Kim is quite obviously not wholly innocent … he is the eric cartman of the geek world, not wholly evil just sometimes dubious in behaviour and intensively seeking self reward right on the edge of law and morality. And he thought megauploads stance would be a matter for lawyers, of which he could afford, also in his public flamboyance his business partners seem to have gone unnoticed ? Link removal is not offering the same feature as file removal to copyright holders, hash checking files being uploaded so as to store a single version of a file whilst enabling multiple download links, tends to work quite nicely to save on storage for “large similar video or music files” rather than your average personal word document which is most likely bespoke, and rewarding uploaders with money for heavily downloaded files, encourages some dubious behaviour, though youtube has worked that same model by rewarding user content creation and distribution, Im sure kims personal music file access rivalled that of itunes match. Sadly google is probably the cop in this scenario as they can measure another sites impact on the web the best, in terms of search and advertising, did google ever write cheques to megaupload ? or was megauploads advertising bespoke ? 4% of internet traffic and google not getting an advertising cut ?
Its also true his arrest was over the top, but the media industry’s ambition is not to win against him but to slow throttle him with a 5 year court case, stop his business and leave him as a penniless example to others, that is a sufficient win for them they dont need more. And the fact the FBI appears to operate on behalf of the MCAA indicates a weird power hierarchy ? Also another reason why the media want to control the internet is not just the Piracy excuse, its because they are also threatened by user generated and non mainstream media content output for a viable share of the publics attention, you know this is true, when the yogscast blew past a billion views ? all of megauploads downloads didn’t equate to a billion downloads. But then again youtube=google can be considered corporo mainstream, after all any wealth seeker can buy shares in it whereas megaupload didn’t share what it was making with an international investor class. Note also he was based in a friendly territorys to the US that made his arrest and prosecution easy, whilst numerous other sites and servers that deliver piracy on a greater scale and more overtly go unchallenged, in piracy prevention it only makes sense to go so far, cost of policing etc unless you get your information for free ?
Kim is right in his video to highlight the real danger which is the media industry wants full control to shape the internet at their will into their paytill, this they should not be given as they have too much power as it is. And the truth is that films can be distributed very easily in digital terms and that lowers the media industrys distribution costs and these distribution costs will continue to decrease in the future, films should cost less in a digital viewing form, and theyre is no reason for them not to be released on the internet at the same time they are viewed in cinemas, the cinema is allot less important to people nowadays in terms of viewing experience with such big screens at home.