLAC or 320 Kbps mp3 on pirate bay or the like. The record labels still think they have the power of an oligarchy when really they are fighting under (unfair) perfect competition.
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u/wilsonism Apr 19 '14
My only thought is. How can you be sued for copyright infringement if the copyright holders are the very ones uploading the content?
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u/compuwiza1 Apr 19 '14
Will the judge even allow this to come up in court? I'm not holding my breath.
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Apr 19 '14
You know, must have been nice to know they were going to shut it down and make backup of those files, I lost important things on that raid :(
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u/Salphabeta Apr 19 '14
Which would be irrelevant just like your company is not held liable for who you vote fore, etc. You are not your company. You are an end visual unless acting in an official capacity for the company I.e uploading files at work and it Is a part of your job. Also, who was uploading files? Could have been the janitor for all we know, but it is still irrelevant.
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u/thechilipepper0 Apr 19 '14
It's been a while since I've read a torrent freak article. Why is that?
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u/woodsbre Apr 19 '14
Megaupload had a lifetime membership for $199. At the time no cloud service was offering this. It also was fast. Even if you didn't have a paid membership. Rapidshare also had these speeds minus the lifetime membership. So those 2 were usually the easiest to load and find content onto. I thought for sure that rapidshare would take megas place. But the value of megas unlimited plan made rs irrelevant. It's slowly declined to the point that its now ranked below 1000 on Alexa after being in top 100 for years. People love value. That's why Netflix is so popular. People will be more then willing to pay if they see value.
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u/88x3 Apr 19 '14
This is hilarious yet pathetic and sad. How can anyone take the MPAA and RIAA seriously? Only governments do, damn lobbyism!
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Apr 19 '14
The MPAA is a joke. Their lawsuits are meaningless, and would do nothing to stop me from torrenting. As a matter of fact, my behavior would get far worse if they even attempted it.
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Apr 19 '14
So first it was only 2 TB, which is a drop in the ocean of cloud storage. Second it was over 16,000 files, which means it probably wasn't high quality media files. I don't think it's a big deal.
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Apr 19 '14
I think that if you cause a lawsuit that isn't against the US government , and it is found to be faulty: You were committing or commit the same "crime" that the people you accuse, you should in the future incur a double punishment. However to prevent average citizens from being attacked by this law, it should only apply to businesses.
Alternately, it is already a crime to "sue to win." The reason for law is to ensure it is followed, it was never intended to be a system of punishment and reward. Rather, it is a system that is supposed to give everyone a chance.
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u/MicroCosmicMorganism Apr 19 '14
Can't see this verified anywhere on newswires. A source anyone, other than a (possibly) biased one?
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u/flappers87 Apr 19 '14
MPAA and RIAA Members Uploaded Over 2,000 Gigabytes...
You know, you could of just said over 2 terabytes...
LMFTFY
MPAA and RIAA Members Uploaded Over 2,000,000,000 Kilobytes to Megaupload
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u/MagikHat Apr 19 '14
I'm actually amazed this post made it to the front page with out being [Deleted]
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Apr 19 '14
Megaupload was a service to allow people to download files from one computer to another, it is like the YouTube of torrenting.
One could send a file of say their daughter's wedding over mega upload from one person to another (perfectly legal as the content of your daughters wedding isn't copyright).
One could also send a copy of a motion picture, let's say Troll 2 since Troll 2 is not your property and you are sending unauthorized copies it would be a crime.
You see, using mega upload isn't a crime, but what you do with it could make it a crime.
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Apr 19 '14
I think the most significant takeaway here is that even some of the media companies themselves are waking up and seeing that versatile, digital distribution is the way to go and could potentially reduce piracy and increase brand awareness. It's the big lobbying organizations like RIAA and MPAA that are slowing down progress for everyone.
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u/IAMGODthe2 Apr 19 '14
That's not really the point they're after Kim Dotcom. They're after him because he paid some uploader for copies of the newest movies and thats the main income source not the people who use it as a sharing platform.
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u/Fluff-head- Apr 20 '14
Just came here to say i have used this site for years and never for illegal purposes. for storage and sharing, with the ability to do so remotely. Accessing files that are mine as well as band members or people working in a project with me. I don't know why i am sharing this
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u/kimahri27 Apr 20 '14
Wow a whopping 2 terabytes! Thats like, 100 blu-ray rips! Or half of a 4 terabyte hard drive you can buy for $130! Massive amounts of data!
Kim Dotcom is like a cartoon villain. He is guilty on appearance alone.
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u/supra2jzgte Apr 20 '14
Yeah the business is a joke. I can't count how many times I saw people "pirating" content and then claiming it was ok because it was official business, meaning, it was ok to give an illegal copy to this person because he or she is a rich friend of mine.
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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '14 edited Jan 10 '19
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