Kim Dotcom’s first TV interview: ‘I’m no piracy king’

I think some of the points Kim makes are interesting:<p>- He complies with the DMCA. - He provides direct 'delete' access to his servers for the content companies. - The content companies that claim to be losing billions, with direct access to his servers so far have failed to file any legal complaint with his lawyers.<p>I'm sure as much as we want to dislike him for his previous flamboyant behaviour, he has some legitimate points and a legitimate company providing a legitimate service (and one that is similarly provided by other companies, some of which are household names).<p>Call me cynical, but this smells of being such a monumental set-up that it makes the farm full of cows just down the road from me seem like a breath of fresh air.

Interesting situation, indeed. Let's not forget he has yet to be found guilty for any of the charges. And if he's tried and found not guilty, who's going to repay all the time and money lost because his site was down?<p>It's like the FBI came in and demolished his store to take away the bricks as evidence - if he's found not guilty, I doubt they're going to rebuild it for him.<p>They just needed someone to make an example of - there are dozens of other sharing sites out there (hell, many of them even have "warez" in their name), and yet they chose Megaupload, one of the biggest, with a brazen in-your-face owner (last time I checked, that wasn't a crime).<p>It seems to have worked, though - Filesonic disabled sharing, for example, and other sites must've done something similar...

In my unprofessional legal view, it seems that what the copyright clique is really hoping to gain from this case is a precedent for making website owners responsible for ensuring that content uploaded to their site is copyright kosher.<p>Currently, the copyright holder has to crawl the internet to make sure their copyright isn't being violated somewhere and if so - file a takedown order. This is very whack-a-mole and when it comes to cyberlockers - intractable, since many external links can resolve to the same file. Locker admins have to only remove the offending link to comply with a takedown request, as it is impossible (without knowing the internal code structure) to prove whether two links resolve to the same file or different copies thereof. The linkers can simply check periodically to make sure their links are current and update as necessary, which can be easily automated.<p>The copyright holders cannot automate the discovery process (not without huge resources, anyway), while the copyright infringing parties can easily automate their side. This inherent unbalance creates a difficult policing problem that copyright holders (naturally) don't want to be responsible for.<p>It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If UGC site admins become legally compelled to monitor what they are hosting, the overhead will kill most ad-only revenue models. If not, copyright holders will have to hire some sort of copyright police (does it already exist? if not --&#62; startup_idea_masterlist.add() ).<p>Opinion question: what is the "ok/not ok" line for encouraging your users to use your (online) service for illegal activities (esp. copyright infringement)? Paying them to do it seems to be clearly "over the line", as far as US gov. is concerned. What about publicly announcing that you are not going to police their data?

I'm confused - A large part of the discussion here is around the legality of deduping and "infringing" files. I was under the impression that files themselves don't violate copyright - people do. As a result, there will never be a way to accurately determine who can download a particular file. Or am I missing something?<p>If I own a copy of the DVD and want to download a dvdrip, am I commiting copyright infringement? Is the file, in and of itself, an illegal file? or is the act of downloading said file illegal?<p>(and to short circuit the 'you should rip your dvd yourself' discussion, it's quicker to download and the end result is the same)

Say what you will about him he does come across as knowledgeable in terms of the legalities and makes some very good points. His points about the outdated business models of the content companies are IMO totally true.

Extremely slow - so I uploaded a mirror (downloadable or streamable): <a href="http://serve2.com/file/kim-interview" rel="nofollow">http://serve2.com/file/kim-interview</a><p>(And, a sneak preview into one of my startup projects)

This is incredible PR, in my opinion. Prior to this interview, all I had known of Kim Dotcom were from photos and videos of him in private jets, on the beach, in expensive cars, etc. He seemed like a playboy who was above the law.<p>In this interview he strikes me as highly intelligent, metered, and well versed in the various copyright laws. It seems like he has managed to operate his business from within a legal loophole, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in court.

I really hope he wins this case, but there's an awful lot of naiveity going around.<p>Comment I read on that video page ended "Leave the poor guy and his wife alone!" They're millionaires, and there's really no way to paint this as "poor Kim" - I can very well believe that based on his knowledge and his legal advice he expected to be safe legally, and was perhaps right, but the idea that he actually didn't know what MU was being used for, or that he cared about preventing it, is laughable. Look at his track record as a person, he's always prioritised himself (money, ego etc.) over legality.

Am I the only one that is finding him surprisingly convincing?

What I like most about Kim Dotcom is the way he stands out bravelly. He is realy a convincing person.

Seeing all those videos that came out when he was first arrested gave the impression that he was a 'bad' person who deserved to be in jail. Hearing him speak gives a completely different impression, obviously he'd have to be smart to have the success he has, but this video goes to show he's articulate, convincing and well versed in the industry that he is a part of. Clearly the early propaganda served a purposes, but this video shows reality.

There's precedent for anti-piracy extraditions: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths</a><p>An Australian was extradited to USA despite having never been to USA or profited from piracy. Then was subsequently jailed, eventually finished sentence and became an illegal alien. Then deported back to Australia and banned from visiting USA.<p>Edit: Corrected deport-back

Sigh. If MegaUpload was still up, 3news could have used it to take the load off their servers. Just like the ad servers are doing.

Can someone please provide a mirror? It's interessting that I looked at the commercial and then expected the clip to load in a timely fashion. And because I can not do it, I will probably not watch that clip to the end.

Just goes to show there is always more than 1 side to a story.

The Kevin Mitnick of piracy. What a shame.

Some megaupload stats from the video: 1.5 terabits of data transfer and 800 downloads completed per second. If my math is correct: 493 petabytes data transfer per month with an average download size around 237 megabytes.

Meanwhile, there are 50 exes from AIG that got millions of dollars in bonuses after having stolen (removing the original type) of billions of dollars in cash money. AND taking down the global economy while they were at it.<p>I think it's funny how Kim Dotcom's gets treated like a terrorist, but the AIG Execs get bonuses and a stern slap on the hand. Justice in this country is really bizarre. Some grand larceny is completely OK, and other "technical larceny" is punished with jailtime.<p>I guess the moral of the story here is that It's not the Grand Larceny that makes it a deed worth punishing, it has to do with other qualities.

So this NZ court decided to let him out on bail and give him access to his bank accounts for 'essential expenses'. I think that's pretty decent. Unlike what the US did with his entire company before even starting a trial.

Kind of annoying how this guy is becoming a media darling.

Notice that when asked about the content provider's direct delete access he was very careful to say that he would remove any <i>link</i> they requested.<p>I'm sorry, but there's only 1 reason why you would remove a link to an infringing file but not the actual file. Aiding piracy.

I don't understand the HN community stance on this.<p>MegaUpload was blatantly profiteering off of copyright infringing materials. DMCA take down notices affected only a single link to a file and not the file itself. Premium users could spend money to "clone" files by generating a new link without having to upload a single byte. MegaUpload paid users based on the number of times their file was downloaded. It is claimed that MegaUpload accounted for four percent of all internet traffic. They did all this to the tune of several hundred million dollars in profit.<p>There are numerous websites that are 100% dedicated to the streaming of copyrighted material (TV shows and movies). They stream content from MegaUpload directly to your browser with no download needed.<p>MegaUpload blatantly and clearly did not care about hosting and serving copyright infringing material from their servers. It does not require an IT genius to detect that the file Game.Of.Thrones.S1.E01 which has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times may possibly be copyright infringing material.<p>Someone who actually cared would look at which websites are streaming content to MILLIONS of users. If that website is 100% solely dedicated to serving copyright infringing material then you should probably take down the files they are streaming.<p>The wiki DMCA Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act states "To qualify for the § 512(c) safe harbor, the OSP must not have actual knowledge that it is hosting infringing material or be aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent." IANAL but it was pretty damn apparent that MegaUpload was being used for infringing activity to me.<p>I seriously don't understand why this community supports Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload. I really don't.

He is trying to hide behind DMCA but I think the FBI found out that he actually solicited pirated copies of music/movies which might land him in trouble. YouTube still is a treasure chest of pirated content but is doing well being protected by DMCA. That's because they don't go around asking people to upload pirated stuff to their site. It's another thing that people willingly do that ;)