Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy
464 Responses
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Is there anything to the Racketeering and Money Laundering charges other than openly carrying on an international business that you know is illegal? I expect those words to imply secrecy and deception, but only found money being openly moved across borders like any business might do these days.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Removing public access to the content is effectively the same as removing it
Good thing you're not a lawyer, then ;-)
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Your presumption that MU deduped is founded in the understanding that that is how you would do it, as it makes sense here in NZ where online storage costs a damn fortune. It’s not the case in the US. Storage is extremely cheap there.
That was simply one situation in which I could imagine that removing a link to a file might be considered not to have removed all links to it or something,.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Since it’s a bit difficult to test (ahem) the functionality now, was it possible to search for content if you didn’t have the URL?
No, they specifically did not provide a search tool on the site to protect themselves under the DMCA. The indictment states that they did have an internal search tool for staff use.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Good thing you’re not a lawyer, then ;-)
If I am wrong on that case then YouTube has NEVER complied properly with a DMCA takedown notice, and the ability to dispute them is completely pointless as the data ceases to exist before anything can be done about it.
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James Butler, in reply to
Since it’s a bit difficult to test (ahem) the functionality now, was it possible to search for content if you didn’t have the URL? Say I’d like to download the new Tintin-movie and I make the assumption that it exists on MegaUpload, could I search for it? Or would I need to ask someone in a forum for a link to it?
MegaUpload didn't have a search engine itself, but various content in it was indexed by external sites. Usually one might search for something on one of the big meta-indexing sites, which would then show a list of links to file locker sites with matching content, one (or more) of which would be a MegaUpload URL.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Since it’s a bit difficult to test (ahem) the functionality now, was it possible to search for content if you didn’t have the URL? Say I’d like to download the new Tintin-movie and I make the assumption that it exists on MegaUpload, could I search for it? Or would I need to ask someone in a forum for a link to it?
I have it it right, no -- you couldn't search on Megaupload for the file you were after. You had to have the URL shared with you by an individual or by one of the third-party sites that index such shares. And you could Google those.
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The relevant wording in the DMCA is:
upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
Disabling the public URL that provides access to a file certainly meets this test.
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Megavideo is mentioned in the indictment 79 times, often in relation to the “Mega” people pillaging YouTube to start the site off.
ah ok, I haven't seen it in any news stuff. Seems weird, the whole coverage is about it as a dl storage thing but it was also this pay to view streaming service.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
Disabling the public URL that provides access to a file certainly meets this test.
Even if there are two URLs and you only disable one?
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Martin Roberts, in reply to
You have no evidence that MU deduped and the allegations make no mention of it.
The indictment clearly claims (para 22) that MU did de-dupe (using MD5 hashes). It goes on to say that they demonstrated the ability to remove underlying content w.r.t. terrorist and child-porn material. Yet they never did this for DMCA complaints. It is also claimed that they misled copyright holders over this in "negotiations" over their 'Abuse Tool'.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Is there anything to the Racketeering and Money Laundering charges other than openly carrying on an international business that you know is illegal? I expect those words to imply secrecy and deception, but only found money being openly moved across borders like any business might do these days.
I believe it's based on the allegation that the money was obtained through criminal copyright infringement and would therefore be proceeds of a criminal act. Any attempt to transfer that to another jurisdiction would be counted as money laundering, I think (Graeme may like to comment).
As far as the racketeering, from the indictment:
persons employed by and associated with the Enterprise, which Enterprise engaged in, and the activities of which affected interstate and foreign commerce, did knowingly, willfully, and intentionally combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other, and with other persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to violate 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) (hereinafter the “Racketeering Violation”), that is, to conduct and participate, directly and indirectly, in the conduct of the affairs of that Enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, as that term is defined in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961(1) and (5), involving multiple acts indictable under:
a. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2319(b)(1) & 2319(d)(2); 17 U.S.C. §§ 506(a)(1)(A) &
506(a)(1)(C) (criminal copyright infringement);b. 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956(a)(1)(A)(i), 1956(a)(2)(A), 1956(h), 1956(f), and 1957
(money laundering).So it's about conspiring together to build an operation that makes money illegally, in my reading.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Even if there are two URLs and you only disable one?
Which is precisely what the indictment says they did.
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The best copyright protection money can buy...
an interesting list of the US politicians who supported the SOPA bill, and how much they got in campaign donations from big media and other companies with a stake in its passing. -
Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Even if there are two URLs and you only disable one?
Well that's what's unclear... Did MU files have multiple access URLs? It wasn't my experience in the few files I'd put on the service in the past.
Or did the multiple links referred to actually mean multiple copies of the same content uploaded by different users?
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nzlemming, in reply to
The relevant wording in the DMCA is:
upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
Disabling the public URL that provides access to a file certainly meets this test.
Fair point, I had believed it was takedown or nothing (note to self - reread the DMCA) but negated by Graeme's comment. If access to the file was not completely removed, then the file was still available and still infringing. Even more so in your scenario of deduping.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
The indictment clearly claims (para 22) that MU did de-dupe (using MD5 hashes). It goes on to say that they demonstrated the ability to remove underlying content w.r.t. terrorist and child-porn material. Yet they never did this for DMCA complaints. It is also claimed that they misled copyright holders over this in “negotiations” over their ‘Abuse Tool’.
Terrorist related content and child porn are presumably explicitly illegal. Copyright material on the other hand is not. I may have a legitimate right to hold the content, and choose to use MegaUpload to store it.
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nzlemming, in reply to
The indictment clearly claims (para 22) that MU did de-dupe (using MD5 hashes). It goes on to say that they demonstrated the ability to remove underlying content w.r.t. terrorist and child-porn material. Yet they never did this for DMCA complaints. It is also claimed that they misled copyright holders over this in “negotiations” over their ‘Abuse Tool’.
Good god, you’re quite right. Mea culpa, I missed that.
Edit: However, the MD5 hash will be different if even a bit is different, so this will only work for absolutely identical files
So, apologies to Dylan, they did dedupe, but that won't stop multiple copies of essentially the same file being available on the server.
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So the multiple links thing all seems to stem from the de-duplication. Which I think is bullshit because MegaUpload can't know the legitimacy of any given copy. While User 1 may sharing a file and having it linked to from various places, User 2 may have a legitimate reason to have that file.
While it's not strictly legal I know plenty of people who work in the TV/Film industry who have pirated copies of work they've contributed to for their show reels etc.
Again if that were a requirement then I'm pretty sure YouTube were frequently not in compliance as duplicate videos are often uploaded by multiple users on YouTube.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Good god, you’re quite right. Mea culpa, I missed that.
Edit: However, the MD5 hash will be different if even a bit is different, so this will only work for absolutely identical files
So, apologies to Dylan, they did dedupe, but that won’t stop multiple copies of essentially the same file being available on the server.
If they have different hashes then the claim that MU should or could remove all of them from a single notice.
And as I've said above, I don't think it's reasonable or required for them to remove all unique references (each represents a separate upload by a separate users) to a de-duplicated file.
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3410,
Even if there are two URLs and you only disable one?
I used it a bit and there was never more than one link.
You click "upload" and when upload is finished you are provided with *one* link for that file.
(In the old days - but not in the last 3(?) years - they would provide, at the same time, a "kill" link, activation of which would deactivate the upload link (ie send to megaupload.com/ "this file no longer exists").)
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Martin Roberts, in reply to
I like the argument that one of the copies might be legitimately held, but could also imagine simple mechanisms to re-assert your right to a file. I have no idea where the DMCA falls on such questions, and expect a lot of lawyers' time to be spent here.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Terrorist related content and child porn are presumably explicitly illegal. Copyright material on the other hand is not.
Which is where I thought Graeme’s “these are drugs” example upthread was a little bit off.
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Peter Graham, in reply to
The DMCA requires that the content be removed on notification of infringement, not that a link to the content be removed.
The DMCA requires that content providers "remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing". A sensible law, since it can be difficult to quickly remove all copies of a file from a internet service.
This is what intrigues me. Does anyone really believe YouTube management has no idea it's hosting potentially infringing content until explicitly advised by the owners?
They absolutely know there's infringing content somewhere on YouTube. They aren't legally responsible unless they know about specific content which infringes copyright.
If I run a photocopy shop and let people photocopy stuff unsupervised should I be liable for any copyright infringement my customers are committing using my service?
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Which is where I thought Graeme’s “these are drugs” example upthread was a lithe bit off.
I actually missed that comment...
So, when someone says “those are drugs”, the police should wait until after trial before seizing the wads of cash when they raid a drug house? And the drug-sellers should be able to continue selling their drugs until tests are back and confirmed by a court that those were indeed illegal drugs?
This is a very tricky one. If MegaUpload were a site that just straight-up stored, indexed and offered direct downloads of infringing content then I can see this analogy being somewhat more reasonable.
But it's not, it is more like a self-storage service. If one person was storing drugs in their unit would we expect (and accept) that police shut down the entire facility?
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