Megaupload Defendants Get Internet Access Back; Kim Dotcom Allowed To Record An Album

from the conditions-of-bail dept

When Kim Dotcom was granted bail, we noted that it was rather silly that the conditions of bail included a ban on internet access. It appears that pretty much everyone involved in the case has actually agreed, and the terms of bail have been adjusted to allow all of the Megaupload defendants to have internet access. The US didn't even object to this request (which surprises me, actually).

What the US did object to, however, was Dotcom's request to be able to go to a nearby recording studio to complete an album he is supposedly working on. The US seems to question whether this album really exists as well as its likelihood of commercial success. However, the judge notes:

This Court cannot speculate on the success or otherwise of Mr Dotcom’s venture. The numerous varieties of modern musical genres suggest that there are probably unimagined audiences available, and modern legitimate digital distribution systems are changing the face of the music market. I could venture to suggest that notoriety alone could well be a marketing angle for Mr Dotcom’s venture.

In the end, he does allow Dotcom to go to the studio, but with specific requirements, including having to notify officials when he's going there, and only staying for four hours at a time. He has to alert officials when he arrives, at the 2 hour mark, and 5 minutes before he leaves -- and he's supposed to do so with a photo of himself on a smartphone (if he has a smartphone).

The US also objected to allowing the four defendants to meet in person, saying that by allowing them internet access, they could just Skype each other. However, the court agreed with the defendants that Skyping is not the same as actually meeting in person and is allowing that as well (again, in a limited fashion). The court notes that the "flight risk" that the US keeps worrying about appears to be exaggerated, though it's still keeping pretty strict limits on Dotcom and the others, and may revisit the rules in the future.

Of course, I'm still wondering why internet access was banned in the first place. It seems like such an overaggressive ban on something that's so central to the ways in which everyone communicates these days.

Filed Under: bail, internet access, kim dotcom
Companies: megaupload

Kim Dotcom Fires Back: Raises Questions About US's Evidence, Shows Studios Were Eager To Work With Megaupload

from the the-court-of-public-opinion dept

After the US shutdown of Megaupload, we noted that there were serious issues with the indictment, in that the US Attorneys seemed to make all sorts of leaps of logic to make their case, and it suggested that they had come into the case with a pre-determined idea (take the site down), and then cherry picked and distorted evidence to make the case. For example, we noted that the indictment used the lack of a search engine on Megaupload to indicate that it was a "criminal conspiracy," because it was "hiding" the infringement on the site. But that made little sense, considering that previous cases had found that having a search engine was an indication of inducement, and made a site against the law. The US government seemed to be saying that having search is inducement, but not having search makes you a conspiracy. That's crazy.

Kim Dotcom is continuing to make his case publicly, sharing a bunch of details of why he's confident that he'll win and why the US Government's case is wrong. In particular, he takes aim at the claims that he's guilty of direct infringement for uploading and sharing some songs. He claims that the government misses the fact that he uploaded songs he owned, but he never actually shared them publicly:

“A link distributed on December 3, 2006 by defendant DOTCOM links to a musical recording by U.S. recording artist ’50 Cent’. A single click on the link accesses a Megaupload.com download page that allows any Internet user to download a copy of the file from a computer server that is controlled by the Mega Conspiracy,” the indictment reads.

Dotcom told TorrentFreak that the file in question wasn’t infringing at all. He explained that he actually bought that song legally, and that he uploaded the file in private to test a new upload feature. He quickly picked a random file from his computer, which turned out to be this song.

“The link to the song was sent using the private link-email-feature of Megaupload to our CTO with the file description ‘test’. I was merely testing the new upload feature,” Dotcom said.

“The URL to this song had zero downloads. This was a ‘private link’ and it has never been published,” he added.

That raises questions about whether or not you can upload your own music for private use -- but given things like Google's Music locker and Amazon's music locker, it seems that lots of companies let you do something quite similar. That said, I would imagine the government's response is just the fact that such a system lets you offer up "private links" means that it's a form of distribution. However, it does make the government's case a little trickier.

Separately, Dotcom reveals that the large movie studios, who were the key source pushing for the indictment in the first place, were eager to work with Megaupload and the company had relationships with many of those companies. There are full emails there, including Disney offering up an alternative agreement to Mega's terms of service, and Warner Bros. asking for easier ways to upload its content (and talking about being able to share key movie content). The WB email is pretty damning:

Hello Megavideo,

My name is Joshua from the Warner Bros. Advanced Digital Services department. I would like to know if your site can take a Media RSS feed for our syndications. We would like to upload our content all at once instead of one video at a time.

Thank you for your time and funny content,

Joshua D. Carver

This is, certainly reminiscent of the revelation that while Viacom was freaking out over YouTube and suing, its marketing people were uploading tons of clips, and that Viacom was so confused that it actually sued YouTube over clips it had uploaded itself.

All that said, I still think that Kim Dotcom's decision to fight this in the press is a huge mistake. Even though he makes it out like he's fighting the MPAA -- and I'm sure they were absolutely behind much of this -- he's really fighting the US Attorneys, a part of the Justice Department, and they don't deal well with things like this. They can be incredibly vindictive and are focused solely on winning the case, not on what the public thinks. They'll use everything Dotcom says publicly and turn it against him.

Along those lines, for all the parallels discussed to the YouTube case, or even the Hotfile case, it's important to recognize the key difference. Those cases were civil cases between two private parties, where the end results could be injunctions or monetary awards over copyright infringement charges. Megaupload's founders are facing criminal conspiracy charges, which are an entirely different ballgame. Yes, the conspiracy charges are based on copyright infringement, but arguing solely about the copyright infringement part misses the main thrust of the government's case. The conspiracy charge is why they can do something ridiculous like claiming the lack of a search engine is evidence of a crime (even if having a search engine is evidence of inducement). Having all of this rest on the "conspiracy" charge means that the rules in this case are different, and the evidence just needs to show conspiracy -- not necessarily focus on the infringement aspects.

I think that Dotcom and his lawyers absolutely should be making these points in court to show that the conspiracy angle falls down when you scratch beneath the surface. Furthermore, they should probably be making the case that, at best, this should have involved a civil copyright lawsuit. But fighting a criminal conspiracy charge as if it's the same thing as a civil copyright infringement dispute is a mistake, and it's one that federal prosecutors will jump on and exploit strongly. Dotcom is right to point out that there's a serious conflict of interest in the fact that Neil MacBride, the former anti-piracy boss for the Business Software Alliance, is leading the case against him -- but arguing that right now isn't going to do him any favors. MacBride is a smart guy, and he'll use all of this against Dotcom.

I think there are a lot of serious issues raised by this case, and I think the government has massively overreached in its indictment. But I do worry (quite a bit) that Dotcom's decision to take his arguments to the press first may backfire and could taint the case, where having strong legal arguments to counter the government's questionable claims are really really important.

Filed Under: conspiracy, copyright, evidence, infringement, kim dotcom, us government
Companies: disney, mpaa, warner bros.

Procedural Error By Law Enforcement Means Restraining Order On Kim Dotcom 'Null And Void'

from the oops dept

We've already seen that the claims made by law enforcement in the indictment against Megaupload has raised significant legal questions, as they seemed to assume all sorts of things not necessarily factually-based. Part of that overreach resulted in a New Zealand judge granting Kim Dotcom bail despite US authorities insisting that the court keep him locked up. Now things are getting even worse, as a court has declared the restraining order issued in the case as "null and void" and having "no legal effect" after law enforcement admitted to making a significant series of procedural errors. The end result may mean that everything seized from Dotcom -- including his money, cars and other goods... may need to be returned.

The police apparently realized this and tried to apply for the proper restraining order after the fact, explaining to the judge that they had made five specific errors in the initial application. The judge is now figuring out what to do and whether or not this means that the government needs to return Dotcom's property. Of course, there's a good chance that the judge will allow the government to continue to hold the property and admit merely that "mistakes were made" and that they've now been corrected. However, given how many mistakes we've already seen in this case -- and the apparent carelessness with which so much of it happened -- it leads you to wonder how many other "errors" or shortcuts law enforcement in both New Zealand and the US took in bringing this case forward.

It's no secret that Dotcom's larger-than-life persona has been an easy target in the attacks on Megaupload, but it's beginning to appear that law enforcement assumed that just because the guy is an obnoxious show-off with a criminal past that it didn't need to actually follow all the rules in bringing a case against him this time. That's not how the judicial system is supposed to work.

Filed Under: kim dotcom, new zealand, procedural errors, restraining order
Companies: megaupload

Kim Dotcom Gives TV Interview Where He Insists The Charges Against Him Are A Joke

from the making-his-case dept

While Kim Dotcom is out on bail in New Zealand, he gave an interview to a New Zealand TV station. You can watch it below or read the transcript at the previous link: Generally speaking, if you're facing criminal charges, it's probably not a wise idea to give public interviews to the press, and I don't see how doing this helps him in any way. He more or less lays out his expected argument concerning the copyright infringement claims, which are pretty much what you'd expect: that they followed the DMCA, took stuff down on request, and even gave copyright holders special access by which they could take links down themselves. Dotcom is clearly very well versed in the legal issues here, and he's choosing his words extremely carefully, but it still seems a bit silly to reveal such arguments outside of court, and it could come back to haunt him later (you can bet US prosecutors are pouring over every word to figure out what they can hang him on.

Also, while the interview focuses on the copyright issues, it avoids the key part of the charges, which is the criminal conspiracy issue. Obviously, those are built off of the copyright claims, but just fighting the copyright claims and ignoring the conspiracy charges is unlikely to be a winning strategy.

One key point he raises in the interview is the fact that, despite being in business for seven years, no MPAA studio ever took any legal action against them other than sending DMCA takedown notices which he claims they obeyed (the indictment suggests that Megaupload didn't necessarily have the greatest record on following takedowns):

JC: CNET, in an article that looked pretty well researched to me and well sourced said, and I quote, “among the copyright owners who’ve accused Megaupload of piracy, including software and video game companies none of them presented the FBI with more, quote, significant evidence, end quote, about Megaupload than the MPAA. Did any members of the MPAA come to you and say “we have concerns, Kim, about what’s going on in Megaupload”.

KD: Never. And I gotta tell you this – if you are a company that is hurt so much by what we are doing, billions of dollars of damage, you don’t wait and sit and do nothing. You call your lawyers and you try and sue us and try to stop us from what we are doing.

JC: So a cease and desist of some form or other. Did you ever receive any letters from members of the MPAA saying “the latest James Bond film is being exchanged, ad infinitum, through Megaupload, you must stop it”? Did you ever receive…

KD: Absolutely not. No legal document has ever reached us from any of these studios. The only thing that we get is Takedown Notices and them using the direct delete access on our website. So, isn’t it surprising to you that when I’m the pirate king and I’m causing all this damage that none of them has ever even attempted to sue us, to sue us for damages, you know? If you would run a business that loses billions of dollars because of me, you wouldn’t just sit there and do nothing. I mean, this investigation was ongoing for over two years, you know, the company was live for over seven years, the MPAA has always thrown names at us and called us all kinds of things but they’ve never actually done anything to you know, take us to court and for the very simple reason that there is a law in the US that protects us which is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that protects online service providers from actions of their users and this is the same law that allowed Google to still exist, that allowed YouTube to still exist. You know that Viacom sued YouTube and YouTube claimed that they were protected by the DMCA and they won. And if you look at the YouTube case files, the emails that were exchanged internally we are a lamb compared to what was going on at YouTube at the time but these guys got away. They won their lawsuit and I’m sitting in jail, my house is being raided, all my assets are frozen without a trial, without a hearing. This is completely insane, is what it is.

Elsewhere he notes that he's an easy target because of his "flamboyant" past, but that, alone isn't illegal. But he also responds to the basic questions pretty clearly, noting that they can't proactively monitor the service, because (1) that's not required by law (2) it's technically impossible and (3) it could raise privacy questions under US law (that part might be a stretch, since the uploads weren't private, but public).

I still think there are serious problems with the lawsuit, but the case against him is a bit bigger than what he portrays in the interview, and he's going to need a much stronger defense if he's going to actually win the case.

Filed Under: bail, copyright, dmca, kim dotcom, kim schmitz, new zealand, privacy
Companies: megaupload

Megaupload Boss Kim Dotcom Granted Bail After US Fails To Prove He's Got Cash Stashed Away To Make An Escape

from the nice-try dept

Whatever you might think of Kim Dotcom (originally Schmitz), the founder of Megaupload, he at least deserves a fair trial. US officials had worked hard to keep him locked up without bail, but a New Zealand court has finally granted him bail after no one could show him having access to vast funds elsewhere that he could use to make a run for it. Apparently, US officials insisted that he must have those funds, but couldn't produce any evidence, and the court realized that's not a particularly good reason to keep him locked up:

In the North Shore District Court this morning, Justice Nevin Dawson said that after a long time where officials could investigate the Dotcom's potential access to funds - none of significance had been found. Justice Dawson said it was "highly unlikely" that he had other financial resources available to him that had not already been seized.

Prosecution acting for the United States Government had said that because Dotcom was "very wealthy" it was probably he had more bank accounts.

However, Justice Dawson said that put Dotcom in the position of having to "prove a negative" and that assertion was not enough to imply his flight risk.

Four new bank accounts were discovered in the Philippines, but they were empty, he said.

"The suspicion that Mr. Dotcom is very wealthy is not evidence of further assets and cannot be used against him."

I've certainly noticed attempts by many to try Dotcom based on his outward appearance or the fact that he clearly was a show off who flung money around. And I can understand that desire. But, any trial should be based on the actual facts against him, not the fact that he was apparently tacky and a showoff when he spent money. If that, alone, was a crime, then tons of famous musicians, movie stars and athletes deserve the same treatment.

That said, the conditions of bail include no internet usage, which (as we've noted in the past) is pretty ridiculous, since nearly everything touches the internet these days, including popular phone systems. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that he can't have anything to do with cyberlockers or Megaupload or such, but a complete internet ban seems extreme.

Filed Under: bail, kim dotcom, kim schmitz, new zealand
Companies: megaupload

Megaupload Details Raise Significant Concerns About What DOJ Considers Evidence Of Criminal Behavior

from the bad-cases-and-bad-law dept

Yesterday I wrote up a first reaction to the Megaupload case. Having spent some more time going through the indictment in much greater detail, I have some more thoughts and concerns.

First, it's important to acknowledge that the founder of Megaupload, who goes by Kim Dotcom, has a long history of flaunting flouting the law in a variety of ways. That makes him quite unsympathetic in a court. On top of that, there are certain claims in the indictment that, if true, mean it's quite likely that he broke the law. Whether or not the violations amount to racketeering & conspiracy is beyond any analysis that we're going to be able to do here. I would say that I would not be at all surprised if he's found guilty.

Where my concerns come in is in some of the "evidence" that's used to add to the overall indictment. To be clear, in a case like this, the issue is the evidence as a whole, combined to show intent and a general pattern to actions. So the allegations in the indictment don't necessarily mean that any individual action is, by itself, illegal. But, I still worry that some of the specific actions used to paint this picture are (1) potentially taken out of context, (2) are presented in a way that likely misrepresents the actual situation and (3) could come back to haunt other online services who are providing perfectly legitimate services.

• For example, the indictment points out that Megaupload did not have a site search, by which users could find material. That's interesting, but it seems like an odd piece of information in making the case. Other copyright cases have specifically found that having a search engine is part of an inducement claim -- so there's an argument that the idea not to have a search engine wasn't so much "conspiracy," as it was an attempt to follow the guidance of the court and to stay legal. To use the lack of a feature, that previously was shown to be a problem, as evidence of a conspiracy is crazy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.



• Separately, the indictment lists various feature choices as part of making its case. There is, for example, the fact that if certain files aren't downloaded in a certain amount of time, then they are deleted. The indictment presents this as evidence that the service is mainly for infringement, because it potentially precludes the idea that the site is used for long-term backup. Of course, that falsely assumes that long-term backup is the only legitimate use of a cyberlocker. But that might not be the case at all. The service could (and is) used to just distribute large files in a directed, short-term effort. If anything, the fact that files are deleted after they're done being shared highlights a key legal function of the site: it was used by people to exchange large files once or twice, since they're too big to share via email attachment.
  
  On top of that, other, legitimate, sites have similar policies. The popular image hosting site Imgur does the same thing: if people don't access an image for an extended period of time, Imgur may delete it. That's not because it's encouraging infringement, but because it knows that the service is being used for short-term distribution.



• There is also the question of paying certain uploaders. However, there does seem to be a bit of a stretch in assuming that because some uploaders get lots of downloads by posting infringing content, all such "paid" users must be putting up infringing works. There are plenty of viral videos that are quite popular not because of infringement. In fact, much of this seems to be based on the simple assumption that encouraging more usage means they must be encouraging infringement. It's entirely possible that Dotcom did encourage infringement, but it feels like there should be more actual evidence of that, rather than pasting together a bunch of claims that could be interpreted in legitimate ways. Paying users for popularity is not, and should not, be evidence of criminality, or even infringement.



• There is also the claim that, while the company did remove some works upon takedown notice, it merely removed one link to the work, but left up other links. The issue here, as noted elsewhere in the indictment, is that Megaupload has a system for de-duplication -- so that if multiple people uploaded the same file, it only kept one version, but made it available at a different link for each person. This is the same sort of thing that lots of legitimate sites do, including Dropbox. The question, then, is if you do something like that with a locker service, and keep a single file, accessible through multiple locker links, what do you do if you get a takedown? This is still somewhat of an open question -- and was one of the points raised (in a civil copyright infringement context, which is very different) in the EMI vs. MP3tunes case. In that case, the company was told that it did, in fact, have to delete the actual file. But that raises other questions. Let's present a hypothetical: what if infringer A and authorized distributor B both upload the same file. The system de-dupes and uses a single file for each to access. Now, the copyright holder discovers A's version, and issues a takedown. It will automatically take down B's authorized work as well -- even though that copy was not infringing. Or... what if someone uploads a copy, but for their own personal use to access remotely, but never shares the link? In that case, no infringement is occurring... but DOJ seems to claim that the site would have to delete the file anyway, or there may be criminal risk. That's crazy.



• The complaint argues that because Megaupload's "top 100" list does not actually list the top 100 downloads on the site, this is more evidence of conspiracy. The issue here is that the list apparently removes files that are likely infringing. But... again, in other cases (like the IsoHunt case) such lists were also seen as proof of inducement. So, again it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If Megaupload's list showed infringing works, then they'd be charged with inducement... but removing them from the list makes them guilty of conspiracy?



• In addition, the indictment shows that, despite the company not being a US company, it did set up a DMCA agent, a tool to make removing files easier, and did take down works on request. There are some reasonable questions about if it ignored some takedown messages (likely) and the fact that it put limits on how many takedowns could be done per day with its tool. Those certainly work against the company in terms of retaining any DMCA safe harbors. Similarly, there is some evidence that the owners of the site may have uploaded infringing files themselves -- which, again, has no DMCA protections.



• The indictment points out that Megaupload used its hashing system to maintain a list of known child porn and block those files from being re-uploaded. The problem here is that copyright is different than child porn. Child porn is a strict liability issue: it is always illegal. There are no extenuating circumstances. But copyrighted content is different. It could be authorized. It could be fair use. And that depends on the specific use, not the file. So using a hash system there doesn't make sense, whereas it can make sense for child porn.



• The indictment also lists all sorts of emails, some of which are more damaging than others, but some of which may be taken out of context. All of them seem to assume that Megaupload employees can easily tell, often just by file name, what's infringing and what's not. I think this is an assumption that many people who don't understand copyright law make. And while you can guess... it's not always so easy. The recording industry, for example, regularly uses cyberlockers as a legitimate way to distribute promo copies. How would Megaupload know if certain files were legit or not, without further details? Yes, there's obvious infringement happening on the site, but will Megaupload always know which specific files are infringing?



• The indictment discusses demands from Universal Music that Megaupload would need to meet before UMG would even discuss a potential license. This included: "proactive fingerprint filtering to ensure that there is no infringing music content hosted on its service; proactive text filtering for pre-release titles that may not appear in fingerprint databases at an early stage; terminate the accounts of users that repeatedly infringe copyright; limit the number of possible downloads from each file; process right holder take down notices faster and more efficiently." While the DMCA does require action against repeat infringers, there are no legal requirements for the other issues. It's not clear why that should be evidence here. The fact that Megaupload didn't go above and beyond what the law requires shouldn't be seen as evidence of wrongdoing...



• Many of the emails discuss the fact that, in general, there are infringing works on the site. Yeah, but that's the same issue in the YouTube case and other cases. General knowledge that your tool is used for infringement is kind of meaningless, because you can't take works down if you don't know what's actually infringing.



• Money laundering claims are tricky and perhaps there was some "money laundering" going on here, but this indictment seems to include basic payments to Megaupload's hosting companies. Using payments to companies for hosting as evidence of money laundering seems pretty extreme, and suggests the possibility that this is just a "lumping in" situation, just to pile on more things that look bad, but aren't illegal by themselves.

Do these kinds of things work together to paint a picture of the company encouraging infringement? It's certainly possible that a court will add up a bunch of things like this and insist that's true. My fear is that, at least with some of these points, there are perfectly reasonable, non-infringing contexts for them. Then, what I worry about, is that in later cases, these types of things are used as "evidence" against companies and services that are legit. Even worse, there's a real worry that it creates chilling effects for lots of legitimate services who do things like de-duplification, or have legitimate backup services. If you're running Amazon S3 or Dropbox, do you now suddenly change how you do business, just to avoid the possibility of being accused of racketeering and criminal copyright infringement? That's worrisome.

But the bigger overall issue is why this action and why now? Companies in the US have filed civil cases against Megaupload in the US and the company was willing to come to the US and deal in US courts. Taking it up to a criminal "conspiracy" and racketeering charge seems like overkill, with tremendous collateral damage and chilling effects.

Filed Under: censorship, chilling effects, copyright, criminal copyright infringement, kim dotcom, racketeering, takedowns
Companies: megaupload

DOJ Gives Its Opinion On SOPA By Unilaterally Shutting Down 'Foreign Rogue Site' Megaupload... Without SOPA/PIPA

from the screw-you-all----we're-the-doj dept

If you've been paying attention to the MPAA/US Chamber of Commerce/RIAA claims about why they need PIPA/SOPA, a key argument is that they need it to go after these "foreign rogue sites" that cannot be reached under existing US law. Among the most prominent sites often talked about is Megaupload -- which accounts for a huge percentage of the "rogue site traffic" that the US Chamber of Commerce and other bill supporters love to cite. However, it certainly appears that the US Justice Department and ICE don't think they need any new law to go after people in foreign countries over claims of criminal copyright infringement. As lots of folks are currently digesting, the Justice Department, along with ICE, have shut down the site and arrested many of the principles (with the help of New Zealand law enforcement) and charged them with massive amounts of criminal copyright infringement.

Of course, just last week, we had noted that Megaupload was immune from SOPA/PIPA because it doesn't apply to dot coms -- but this is still interesting and crazy for a whole variety of reasons:

• ICE and DOJ have a pretty freaking dreadful record so far in bringing these kinds of cases for online copyright infringement. It's kind of amazing that they did this so soon after they totally screwed up and had to give back Dajaz1 (without an apology, by the way). Megaupload may be a different type of site... but, still...
• Similar cyberlockers, like RapidShare, have already been declared legal in both Europe and the US. I don't know the details of Megaupload's situation -- and certainly its founder has a... um... colorful history... but it seems pretty extreme to totally shut down the site prior to any adversarial hearing.
• In the last few days and months, Megaupload had announced plans to help artists make more money... and had announced that very successful and famous music producer Swizz Beatz had become CEO of Megaupload. Beatz is also married to recording superstar Alicia Keys and was responsible for getting all those RIAA artists to endorse Megaupload. All indications were that the company was clearly building a legitimate system for artists to make money and fans to get content. And it seemed that many artists clearly supported the site.
• So why do we need SOPA/PIPA again? It seems like the DOJ/ICE just undermined the key argument of the MPAA/RIAA/US CoC for why they need these laws. After all, Megaupload was one of the key examples used for why the law was needed.
• At the same time there are huge questions about why the government is involved here. Megaupload is currently engaged in a lawsuit in the US -- and contrary to claims of SOPA/PIPA supporters, the company seemed more than willing to appear in court to deal with civil copyright claims. Why leap to criminal claims?
• Is this really the message the US DOJ and White House want to be giving the day after mass, widespread protests happened concerning a fear that this new law would be used to take down websites? Honestly, this is a big "fuck you" to the protestors, showing that the government already has this power thanks to the last law they passed: ProIP (which they promised they'd never abuse).
• The indictment itself -- embedded below -- is so full of hyperbole ("Mega Conspiracy") it sounds like it was written by the entertainment industry itself...

Anyway, I'm sure we'll have much more to say about all of this... but wow is the timing dumb on the government's part. Not only does it undermine the argument for PIPA/SOPA, but it raises significant questions about whether or not the feds already have too much censorship power.

Filed Under: copyright, criminal copyright, cyberlockers, doj, fbi, foreign rogue sites, ice, indictment, kim dotcom, pipa, protect ip, seiruzes, sopa, swizz beatz
Companies: megaupload