German Court Sees Through The DOJ Fairy Tale, Rejects Attempt To Seize Megaupload Assets
from the a-string-of-failures dept
We've covered a series of embarrassing setbacks for the US government's case against Megaupload over the past few months. It's a pretty stunning trail of errors by US officials who seemed to think that a scary story about a "bad man" would trump a lack of actual evidence or following legal procedure. While the case may hold up in the long run, it seems like everywhere you look there's evidence of highly questionable activity by the government.The latest setback comes from Germany, where the US sought assistance from officials in seizing various assets of Dotcom's or Megauploads. However, the court has now rejected the request:
The Frankfurt judges have since rejected this request, because it contains insufficient evidence. The US legal team failed to demonstrate that a web hosting service for the illegal upload of copyrighted files, amounts to a criminal offence.Of course this was the same point that we raised the day that Megaupload was shut down. While it may be true that many Megaupload users have infringed on copyrights, there's a massive leap from that point to the idea that Megaupload is a criminal enterprise -- yet the US government's case basically skips over any details to make that leap. Thankfully cooler heads are recognizing that a significant amount of the US's case seems to be based on a fairy tale that US officials -- under the influence of Hollywood -- keep telling.
According to the German 'Telemediengesetz' (communications legislation), a hosting service for foreign files will generally not be accountable unless the host had active knowledge of illegal activity. The judges also emphasised that the concept of knowledge is limited to positive knowledge. Therefore if the service provider believes that it is possible or likely that a specific piece of information is stored on their server, this is not sufficient evidence of knowledge of abuse.
According to the court ruling, there is no legal obligation to monitor the transmitted data or stored information or to search for any illegal activity.
Tip to DOJ officials under the sway of Hollywood's version of the internet: remember, these people make their livings telling fairy tale stories. You know those opening credit lines about how something is "based on a true story"? Yeah, quite frequently the actual truth is a long way from what's shown. It seems that you may have been taken in by another such Hollywood "true" tale.
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Filed Under: assets, copyright, criminal, doj, germany, hosting, kim dotcom, liability
Companies: megaupload
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Niflheim
c/o Bifrost
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1:suprise
2:baseless claims threats etc crazy serial killer style due to not knowing where his/her life went so terribly wrong.
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1:suprise
2:baseless claims threats etc crazy serial killer style due to not knowing where his/her life went so terribly wrong."
3: ....
4: Profit!!!
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Of course that ain't gonna happen, since that last part is a fantasy, but hey, if the US can, I don't know, get the entertaining monkey off their backs and realize they aren't the ones in charge of the world, then maybe I might raise my flag in celebration.
Then again, you don't know what flag I'm going to fly.
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He likes it! Hey Mikey!
Oh im sorry, I thought this was the whacked out comment section.
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I really have no idea, but whatever it is, you're failing hard.
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1:suprise
2: ecouragement of mind change/pychotic vague threats and actions calm serial killer style.
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Cue the usual trolls arguing about how Germany is being a renegade judge, or some other similar butthurt bullshit.
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"the same [legalism] that we raised"
I believe most Rapidshare servers are in Germany. It's a net plus (ha, pun) for Germany as most stolen content is from US.
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
I shall now laugh at you.
Ah ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
...
HA!
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
The public. Culture is the sharing of ideas and expression amongst a group of people. Once content is released to the public, trying to put up artificial fences of monopoly ownership and control around it is silly.
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Re: Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
We could spend all day naming names of authors, actors, artists, musicians and other content creators who have stated on record that the creative accounting practices of the big content producers have cost them far more in payments/royalties/residuals than anything they may have lost due to privacy.
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Re: Re: Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
Lets start investigating the real problem here, the artists not getting there payments from the copyright cartel, from the labels and the studios. Lets investigate and fix the corrupt accounting methods used by the entertainment industry to keep the majority of the profits.
Lets strengthen the law that anyone can copy and use anything in the public domain, as long as they do not sell it for a profit.Anyone using content for profit must pay a reasonable portion to the creator of the content they use to make money.
Once the conversation gets going in the right direction and big business is the target for copyright laws , maybe then we will stop the trolls from suing and stealing from the normal citizens and stealing from the creators.
Wording not brilliant but I am sure you get the gist of my argument.
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
Also, the reason morality is not discussed, as has been stated repeatedly, is that morals are purely subjective. Yours aren't mine, mine aren't Mike's and so on and so forth.
Also, there has yet to be any shred of evidence showing even any profits made by Megaupload came from directly infringing content. What has been shown however is that some of their profits, as in SOME THAT CAN BE VERIFIED FOR A FACT, came from the legitimate and perfectly legal use of their services by various users.
Also, no content has been taken. This is the problem with you and your type. You try repeating something in the hopes that it'll come true. Nothing was ever taken. Thus there never were any stolen valuables. However, copyright may have been infringed upon, but that's not the same as it was outright stolen. Nor is content being uploaded without permission tantamount to "stolen valuables".
The law, has thus far, been clear on a majority of such matters. Your interpretation of it, as well as reality distorted views of it, notwithstanding.
RAPIDSHARE, as has been determined by German AND U.S. courts IS PERFECTLY LEGAL.
Basically, OotB, you're a fucking idiot and your strawmans and opinions are beyond flawed. So much so that it's almost pointless to rip them apart, because the facts are very much against you. That and you'll ignore the facts for whatever is convenient to yourself and your "arguments/points". 'tard.
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
How many times do you blame the Romans for building roads and aiding, murderers, bank robbers, kidnappers, rapists, ..., ..., ....
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
So I'm just going to leave it as at simple, unambiguous "fuck you and the three-dollar whore who birthed you."
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
When the Department of Justice starts living up to moral standards, we'll discuss "morality", boy.
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TWO DOG PILES OF GARBAGE! NICE!
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Re: "the same [legalism] that we raised"
Yeah, I think we can safely conclude that it's perfectly reasonable to bitch about legalism, because that's the core tenet of your case. Now, why don't you do as you threatened and leave the site for good?
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Germany joins the party
What I am sure most of us would like to see is action in the Hong Kong court system when currently they only play a submissive role stating that they will await for the US Court system to decide what to do.
They obviously need someone to point out that HK has its own laws (based on English law) and they need to look at the facts and evidence to make up their own mind. Mega had its HQ in HK so quite a lot of property there.
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Or better yet do what the Japanese have been doing and stop buying the entertainment industries product.
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They broke our Laws to go after Kim and now we are watching you.
In the End US Gov you won't walk away from this one unscathed.
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lets face it people. the US government IS an arrogent cocky ###face that whould sell its own mother to a sex ring if it got the chance.
and people have really been tame with them. its might just be me but its nice to have someone who when called an @@@hole whould turn around and call them the same thing. theres only so much room a person should get i guess.
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...In the actual story at least one of the humans did indeed have a head and spoke, and the rest of the film was artistic license.
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LMAO
Man, that shit will fuck you up!
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And which service is that?
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On the backs of artists?
Yeah, it's really cool.
Mike Masnick is so intellectually honest. I simply can't believe it when people call him out.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ysyZF-DZFY
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