Posts by nzlemming
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
In the case of a service like MegaUpload which may possibly use de-duplication techniques to reduce storage requriements they still should not be required to remove all copies of a given file.
Well, it's reported that they were using up to 25 petabytes of storage in Virginia alone, so I think they weren't de-duping. Also, I believe that their 'safe harbour' relies on them not knowing what was there until advised by content owners - if they were posting multiple links to a file, they would have to know what it was.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Russell Brown,
Or, as Corin Dann would have it, “Rick Sherpa”.
Well, he did look like he was tensing for something...
</coat_hat>
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to 3410,
Right, so how does Megaupload deactivate a hyperlink on a site that is not their own without deactivating the page linked to?
Sorry? The site is their own. They are not just posting links, they are actually hosting the material. So the link is internal. CMS's are databases of content which construct 'pages' on request from templates. There are no actual pages to deactivate, in the way that you or I might write HTML pages.
EDIT: What Robert said
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Rick Shera on Breakfast TV this morning http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/piracy-arrest-happens-now-video-4697951
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to 3410,
I’m quite familiar with how Megaupload works, but I still don’t understand this bit. Anyone?
Megaupload (and cyberlockers in general) generate a unique ID for any items in their content management system and that's what you share as a link. While each ID will only access one item, an item can be referenced by many ID's. To fulfil the 'safe harbour' provision of the DMCA, providers must take down any content identifed as infringing, i.e. remove it from the server). The FBI alleges that MU did not do this. They provided a tool for the content industry to remove content, but it is alleged that it would only remove one particular identified link, leaving the content (and any other links to it) still in place.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to BenWilson,
any time you find someone has made their house into Fort Knox, you don't take chances.
I'd be really interested to know if Dotcom installed the panic room, or the Chrisco people :-D
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Simon Grigg,
And this does feel to me like another building PR disaster on the part of the MPAA and RIAA. Aside from the assets seized, there doesn’t seem to be an upside in this for them.
Yup. It's like I say to people about unions - if you treat your staff like people instead of work units and treat them fairly, you will never have union trouble. The MPAA and RIAA are engineering their own demise.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s interesting that the key to the indictment is that the defendants are alleged to have committed infringements on a scale that would be familiar to most of us here – personally accessing infringing content, sharing links with others. Without that, as I understand it, the subsequent racketeering and money-laundering charges don’t fly.
My reading is that their alleged personal infringement is used to show that they knew their system was being used for copyright infringement and not only did nothing to stop it, but profited personally and financially from that fact. They are alleged to not have taken down material when advised under the DMCA that it was present, but only to have removed the reported links to the material, while leaving it and unreported links in place so that infringement could still continue. This, if proven, would be a breach of the 'safe harbour' provisions. The financial profit aspect would go to the criminal copyright infringement charge, and the 'money laundering' charge would relate to moving the profits out of the US.
It will also be interesting to see if they paid the relevant taxes in the US and Hong Kong (or even here). That's how Al Capone was taken down, remember. (No, I am not comparing Capone's activities with Dotcom/Schmitz, don't be silly.)
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Tom Beard,
boom tish!
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Undoubtedly, but the DoJ PR indicates that the "Mega-Conspiracy" investigation has been going on for 2 years. I'm surprised it's taken so long for the US to have a go at the cyber-lockers. I'm guessing they really wanted to have their ducks in a row before they moved.