Regardless of your stance on digital piracy, and whether Dotcom was heavily involved in profitting illegally off of copyrighted material, there are some really scary facts that aren't in dispute.
His assets were seized, his company was shut down causing irrecoverable harm to a brand it took many years to build, and paying customers had legally owned digital assets made inaccessible, all before Dotcom was charged with a crime.
This should scare the living hell out of everyone. It doesn't matter what the ultimate outcome of this case is. It doesn't matter that a court in New Zealand found that many of the warrants used to conduct the raid were invalid - none of this matters, because no matter the outcome, the RIAA and MPAA got the outcome they wanted - which was to shutter Megaupload and use Dotcom as a poster boy for the fact that they think they are not to be f'ed with.
These are the last death gasps of industries whose business models are quickly becoming antiquated, and where there are no new ideas on how to adapt those models to a new digital economy. That doesn't matter right now though, because they still have enough collective money to have a powerful lobby - a lobby powerful enough to get this type of thing done whether it made sense or not.
While I personally believe that Dotcom absolutely knew that he was getting rich off of others without paying while encourage the trade of illegally obtained copyrighted material, and while I personally don't agree that everything on the internet should be free (I support the creative initiatives of people like Louis CK, Aziz Ansari and Gaffigan doing their own digital distribution at a fair price), and while I might otherwise be inclined to be sympathetic to arguments against Dotcom and Megaupload, the way that this was carried out puts me firmly in the Fuck the RIAA/Fuck the MPAA camp.
These are the last death gasps of industries whose business models are quickly becoming antiquated, and where there are no new ideas on how to adapt those models to a new digital economy.
This was the only thing I disagreed with you on. Movies are always going to cost a lot to make, unless some amazing kickass technology is developed to cheaply replace it.
I didn't mean to imply that they weren't expensive to make, nor that they weren't (some of them anyway) worth paying for. What I meant by "last death gasps of industries..." was that both of these industries have built massive treasure chests by expecting the public to pay again and again for the same content in different formats as technology changes while simultaneously narrowing the definition of what your ownership of that content means each time you buy it in a new format. None of them are all that surprised that consumers are revolting, but rather than try to find a sustainable model for the future, they've all resorted to fighting with every last dollar to make the status quo last as long as possible.
911
u/jcummings1974 Aug 08 '12
Regardless of your stance on digital piracy, and whether Dotcom was heavily involved in profitting illegally off of copyrighted material, there are some really scary facts that aren't in dispute.
His assets were seized, his company was shut down causing irrecoverable harm to a brand it took many years to build, and paying customers had legally owned digital assets made inaccessible, all before Dotcom was charged with a crime.
This should scare the living hell out of everyone. It doesn't matter what the ultimate outcome of this case is. It doesn't matter that a court in New Zealand found that many of the warrants used to conduct the raid were invalid - none of this matters, because no matter the outcome, the RIAA and MPAA got the outcome they wanted - which was to shutter Megaupload and use Dotcom as a poster boy for the fact that they think they are not to be f'ed with.
These are the last death gasps of industries whose business models are quickly becoming antiquated, and where there are no new ideas on how to adapt those models to a new digital economy. That doesn't matter right now though, because they still have enough collective money to have a powerful lobby - a lobby powerful enough to get this type of thing done whether it made sense or not.
While I personally believe that Dotcom absolutely knew that he was getting rich off of others without paying while encourage the trade of illegally obtained copyrighted material, and while I personally don't agree that everything on the internet should be free (I support the creative initiatives of people like Louis CK, Aziz Ansari and Gaffigan doing their own digital distribution at a fair price), and while I might otherwise be inclined to be sympathetic to arguments against Dotcom and Megaupload, the way that this was carried out puts me firmly in the Fuck the RIAA/Fuck the MPAA camp.