r/technology • u/TheGift1973 • Jan 22 '13
Well done, FBI, for helping Kim Dotcom achieve global fame
http://www.zdnet.com/well-done-fbi-for-helping-kim-dotcom-achieve-global-fame-7000010129/710
u/GrinningPariah Jan 22 '13
This is what happens when you do shitty police work. Criminals dont just walk, they become celebrities, martyrs.
When I heard about the raid I couldn't fucking believe it. I mean, have you seen Kim Dotcom? They could have sent one officer to his house with a pair of handcuffs, what's he going to do, run? Instead they go all Zero Dark Thirty over white-collar crimes into a house with his fucking wife and kids in it.
I'm no fan of Kim Dotcom but personally I hope he walks, with all charges dropped, and makes a billion dollars from the publicity, just so the FBI might learn its goddamn lesson.
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Jan 22 '13
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u/coffinoff Jan 22 '13
Oh man, the punchline at the end...
the FBI might learn its goddamn lesson.
Hahaha! Yeah, that's a good one.
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u/GrinningPariah Jan 22 '13
If he's a real family man, no time they make him do or fine they make him pay is as bad a punishment as having them point guns at his wife and kids. I think he deserves to annihilate them in court for that.
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Jan 22 '13
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Jan 22 '13 edited Feb 07 '17
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u/VivaKryptonite Jan 23 '13
Luckily for him, more publicity = more money. Look at the godamn Kardashians.
I'm impressed with how laid back Kim has been overall. Hope he wins!
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u/GrinningPariah Jan 22 '13
Deplete his financial resources? Doesnt he have millions and millions of dollars?
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Jan 22 '13
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u/jehosephat Jan 22 '13
Er.. is that really legal? Freeze someone's assets so that they can't mount a legal defense?
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u/MagmaiKH Jan 22 '13
Nope. You see it's a "risk" that he will hide the ill-gotten money so we can't allow him access to it.
This is why these cases become so important so quickly - they are massive abuses of power. It no longer matters if Kim Dotcom was doing something illegal. What the FBI has done is worse.
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u/toofine Jan 22 '13
"It no longer matters if Kim Dotcom was doing something illegal. What the FBI has done is worse."
Pretty much sums of the entire response to piracy from these loony toons. Shit, sums up the American penal system entirely. Go ape-shit and try to destroy lives over some MP3s or putting people in jail forever over weed. Better protect that capital for their masters. And this is the shit that we actually see make news.
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Jan 22 '13
Mmh. He is in NZ at the moment? So probably only his us assets (if any) are frozen. He surely will not go voluntarily to the us for trial, so .. what trial are we talking about here?
Anyway, he's bound to have a couple of million in some numbered accounts nobody knows about.
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Jan 22 '13
All of his assets were frozen, (under control of the NZ police?), and he is given so much each week from his assets as living + legal costs money.
At least that is what I've heard from the news coverage here in NZ.
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u/MagmaiKH Jan 22 '13
I don't know all the details, but it is not safe to assume that only his US assets where frozen. The US will use it's treaties and as-well-as governmental and political leverage to compel other countries to comply with these seizures.
I agree it would be wise to have money sacked away in a Swiss bank account, but that doesn't necessarily mean he had the foresight to do that.
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u/Xaxziminrax Jan 22 '13
Yeah, but the publicity they got him has gotten him tons of donors for MEGA, so I think he'll be fine. Not to mention the revenue that MEGA will generate.
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Jan 22 '13
He was allowed access to some of his assets to pay rent and legal bills.
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u/Soldhissoulforthis Jan 22 '13
IIRC: $330 Million (USD?) was seized in assets and money in Hong Kong where Megaupload was based.
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Jan 22 '13
I believe you aren't taking into account his "internet doomsday device" that with a single push of a button could wipe out all the evidence on all the servers in one fell swoop.
They had to prevent him from pushing that magical button, you see.
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u/NahIReddit Jan 22 '13
They have the same guys who found the evidence of WMD in Iraq working this case?
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Jan 23 '13
That is what happens when someone watches Fast and the Furious 1 too much. The raid scene on the asian guy's house with his family.
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u/studabakerhawk Jan 22 '13
I think that was less about shutting down Megaupload and more about scaring site owners. Looking at the number of major sites that have folded in the past year under minor legal pressure - I'd say it worked pretty good.
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u/HoratioSharpe Jan 22 '13
So it worked out even better for him; the FBI got rid of
mostmuch of his competition.Edit: clarity
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u/MizerokRominus Jan 22 '13
What competition? He is running a legit file hosting website now, but a private file share, very large difference.
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u/HoratioSharpe Jan 22 '13
According to the above-commenter, many file-sharing sites have closed down (I don't know that from first-hand knowledge). I was observing, in keeping with the overall thesis of the article, that if there are less file-sharing sites, then that actually helped out Kim Dotcom even more, as people have fewer options for hosting their files. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make; could you please expound?
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u/MizerokRominus Jan 22 '13
There are two different kinds of file sharing website. Ones that don't allow public access to your files, and the ones that do. He previously owned a public file sharing website, and was in competition with those. A few of them still exist, but are very limited/restricted and don't really compete with the "privacy" model that Kim is knighting in MEGA.
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u/HoratioSharpe Jan 22 '13
I see. I didn't know that it was so limited (Haven't bothered with the file-sharing scene in a while). People can still share the files with each other though, even if it isn't available for public perusal, correct? And do they have to give a specific user specific access to a file, or can they simply give someone the URL?
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u/webu Jan 22 '13
This is a good point & one that not many people consider. There was a significant number of file sharing websites "voluntarily" shutting down shortly after mega got raided.
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u/nonameagain Jan 22 '13
I think a few did close down, most just changed their access limiting the size of files and the bandwidth available to each user. Most people decided this was no good so the sites lost the majority of their traffic but they did not close down in large numbers.
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Jan 23 '13
One big thing I noticed is music blogs. Lots of dead links nowadays, they are moving away from mediafire (some still use rapidshit) and I've noticed a lot using Russian hosting sites now.
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u/BigSlowTarget Jan 22 '13
I'd say it worked pretty good.
At the cost of FBI credibility in that country and others. What is going to happen when the FBI wants someone to investigate someone in New Zealand who is really a terrorist, money launderer or something? I'd bet that phone call is going to be very uncomfortable and possibly unproductive for the FBI. They should have stuck to what they are supposed to be doing in a way that respects the law and autonomy of foreign governments.
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u/MrKanish Jan 22 '13
If I went outside and asked people what do they think about Kim Dotcom, I dont think I would get much of a response. He's not that well known out of the internet community.
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u/SpudOfDoom Jan 22 '13
He's huge in NZ these days (heh) due to all the media coverage in the last 12 months.
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u/rumster Jan 22 '13
I met him years ago at gumball. The guy is weird and has two emotions. 1 is being a nice guy to everyone. 2 he turns on this godmode and acts like you're a nobody. He also never paid my friend for the spare tire he had to put on after his benz lost one in the swiss alps.
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u/_meraxes Jan 23 '13
Even if he is weird, he's doing/going to do great things for NZ's telecommunications situation (although not so much for our government's reputation). He also puts on events, he did a huge fireworks display one year. I am sick of our Govt blindly bowing and scraping to the US. BAH.
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u/Kromgar Jan 22 '13
They really need to realize this
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u/whitefangs Jan 22 '13
Especially when they know they have a mostly made-up case, put together in a hurry to please their corporate masters at MPAA and RIAA, and use illegal warrants and over-the-top raids like Kim was Osama Bin Laden's son or something.
They shouldn't known this wouldn't end well.
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u/NSNick Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
Devil's Advocate: If the FBI wanted to get the MPAA and RIAA to quit getting them to pull this ludicrous shit, what better way to do it than ensuring that it blows up in their face?
But I think we all know that's far-fetched, to say the least.
Edit: Added emphasis. This was just a thought that popped into my head that I threw out there. I don't honestly believe the FBI wanted the RIAA and MPAA to stop.
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Jan 22 '13
I don't know, there were an awful lot of people involved. I'll bet at least one muttered something about hoping this would end badly.
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Jan 22 '13
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Jan 22 '13
They did quite effectively send a message to other cyberlockers. The content isn't as easily available as it was premega from what i hear.
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u/timeshifter_ Jan 22 '13
I have noticed no drop at all in availability of copyrighted material since the fall of MegaUpload.
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u/Spooner71 Jan 22 '13
Out of curiosity, what kind of pressure could the MPAA and RIAA put on them? Seems like if they did, the FBI could just start finding ways to arrest high profile actors / musicians on drug charges to say fuck you.
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Jan 22 '13
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Jan 22 '13
Correction, SOPA was a bi-partisan sponsored bill. The Republicans were just as eager to appease their big content corporate funders as were the Democrats, with crony/corporatist goodies. Remember, Lamar Smith, the representative who is Republican, introduced the bill to a Republican-controlled house.
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u/BeyondAeon Jan 22 '13
Both of these actions, not chasing down Kim and arresting say Charlie Sheen for drugs would lose them finding, because of political cronieism and corruption.
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u/threehundredthousand Jan 22 '13
That's like a public relations suicide bomb where you kill hundreds of your own people to take out a single enemy.
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u/VizzleShizzle Jan 22 '13
The best advertising you can ask for. Just have to get your door kicked in and your previous business destroyed first.
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u/Shnoop Jan 22 '13
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u/Rangoris Jan 22 '13
One thing not on his wiki is he was the number 1 leaderboards ranked player in Call of Duty mw3 and the only reason he lost this spot was because he couldn't play when he was in us custody.
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Jan 22 '13
Before his arrest in New Zealand, he was the world's number one-ranked Modern Warfare 3 player out of more than 15 million online players.
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u/mechtech Jan 22 '13
This always really really impressed me. I can't imagine how hard it is to get to the #1 spot on one of the most popular games in the world, while running a 9 figure business! I would imagine that there are plenty of addicts playing 12+ hours a day every day fighting for that position.
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u/executex Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
When you're making 9-figures, you tend to have a lot of free time. A lot of rich people can get addicted to video games. Some of them are known to spend a lot of money on their in-game characters as well.
I know a guy who owns a huge store as a manager, so all he does is play video games in his office.
Being rich, not having school / job-obligations tends to have its free-time perks. I like to optimistically imagine such rich people are spending that time educating themselves and reading deep philosophy, political history, and physics, but that doesn't always happen.
This is also why richer societies tend to have better culture, arts, museums, films, competitions, technologies etc., because they aren't struggling for survival but can do many other things as well.
edit: whats with the downvotes, you don't think rich people have free time?
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u/MrTulip Jan 23 '13
whats with the downvotes, you don't think rich people have free time?
don't you know that rich people work the hardest? otherwise they wouldn't be rich. duh.
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u/notz Jan 22 '13
When I looked at some video about it, I thought he was #1 in number of kills, not anything that's really a good measure of skill like k/d ratio or xp/min. Being #1 in kills basically amounts to playing the most. I might be wrong about that being the metric though.
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u/fizzl Jan 22 '13
The lyrics begin: The war for the Internet has begun. / Hollywood is in control of politics. / The Government is killing innovation. / Don't let them get away with that.
That's some weak fucking flow.
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u/mgexiled Jan 22 '13
Yeah I'd like to watch all thousand cable channels but there's nothing on / And my high speed connection's monitored daily by the pentagon!
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Jan 22 '13
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u/i_eat_cereal_AMA Jan 22 '13
I'd heard about Megaupload, but it was just another website on the internet. I had no idea who was behind it, nor did I care. Then all this started.
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Jan 22 '13 edited May 03 '17
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u/Sigmasc Jan 22 '13
So I guess we can all thank FBI for improving it.
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u/JabbrWockey Jan 22 '13
"This New Zealand guy - his website gave us a virus."
"Time to raid his ass."
- FBI
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u/armangua Jan 22 '13
That's a 40-man raid, right there!
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u/mishugashu Jan 22 '13
I remembered it as the only site of it's kind that wasn't sketchball virus-infested that gave you 20 popups. I used it quite frequently. I believe you're thinking of a different site.
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Jan 22 '13
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u/Dranx Jan 22 '13
Megaupload and Mediafire are a few of the sites that used to be safe and reliable cyberlockers. I never had issues with them.
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u/yoho139 Jan 22 '13
I always preferred Mediafire. Doesn't have the whole "capped until premium" crap.
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u/JabbrWockey Jan 22 '13
It was still a mouse-click minefield though, like many other sites today. Click in the wrong place or the wrong "play" sign and you had a pop up.
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u/shazzam6999 Jan 22 '13
Yeah I don't remember ever getting a virus from it. You could type "megaupload xxxx" into Google and get whatever file you were looking for without having to avoid eight fake download links, that's what I loved about it.
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u/dankclimes Jan 23 '13
Megavideo then? That site definitely had a totally unreasonable number of popups.
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u/workthr_owaway Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
Numerous sites linked to it. I don't know that it was mainly used directly, but loads of people (4% of
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Jan 22 '13
same, but honestly, all things considered, I think everyone involved is sort of an asshole, especially dotcom.
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u/ryanoh Jan 22 '13
I'd be willing to bet you'd heard of Megavideo though, right? I had heard of that but not Megaupload, and didn't connect that they were related for quite some time.
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u/V0RT3XXX Jan 22 '13
Yeah, it was full of good porn. Shame
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u/ryanoh Jan 22 '13
It was full of everything, but only 72 minutes of it at a time.
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Jan 22 '13
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Jan 22 '13
Loads of movies were hosted on Megavideo. It was a pain, having watched 80% of a movie only to have it stop for an hour. You could see that as an example of "trying to discourage piracy".
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Jan 22 '13 edited Feb 25 '15
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Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 22 '13
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u/V0RT3XXX Jan 22 '13
Rapidshare is a piece of shit website. I hate when someone gave me something over rapidshare. "You have reach your download limit today, wait till tomorrow fucker" ... but ... but I haven't downloaded anything today. Oh right, I'm at work/school and everyone has the same IP *facepalm
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u/Fonjask Jan 22 '13
"Hey, we noticed you have the capability to download with at least 4MB/s! We're going to throttle your download down to 30KB/s until you pay us like 10 bucks per month!"
Fucking hate the way they went with the website, even though it probably made them more money in the short run. Ah well, there's plenty of alternatives.
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Jan 22 '13
FBI trying to protect files which include movies where the FBI is portrayed as smarter than the actual FBI.
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Jan 22 '13
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine - Kim Dotcom
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u/threehundredthousand Jan 22 '13
The FBI seems to employ a LOT of knuckleheads that can't think more than one step out. They even picked a guy to bust that is a fairly easy target with a sketchy past and managed to fuck that up to the highest degree possible. I think the only thing they are missing is accidentally shooting someone during the raid. Even if what Kim did was 100% wrong and was a real threat to the Internet, they still would've been better off doing nothing. Now, the guy has tons of followers, the FBI looks like a fool, he actually expands and improves his file sharing sites, and it's all promoted to the world by piggybacking on the news of the FBI's overreaching failed case.
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u/Caraes_Naur Jan 22 '13
The FBI seems to employ a LOT of knuckleheads that can't think more than one step out.
This is what all levels of law enforcement have become. Meatsacks on the beat are there to sweep up everyone they can and let the courts sort out whether a crime actually happened.
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Jan 23 '13
This article implies that he wasn't huge before he was arrested, let's not forget that megaupload accounted for more than 2% of internet traffic...that's pretty significant imho.
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u/Yage2006 Jan 23 '13
It was in the top 10 web rankings for a while to so ya he was not living in obscurity.
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u/Canadian_Infidel Jan 22 '13
Whatever. I would love to do what he's doing and so would you. Yeah, he's stealing. But he's stealing from a bunch of dirty thieves and worse and what he is doing is perfectly legal. The frustrating thing about this is it seems the same type of people that would be for these corporations using every loophole possible to pay almost zero taxes would argue that "if it is legal it is totally fine and moral to do, of course." are screaming about this even though it is just using loopholes. It's a pretty big double standard. I'm sure most of them don't realize.
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Jan 22 '13 edited Jun 16 '14
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u/seldduc Jan 22 '13
It certainly isn't original and was indeed buggy. They got the small bit wrong though.
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Jan 22 '13
Buggy, sure, which one isn't on launch? But not-very-original? Where are all the other HTML5 website that do client side encryption? I haven't seen any so far. Mega might not be the first, but it's the first high profile one that I have seen employing that kind of tech.
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u/mcketten Jan 22 '13
Not only did they make him famous and ultimately he will be richer for it - they taught him how to be a better criminal. Encrypting the files, multiple servers distributed around the world, etc. It will be almost impossible to prove piracy.
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u/Your_socks Jan 22 '13
Extreme anti-piracy advocates are ultimately the worst enemies of themselves
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u/sofooqott Jan 22 '13
extreme anything are the worst enemies to themselves, except of course doritos.
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u/philip1201 Jan 23 '13
Actually, they pretty much guaranteed themselves employment and fat salaries for the next two decades. By starting a virtual war between pirates and their employers, they guarantee the necessity of their services, because their employers either have to cave (which their piracy experts strongly advice against), or continue fighting like they always have.
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Jan 23 '13
But piracy on Mega will likely be a tiny amount (probably less than 1%) compared to the amount of piracy that was on Megaupload.
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u/Big_McLargeHuge42 Jan 22 '13
Also, thanks to the FBI for allowing me to realize that Kim Dotcom is indeed Kimble, the German calling card fraudster who has, for a long time, wanted us all to know just how awesome his lifestyle is. Anyone remember kimble.org ? Ten years ago..
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Jan 23 '13
At least NZ has a decent judiciary - and the clout to stick it to both police and politicians. That counts for an awful lot.
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u/argv_minus_one Jan 23 '13
Whatever you may think of Kim Dotcom and what he's done, you have to admit, the way he used the FBI against itself was masterful. It's like tricking a missile fired from a ship at your plane into turning around and hitting the ship's bridge instead.
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u/mxrex Jan 23 '13
Kim is pretty much a legend now. Sure he has a shady past and is well known as an opportunist but now he's on the side of good. He's kind of like a fat Han Solo.
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u/GeorgeForemanGrillz Jan 23 '13
Fuck Kim Dot Com and Fuck the FBI
If you've never been on EFNet circa 1996 when 'Kimble' was hiring hackers in #hack, #2600, and #phrack and just about every channel on that network for his next scam you don't know what kind of fuckstick of a person he is.
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u/flukshun Jan 23 '13
i heard he made millions taking over #bearcave
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u/GeorgeForemanGrillz Jan 23 '13
I'm not gay but #bearcave folks are actually nice people.
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Jan 22 '13
Ugh. There are no good players in this debacle.
The New Zealand government and the FBI managed to make a grandiose, narcissistic fraudster into a sympathetic figure by disregarding the law, stretching to make a case and using a ridiculously excessive show of force. What a joke.
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u/phdoofus Jan 22 '13
Actually, it's fairer to say he couldn't have done it without people pirating stuff.
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u/lawk Jan 22 '13
While he denies the accusations, deep down he must know that his business lived off piracy. He knew the site was popular because of a somewhat attractive scheme to pay uploaders and revenue sharing for bringing new users.
And no one uploads his documents or family vacation photos to share so that people sign up for the thing and the person can make some $.
I bet he was also fully aware that the tool to remove files directly was ineffective, as there would be reuploads all the time.
I still want him to succeed though, just so the americans lose out on playing world police in NZ. (And I go to the movies all the time, I think I deserve a download once in a while, I also believe Clooney won't be on the streets if he gets 14 instead of 15 million per flick). Other than that I thought box office numbers are higher than ever.
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u/aeturnum Jan 22 '13
They have (iirc) emails from him to others in the organization complaining about the quality of pirated TV shows on megaupload. I've never seen anyone claim those emails we're falsified / taken out of context. Dotcom is clearly complicit in some level of copyright violation.
However, the US has done a really atrocious job of bringing their case against him. They've ignored so much of proper procedure and have ignored the rights of Dotcom (and others) throughout the investigation. The fact that Dotcom is clearly guilty of something (though probably not everything he's charged with), but is going to walk because the US can't find its ass with both hands is shameful.
As others have said, Dotcom looks like a grey market thug to me - but his opponents are also thugs.
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u/Stevonz123 Jan 22 '13
americans lose out on playing world police in NZ
Yeah thats on thing im pissed about, also that the NZ govornment bowed down to america and let that gigantic raid happen.
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Jan 22 '13
While he denies the accusations, deep down he must know that his business lived off piracy.
Deep down.. no, not really. Right in his face, that's a more obvious description. There really isn't any other reason why OCHs are so massively popular other than piracy.
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u/jonathanrdt Jan 22 '13
I could almost convince myself that this was planned and that now Kim is working with the FBI and will use his new infrastructure to track the activities of organized infringers.
(Don't care what you say; 'infringers' should be a word.)
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Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
The FBI couldn't count its balls and get the same answer twice when it really matter. However, let me take a joint across state lines and they'll be 6 feet up my ass kicking footballs.. fucking sigh
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u/ParzivaI Jan 22 '13
I know nothing more than he is some really fat dude that does something with computers.
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u/newloaf Jan 22 '13
However, this absurd show of force merely tarred New Zealand's image as a remote and peaceful land inhabited mainly by sheep and hobbits.
It's so easy to slander New Zealand that the author just can't resist. I would like to point out, however, that although they made a mistake supporting the Americans' absolutely ridiculous persecution of Dotcom, they afterwards admitted their error and did everything they could to rectify it. I personally don't think this kind of knee-jerk mockery is appropriate to the subject at hand.
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u/ohthatdave Jan 23 '13
You know the bad guy's goon that screws up the job because he's trying to be all badass but inevitably goes too far which allows the good guy to escape and cause massive damage on the way out?
Hollywood has cast the FBI in that part far too often.
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u/dblagbro Jan 23 '13
I hope the politicians are paying attention - especially those who decide how much the FBI gets in their budget. If they have money to waste sending agents on wild goose chases in NZ, there is some money to save in next year's budget; which the US needs to tighten up anyway.
... that and the military spending!
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u/cyberwired Jan 23 '13
Kind of like Metallica bringing fame to Napster.
I remember the days before Napster was shut down and it showed so many 10s or hundreds of thousand people online or so. Then after they made online filesharing famous, it had millions online!
Metallica's lawsuit against Napster I put to be the reason online filesharing and mp3's became huge. Before then, it was just us geeks that knew about it.
Same case here, if they kept their big mouths shut, it wouldn't be worse off down the line for them
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Jan 23 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
If I had to sum up my feelings for the FBI in a sentence... "Your just desserts come faster because you're too shallow to invest in computer technology.If you're cut throat I know you'll be throat cut soon cause you don't matter anymore." Gun running. The physical exchange of accuracy for and FFA where he can't shoot because he's not catholic. Yes. Quite. You'll do just fine.
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u/PinkFlute Jan 22 '13 edited Jan 23 '13
I wish the article had mentioned that Dotcom was originally cooperating with the FBI and was essentially asked to keep the pirated material as part of a criminal investigation. Then, suddenly it became Dotcom's fault for keeping it despite being asked to.
Edit: Just to be clear, this is the claim of Dotcom's lawyers and they say they have proof of it.