This seems non-judgemental. But the Big Brother arm of my government reaches where it wants. Scary. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/ff-kim-dotcom/

 

Very interesting article.

Kim is a scumbag, built an empire on online file-lockers. There's tons of frauds going on in his business. Just stating the obvious.

Still, if we go that way : CD-RW and harddrive sellers should be fined as well.*

Second fact : on the release of our albums (3 so far), we did some piracy raids with my band (basically asking (sending 10s of e-mails) for megaupload and such to remove our album from their services). MegaUpload were the faster to answer and take action (few hours). Every times. (Some other didn't answer at all, or 2 days later)

Third : Philips stopped his music production work (in 1998, or a bit later). Next year they started to sell CD writers, and CD-R.

* In France, a company (well, two) share a monopoly of private copy redistribution rights.
They got a kind of mandatory (and fake) status for french interpret and author rights. And since they're the only one in this game, they get the whole pie.
The concept:
Since people copy (there's a right for a private copy) some music/movies on DVD/CD/harddrive/... SO, a significant share on such sell are being taxed (4 or 5%). When you buy an empty harddrive, you pay money to Universal and EMI (since they have the significant part on copyrighted recorded music).

I save some pics of my cat or homebrewed porn : I pay the tax. (In case it leaks and make me a adult movie star)
I work with heavy file of music being produced : I pay the tax. (same)
I backup some files : I pay the tax (too bad it's not related to media content)
I buy some music on iTunes (buying a right to store and reproduce) : I pay the tax (twice: directly to producer, through itunes, and indirectly)
I pirate music : I pay the tax (fair enough, right?)
Universal France buys a bunch of harddrive for their online shop server : I suppose they pay/
...

The irony is everywhere on this matter. In France it just get more baroque.
There's abuse on every sides.

 

PMS In Spain there is a similar situation about empty support. They are taxed like if they where going to be used for illegal copy all the time. Even when you buy a camera as it comes with some flash memory. So when you take a picture of your children on vacation, you are paying author rights to this Spanish Author rights organization called SGAE.
(Which director Teddy Bautista have been charged in 2011 for stilling tens of millions while he has a salary of 340.000 euros a year but he was from PP party which wins the last presidential so now we don´t hear about the case any more).
I suggest that you look in France who are the friends of administrators of SACEM, (Jean-Noël Tronc) and you tell me if there is no political implication too.

Behind the smoke wall of shouts for author right there is a huge amount of money easy to move without being declared which make financing a party very easy, that´s why there is a so close implication between political parties and Author rights associations.

So the logic says: If I am already paying like if I was a pirate, what´s the difference with being one?

The other point is that we can see that the whole story goes about the money (do you pay or not the taxes) not about why people are more interested of doing illegal piracy than just pay for music or movie.
After I buy 5 music CDs for 21 euros each with not even 2 good songs in each that means 105 euros for 10 songs, I feel a bit cheated.

Now in Spain, the (Anti)Culture minister just declared that culture is luxury amusement so taxes are going to go up to 33% this helps a lot of course.

Now coming back to Kindotcom : was hes business good or bad? And all that blabla, i´d say Do you know this old Chinese word that says "when the wise shows the moon, the fool look at the finger"? Well, I think that the fool is the one who don´t look at the wise other hand.
Why does this operation against Megaupload appears at that time and against that enterprise? This is the right question. Again, look for political party and who give them money for their campaign.