Posts by Dylan Reeve
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Unfortunately I think it was a poorly considered remark by Harvey given that he was hearing a case where "U.S." is one of the parties involved. It wasn't related to the Dotcom case but it was related to both copyright law and the USA which are pivotal in the Dotcom case.
Regardless of what Harvey meant by his statement, and I have no reason at all to doubt his professionalism as a judge, it can clearly be interpreted as being biased.
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Gareth Ward,
The upgradeability of the product he bought is compromised – the product as he bought it when he bought it remains exactly the same. The question is whether or not condition-free upgradeability is an implicit function you are purchasing…
I guess, although to some extent it can become core functionality as well when we're talking about applications that are reliant on server-based APIs etc.
But this is probably increasingly the price we pay for a reliance on cloud-based and always-online services. The hardware becomes almost irrelevant, serving only as a gateway to the software that we really need.
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The story in the Herald was weird and seemed to contain a lot of conflicts, but there is an interesting point and one that troubles me about the Apple's i-devices and to a lesser extent many other smartphones and tablets...
I buy a product but the use of that product is heavily limited by my acceptance of further limitations and licenses that are either not disclosed at the time or purchase or change outright after the fact.
The iPad is entirely useless when first purchased (or at least mine was) without iTunes. So immediately to even use the device I have to install that software and accept any terms it requires. To continue using the product in the way it's intended I also have to continue accepting any changes in those terms that Apple chooses to make.
In this case Brian has found a condition in the terms he doesn't wish to agree to and as a result the usability of the product the bought and owns outright is seriously compromised. Maybe not to the extent the article applies, but certainly in some ways.
I can't really think of many other parallels outside of consumer technology (and not even that many within it) where these sorts of situations exist. While it's fairly benign currently I really don't like the direction it's heading. We already see with media that we don't really 'own' the products we buy any more.
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I blah blahed on about Dotcom on my website, btw:
http://dylanreeve.posterous.com/a-mega-conspiracyThere are a lot of fascinating aspects about this case.
Fundamentally I believe he knew what was going on with MegaUpload, but he spent a lot of money on lawyers to make sure he did all the things the law required to keep him out of trouble. But it didn't work. It's interesting, because that's pretty much what many big companies do - act in ways that are probably outside the spirit of the law, but carefully within the letter of it.
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Hard News: Finally, the Teapot Tape?, in reply to Russell Brown,
That and: police were sent into newsrooms in election week for this?
Well Key always said it was about the principle, so perhaps he was telling the truth about that much.
I certainly hope this whole situation does make it into a court one day because there were some very interesting issues of law involved.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Wouldn’t work for NZ audiences? Well I would prefer a 2-4 week break as opposed to just stopping a series in mid flight to show an Aussie dancing show or whatever and never see it return to our screens, with no explanation to boot.
Yeah, well that's a different issue entirely. Small potential audience to compete for, ratings are the key metric. Rather unfortunate. Something that Sky doesn't really have to worry about.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
From the public usage perspective, I agree. But that’s not what the alleged crime is about. It’s as if MU was going through those lockers and making money of showing their contents to other people.
More like it was as if MU were letting anyone off the street who had the right code written on a bit of paper go into the lockers get something and walk away. These visitors could either stand around and MegaUpload staff would recite ads at them for 45 seconds, or they could pay a little money and the MU staff would just let them in.
Now perhaps also MegaUpload staff also happened to pick up the underground newspapers that these lockers and their passwords are advertised...
I'm not totally sure on how MegaVideo was working, but as I understand it MegaUpload themselves never published links to any infringing files.
It would, indeed. Consensus among some people I know (some of whom use MU and other sites for both purposes) is that the ratio legitimate:infringing would be very low (something like 1:500 was one estimate, which was promptly laughed at by the others present). It would be interesting to see an audit of files, but I doubt that will happen
Give the massive quantity of data they had I find that ratio difficult to believe, but perhaps?
Also files that were present on the server but weren't being linked to from outside (maybe unlikely?) weren't infringing, or at least MegaUpload wasn't involved in the infringement - another reason I think they weren't obligated to search for and delete duplicate copies of notified files. Unless they are made aware it's being actively shared it's not a breech.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Sorry, let me rephrase that. If it were alleged that one of a bank’s major income streams was illegal, that it was engaged in large scale money laundering — on a level beyond merely `errors’, and an officer of the bank had convictions for insider trading, then it would almost certainly be frozen.
Maybe, but I'm not sure that's a fair comparison.
The activities of MegaUpload are much more akin to safe deposit boxes, or storage lockers.
It would be fascinating to find out what percentage of MU's business was infringing. I certainly know plenty of people who used it legitimately.
By the way, here is a copyright file that I am sharing without authorisation from my Dropbox account... Hope you guys have copies of all your files from Dropbox!
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Sacha,
Unless a government with balls regulates otherwise.
No government will regulate away an entire business model. TVNZ, TV3, Sky - they all depend on the ability to exclusively license popular content.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Mostly with you. Dylan, but it already has changed a great deal. And we’ll see more change. NZ more-or-less missed the cable boom, but that fragmented markets in the US and Europe.
Lots of ‘shopping channels’… but also HBO making direct to cable shows- including some of the best TV drama ever produced- that have never been broadcast free-to-air in the US.Same thing... The content is first and foremost licensed for broadcast, internet rights are secondary to that (and usually bundled).
Although NetFlix is starting to commission original content - that could make a big difference.