In case you missed it, Kim Dotcom is a rich, grossly overweight German national, usually dressed in black, with a long criminal record, who has been making his money by enabling people to steal movies and music on the Internet. He was arrested at his lavish New Zealand home last weekend and charged with Internet piracy in one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought.
The arrest of Mr. Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, came in the midst of a furious uprising by much of the Internet industry and millions of frightened individuals against proposed laws to curb Internet privacy. They feared the legislation could open the way for prosecution of legitimate Internet operations.
What amounted to an Internet revolution drew millions of individuals into a massive online protest against two bills, SOPA and PIPA, short respectively for the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. Wikipedia went blank for a day, showing only a long explanation of its opposition when users logged onto the site. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled the scheduled hearing on the Senate version of the legislation “in light of recent events.” But he insisted that the problem must be dealt with. He said counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year.
What the sudden arrest of the flamboyant Mr. Dotcom accomplished was to distract public attention from the spectacular opposition campaign and focus it on piracy as an issue by zeroing in on a kingpin. His garage held at least 18 luxury cars, including a 1959 pink Cadillac and a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe. One of his license plates said “God” on it. His Hong Kong-based Megaupload website, which officials have closed down, offered for download movies, music, television shows and books, many of them illegally copied, according to authorities. Police seized about $50 million in assets as well as electronic equipment, art and the luxury automobiles.
Many file-sharing sites are legitimate. Some, such as YouSendIt, are used by business firms as a means of sending documents back and forth for consideration and signing. Others, such as Box, are file-storage companies that take down copyright violations when reported.
A peaceful solution looks possible. Apple reached an agreement with music suppliers in 2009, as told in the Steve Jobs biography. Apple removed anti-copying restrictions on songs in its iTunes Store and stopped requiring that all must be sold at 99 cents. In return, major music companies began selling tunes through the Apple store at varying prices.
Similar give and take should enable Hollywood and Silicon Valley to agree on legislation that would stem the traffic in pirated movies without jeopardizing legitimate file sharing.
This is the smell of death for the internet, especially the free Porn.
i stopped reading at “who has been making his money by enabling people to steal movies and music on the Internet.”
haha same… funny that!
Step 1: Music and Movie industry buys politicians
Step 2: Politicians increase copyright life spans to border line indefinitely
Step 3: Continue to pump money into politicians in order to buy legislation to facilitate suing ordinary people for insane amounts of money (One case was for more money than every countries GDP combined) and keeping a dying business model afloat.
Time to move on to step 4… Destroy the internet as we know it in pursuit of more money! Got to love greed!
The real problem is that the talentless, Hollywood executives want to have the Pink Cadillac and the God license plate in their garage, not in someone else’s. Hollywood needs to find a way to evolve, because the old business model died about 5 years ago.
And the whole point of this opinion piece is………?
That it is OK for United States authorities to go anywhere in the world they choose to go, to shut down websites they don’t like?
That millions of people are too stupid to know what they are doing, thus government must do things like this in their behalf?
That Mr Dot Com, and the others surely are guilty of horrible deeds, like owning cars that others envy, thus we must throw them in jail forever, no trials necessary?
Or was there really nothing else of consequence to opine about this morning?
This piece seems like a waste of bandwidth!
The internet is known as “The World Wide Web” not the “United States Web”!
If someone believes his “intellectual property” is being stolen he has the right to hire an attorney and seek redress in the courts, he should not have any expectations of sending the US Government, anywhere in the world, in his behalf.
Next thing you know we will be in a war with Hong Kong!
Let’s all admit that the US want to make him look like a villain as do you guys just simple because your “journalists” and need to pay your bills
The way things went down is wrong and it’s not about megaupload or dotcom but our freedom of information and to not crush what the internet was made for and it wasn’t made by the government and isn’t owned by the government they simply invested in parts of the infrastructure or in Australia’s case with the NBN we the taxpayers own the infrastructure because that’s what’s paying for majority of it… our taxes….
www . freekimdotcom . org
You have a greater chance of limiting how much air people breathe than to stop internet piracy.
Gee, I thought that was Rush Limmbaugh