Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
So the police have evidence that a couple of safe deposit boxes in a bank contain illegal goods. They then shut down the bank and all it’s websites and branches.
The bank remains closed until the case comes to court?
Um, yes. I saw someone on line describe SOPA/PIPA as being like reacting to a cockroach in the kitchen by burning the house down with your whole family inside. Everyone’s dead, you don’t have a house anymore… and the roaches have moved next door. Score!
That really seems to be the default level of bat-shittery from “the industry” where copywrong is concerned, and it’s just not helpful.
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its like closing auckland airport because someone was found trying to import illegal drugs into the country
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Um, you know, if a bank was alleged to have indulged in money laundering, it sure as hell would be frozen when the police moved against them. No two ways about it.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Um, you know, if a bank was alleged to have indulged in money laundering, it sure as hell would be frozen when the police moved against them. No two ways about it.
This is just wrong.
A UK FSA study found evidence of money laundering -- or at least unacceptably poor controls -- at multiple banks last year. The Bank of Scotland was fined in a separate case. None of them had their entire businesses frozen.
Neither did Citigroup, despite repeated scandals over years.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
its like closing auckland airport because someone was found trying to import illegal drugs into the country
Funnily enough, Stuff's Henry Cooke retweeted a similar argument.
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Sorry, let me rephrase that. If it were alleged that one of a bank's major income streams was illegal, that it was engaged in large scale money laundering --- on a level beyond merely `errors', and an officer of the bank had convictions for insider trading, then it would almost certainly be frozen.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
BCCI - only time it's happened, to my knowledge. I'm not sure if BCCI had any business that *wasn't* criminal, at least in the eyes of some jurisdiction. They were also eventually insolvent.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
BCCI – only time it’s happened, to my knowledge. I’m not sure if BCCI had any business that *wasn’t* criminal, at least in the eyes of some jurisdiction. They were also eventually insolvent.
Ah yes. That's the exception I was trying to think of.
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Meanwhile, also via Techdirt, Universal Music's raving mad list of "rogue" websites (that is, sites their agencies are forbidden to engage with) including Soundcloud and most of the hip hop blog ecosystem.
They're only shooting themselves in the foot here, but it is worth noting that this is precisely the kind of list -- even the same "rogue" terminology -- that they'd be able to have actioned under SOPA. That would then be everyone's problem.
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3410,
Oh. I initially thought you mean this BCCI. :P
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
From Granny:More online effects and lobbyists in Washington
This, could be old news or not -
3410,
Universal Music's raving mad list of "rogue" websites (that is, sites their agencies are forbidden to engage with) including Soundcloud and most of the hip hop blog ecosystem.
Though not Google (surprise, surprise).
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Yeah: it turns out most banks are so heavily regulated, it is almost impossible to be massively illegal and still a bank. So it's a flawed metaphor.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Ah yes. That’s the exception I was trying to think of.
All over, they launder
Ah, the hypocrisy of Democracy. -
Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Sorry, let me rephrase that. If it were alleged that one of a bank’s major income streams was illegal, that it was engaged in large scale money laundering — on a level beyond merely `errors’, and an officer of the bank had convictions for insider trading, then it would almost certainly be frozen.
Maybe, but I'm not sure that's a fair comparison.
The activities of MegaUpload are much more akin to safe deposit boxes, or storage lockers.
It would be fascinating to find out what percentage of MU's business was infringing. I certainly know plenty of people who used it legitimately.
By the way, here is a copyright file that I am sharing without authorisation from my Dropbox account... Hope you guys have copies of all your files from Dropbox!
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Oh, it is old news. More recently, Motion Picture Association of America head former Senator Chris Dodd has been pure comedy gold. This nitwit makes Alisdair Thompson look like a paragon of competence.
What do you do when your legislative agenda is turning to shit. Go on Fox News and have a very public “hey bitch, when when we buy you, you stay brought OR ELSE” temper tantrum at the White House, of course!
Then throw yourself a pity party about those horrible lying liars on the internet. As Cory Doctrow snarks on BoingBoing:
Must be terribly hard to represent the largest media empires in the world, who collectively own all the major newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, billboards, record labels and studios. How will they ever get their side of the story out?
WHAT AN ASSHOLE is a pretty apposite tag.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Pope on a rope...
BCCI
Which reminds me of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano which collapsed and, well, left things hanging....
But eventually many high level people were prosecuted. -
nzlemming, in reply to
The bank remains closed until the case comes to court?
If the person accused of committing crime is the one who owns the bank, quite possibly.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
WHAT AN ASSHOLE is a pretty apposite tag.
Nice contributions in that thread, dude.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
well I'll be dipped in dog deposits...
If the person accused of committing crime is
the one who owns the bank, quite possibly.and don't they say the best way to rob a bank is to own one...
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nzlemming, in reply to
The activities of MegaUpload are much more akin to safe deposit boxes, or storage lockers.
From the public usage perspective, I agree. But that's not what the alleged crime is about. It's as if MU was going through those lockers and making money of showing their contents to other people.
It would be fascinating to find out what percentage of MU’s business was infringing. I certainly know plenty of people who used it legitimately.
It would, indeed. Consensus among some people I know (some of whom use MU and other sites for both purposes) is that the ratio legitimate:infringing would be very low (something like 1:500 was one estimate, which was promptly laughed at by the others present). It would be interesting to see an audit of files, but I doubt that will happen.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
From the public usage perspective, I agree. But that’s not what the alleged crime is about. It’s as if MU was going through those lockers and making money of showing their contents to other people.
More like it was as if MU were letting anyone off the street who had the right code written on a bit of paper go into the lockers get something and walk away. These visitors could either stand around and MegaUpload staff would recite ads at them for 45 seconds, or they could pay a little money and the MU staff would just let them in.
Now perhaps also MegaUpload staff also happened to pick up the underground newspapers that these lockers and their passwords are advertised...
I'm not totally sure on how MegaVideo was working, but as I understand it MegaUpload themselves never published links to any infringing files.
It would, indeed. Consensus among some people I know (some of whom use MU and other sites for both purposes) is that the ratio legitimate:infringing would be very low (something like 1:500 was one estimate, which was promptly laughed at by the others present). It would be interesting to see an audit of files, but I doubt that will happen
Give the massive quantity of data they had I find that ratio difficult to believe, but perhaps?
Also files that were present on the server but weren't being linked to from outside (maybe unlikely?) weren't infringing, or at least MegaUpload wasn't involved in the infringement - another reason I think they weren't obligated to search for and delete duplicate copies of notified files. Unless they are made aware it's being actively shared it's not a breech.
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linger, in reply to
Peripheral, but I’m struck by how this US usage [ “curb” ] has replaced the previously common “kerb” in a few published articles in NZ lately.
Both spellings are standard in British and NZ English, but they are used for different purposes: kerb is the (literally) concrete noun, and curb is the verb. The Wellington corpus [of 1986 NZE] has just 3 tokens of curb (all verbs) and 5 of kerb (all nouns); that’s not enough evidence to conclusively state that variation in NZE was impossible in 1986, but does suggest that, if variation was possible within either of those functions, it wasn’t widespread.
However, I can see how variation in "NZE" might easily arise, (i) through functional confusion, when the noun is being used within a verb phrase such as jump the kerb, and (ii) as a result of news subediting being subcontracted to Australia, which has a higher tendency to use (some) “American” spelling variants. -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Nice contributions in that thread, dude.
I'm just bemused that someone who was hired for his connections on Capitol Hill is acting like some more-than-usually unhinged GOP primary candidate. If I was Rupert Murdoch, I'd be asking if the sixth of Dodd's arse I'm paying for is making an acceptable ROI.
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Roger Lacey, in reply to
Peripheral, but I’m struck by how this US usage [ “curb” ] has replaced the previously common “kerb” in a few published articles in NZ lately.
And there I was thinking that jumping the curb was somehow related to jumping the snark.
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