40hz note to myself: Stop reading TechDirt and take it off bookmark list. All it does is make you angry. And speaking purely from a clinical perspective, you really can't afford to indulge in that level of rage at your age.

Quote from: Renegade on October 24, 2012, 03:12 PM

Dude has a point! He's not going to win. (Which is a good thing for his health and personal safety - presidents that like the United States government to issue currency get assassinated.) But voting for him at least sends a message that you're sick of the same crap all the time.

That's BS (IMO).  It might send a message for you, but not for anyone else that cares.  Too much money is tied up in the two political parties for any other party to be viable, and they know that.  And knowing that, the marginal vote for other candidates sends no real message, especially not a lasting one.  And the biggest reason that we don't have a viable third party (and truthfully we need 4 for real change) is that the other parties don't know how to work in small steps.  It would take decades of concerted effort to create a viable third party, but working lower offices in an organized manner to spread the candidates and the messages.

I actually didn't mean you... I meant him.  And from what I've seen, you're only alternative until you become an alternative.  There's just no way to get to that level playing that game without becoming who you're playing against.

MegaUpload will be reborn as Me.ga in January

The service will also not make use of any U.S. hosting companies. Me.ga will also enable copyright owners will be able to get "direct delete access" of pirated content provided they agree not to hold Me.ga's operators responsible for the infringement, DotCom told Reuters.

I think I'll end up respecting Kim no matter which way he plays this one.

As a direct result of the Megaupload raid many legitimate users of the site lost access to their personal files. To find out why the Government put the interests of copyright holders before those of the public, one user convinced the court to unseal the seizure warrant matarials. Surprisingly, however, there is absolutely no mention of Megaupload’s legal use in the released records. In a response Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says the whole case is a tragic copyright comedy...
(Read the rest at the link.)

• Objective:
  Stated objective - To nail and bring to justice a commercial group suspected of copyright crime.
  Primary objective 1: To destroy their business enterprise rather than succeed in them being found guilty (guilt being likely to be too difficult to substantiate).
  Primary objective 2: To communicate the message that so-called "copyright crime" could be met with penalties worse than death and is just not worth it.
  
• Constraints:
  All strategic instructions and directions are to come from the **AA.
  The police/SS authorities are to be responsible for devising/executing the strategy for surveillance, SWAT and seizure in their respective territories.
  
• Problem:
  Authority to proceed needs to be based on evidence that a serious large-scale money-laundering/Mafia-type crime has been committed, however accusations are weak on substantive evidential proof.
  
• Solution:
  
  • Make the proof up! For example, including fitting-up the suspects by getting them to behave like they committed a crime, by telling them to follow the directions from the FBI, during surveillance. Don't mention that you did that in the seizure warrant or subsequent charges/accusations. It'll leak out later.
  • So as to avoid the thing going to trial, arrange to make the raid illegal by default, so that charges will reluctantly have to be dropped - "It was a 'genuine mistake' yer honour".
  • Collaborate closely with the police/SS authorities and keep stressing the threats/risks so as to wind them up into a feva and testosterone/adrenaline-fuelled feel-good state of high alertness.
  • Communicate using FEAR: Act like terrorists so as to make an example that will literally terrify other suspected/potential copyright "criminals" (that's potentially every consumer on the planet). Let the dogs of war loose - make it a no-holds-barred, fun-filled SWAT-fest-with-prejudice exercise! Make it seriously over-the-top excessive violence at all times. (Don't waste all that testosterone/adrenaline!)
    
    Quote

    "That's the way to do it!" (- Punch, in Punch and Judy).

  • Wiretapping the suspects illegally (without warrant).
  • After seizure, don't mention the humungus amount of legitimate property held on the servers. If there's any liability for damages or consequential losses from any of this, it's an externality that the State will be obliged to foot the bill for.
  • Effectively commit a crime (you're doing all this illegally, don't forget) against tens of thousands of people's property - and probably that of the suspects' themselves - by unwarranted and deliberate excessive use of force and seizure, seizing all servers and property (content/data), in order to destroy the suspect's business. Just Go For It and never mind the collateral damage - this is a SWAT-fest, don't forget!
  • Encourage the police to commit borderline/actual perjury in court, when giving their testimony. They are to just do their job the best they can.
• Remember to ensure that you do all this illegally - because the warrants were invalid (both in the US and New Zealand, and maybe elsewhere too).

Megaupload Assisted FBI vs NinjaVideo, But Evidence Then Used Against Them

In 2010, individuals from the now-defunct NinjaVideo site stored copyright-infringing videos on the servers of Megaupload. These subsequently came to the attention of the FBI who were conducting an investigation into NinjaVideo and its operators. As a result Megaupload was served with a criminal search warrant requiring it to hand over information to the authorities, but in a cruel twist Megaupload’s cooperation and a desire not to destroy evidence is now being used as evidence against it.

The February 2012 “Superseding Indictment” document, which lays out the Grand Jury charges against Megaupload, runs to 90-pages long and contains dozens of allegations of illegal behavior against the operators of the now-shuttered file-hosting site.

As outlined in our discussions this week, Dotcom says that some of the allegations are misleading, particularly one claiming that Megaupload failed to delete infringing video files from its servers.

“A member of the Mega Conspiracy informed several of his co-conspirators [in 2010] that he located the named files using internal searches of the Mega Conspiracy’s systems,” the DoJ wrote.

“As of November, 18 2011, thirty-six or the thirty-nine infringing copies of the copyrighted motion pictures were still being stored on servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy.”

Out of context the claim, that Megaupload ignores the DMCA, looks bad. However, when the full picture is put forward – that Megaupload found these files because a criminal search warrant from the FBI required them to do so – things start to look quite different.

And the plot thickens. Wired has discovered that the infringing files were put on Megaupload’s servers by individuals connected to the now-defunct streaming video site NinjaVideo.

The FBI were conducting a criminal investigation into NinjaVideo (which later resulted in several of its operators going to jail) and required Megaupload’s cooperation after serving the company with a search warrant in June 2010, just days before NinjaVideo was raided.

“Megaupload complied with the warrant and cooperated with the government’s request,” Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken confirms.

According to Kim Dotcom, the FBI made it clear that the warrant should be kept quiet so as not to jeopardize the NinjaVideo inquiry.

“The agent was concerned that the target could be warned and that this needs to be handled confidentially,” Dotcom informs TorrentFreak.

The Megaupload founder says that this warning was taken seriously and that since the files were clearly evidence in the case none of them were interfered with.

“Obviously when the FBI contacted us they made this clear to us and therefore we did not touch the accounts or the files,” he says.

“We even emailed back to Carpathia [Megaupload's US server host] to ask the FBI (and the FBI had our emails before asking for the Mega domain seizure) if we should do anything about those files. We never got a response.”

But the criminal investigation against NinjaVideo and evidential issues in that respect were pushed aside when it came to building a case against Megaupload and seizing its domain.

“To use this against us and to tell a Judge that the Megaupload domain seizure is justified because we have not removed those 39 files is totally unethical and misleading,” Dotcom concludes.

The fact that the infringing files remained on Mega’s leased servers led the U.S. government to claim that Megaupload infringed copyright, despite the company having been served the original NinjaVideo search warrant as the site’s service provider, one that presumably should have received safe-harbor protection under the DMCA.

As previously reported, NinjaVideo founder Hana Beshara was eventually sentenced to 22 months in jail and ordered to repay almost $210,000.

I think we need a link to it here.

Leave no good deed unpunished - Where was that Don't Talk to the Police video again? I think we need a link to it here.

On a more practical note, this 45 minute video is pretty much the single best video I've ever seen on how to deal with the police in their official capacity. Most of this won't be too helpful if it turns out you actually did violate the law. But it will go a  long way to protecting you if you haven't.

And as any attorney will tell you, it's not necessary that you actually break the law to get arrested - or even worse, be convicted for doing so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA