Kim Dotcom - the gift that keeps on giving

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#3272324 16-Aug-2024 08:44

elpenguino:

Interesting that he is being pursued so vigorously for what is essentially a civil law suit.

And for this most heinous alleged crime of letting people transport copies of hollywood movies he could spend the rest of his life in a concrete box with actual criminals. The whole thing seems way overblown by the americans.

Yes this will be a show trial for the US media companies . I'm sure he did nothing different to what Google Drive, MS OneDrive , Dropbox etc are currently doing. I'm sure the FBI won't be hunting them down.

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#3272335 16-Aug-2024 09:07

old3eyes:

elpenguino:

Interesting that he is being pursued so vigorously for what is essentially a civil law suit.

And for this most heinous alleged crime of letting people transport copies of hollywood movies he could spend the rest of his life in a concrete box with actual criminals. The whole thing seems way overblown by the americans.

Yes this will be a show trial for the US media companies . I'm sure he did nothing different to what Google Drive, MS OneDrive , Dropbox etc are currently doing. I'm sure the FBI won't be hunting them down.

You missed my post in the previous page.

It's not piracy only.

"Along with three co-defendants, Dotcom was indicted by a US grand jury on a range of charges including conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to infringe copyright on a commercial scale and money laundering"

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#3272337 16-Aug-2024 09:12

freitasm:

You missed my post in the previous page.

It's not piracy only.

"Along with three co-defendants, Dotcom was indicted by a US grand jury on a range of charges including conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to infringe copyright on a commercial scale and money laundering"

I might be wrong, but those charges only become valid if he is found guilty of the primary piracy charges.

Matthew

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#3272350 16-Aug-2024 10:49

mdooher:

freitasm:

You missed my post in the previous page.

It's not piracy only.

"Along with three co-defendants, Dotcom was indicted by a US grand jury on a range of charges including conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to infringe copyright on a commercial scale and money laundering"

I might be wrong, but those charges only become valid if he is found guilty of the primary piracy charges.

I'm impressed how much of a fight you can put up if you have lots of money. It's 12 years or so since the dumb waiter was smashed in.

Most of us would have to cave in or face financial ruin. It's bad that justice is out of reach for most of us.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#3272464 16-Aug-2024 12:20

elpenguino:

I'm impressed how much of a fight you can put up if you have lots of money. It's 12 years or so since the dumb waiter was smashed in.

Most of us would have to cave in or face financial ruin. It's bad that justice is out of reach for most of us.

You don't need lots of money to fight extradition, just lots of determination

They have been l trying to extradite a Korean murder suspect to China since 2011.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/132526796/nzs-attempted-hurry-up-to-un-over-suspects-extradition-to-china

Basically it is a broken process, because even with this formal step taken, KDC will file a "Judicial review" which will argue that the Minister did not undertake a fair and extensive process in coming to the conclusion to extradite him.

This is in the High Court, If that goes against KDC, he will appeal it to the Court of Appeal, and then to the Supreme court,

He's gonna be around for a few more years at least,

elpenguino

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#3272519 16-Aug-2024 13:01

wellygary:

elpenguino:

I'm impressed how much of a fight you can put up if you have lots of money. It's 12 years or so since the dumb waiter was smashed in.

Most of us would have to cave in or face financial ruin. It's bad that justice is out of reach for most of us.

You don't need lots of money to fight extradition, just lots of determination

I'm sure it helps to be committed. I dont actually know if his lawyers are working pro bono, now you mention it. Didn't KDC get to keep at least some of his assets after the initial seizures?

His subsequent business efforts might be keeping the lights on.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#3272521 16-Aug-2024 13:29

elpenguino:

I'm sure it helps to be committed. I dont actually know if his lawyers are working pro bono, now you mention it. Didn't KDC get to keep at least some of his assets after the initial seizures?

His subsequent business efforts might be keeping the lights on.

He got $60 million out of HK in 2014, He's not low on cash...

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kim-dotcoms-fight-for-hong-kong-millions/3IU4CTY5MOKB3E5ABXCEUP4TZE/

The US govt alleges that MegaUpload raked in $175 million USD in adverting & premium memberships before they took it down...

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#3272525 16-Aug-2024 13:47

Batman:

cddt:

He should have just waited a decade and dressed up his business in "AI" clothing. The CEO of Microsoft AI has said re any content on the web: "Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like."

I don't see the black helicopters coming for a Microsoft CEO...

very similar comparison is Elon Musk & Elizabeth Holmes

both have companies that promise something that doesn't work

one gets billions in govt grants while the other is jailed for 11 years

one of the products is still sold! and still doesn't work, may or may not be causing fatal crashes!

I'm no Musk fanboy, but self-driving is reasonably feasible and working kinda OK in some situations. There are major issues and their insistence on only using cameras (no LIDAR) is giving them a really hard time, but most of what I've seen is over-optimistic marketing and future-gazing. It'll work someday.

Theranos was a bucket full of lies from day one and never produced even proof-of-concepts.

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#3272744 16-Aug-2024 22:16

SomeoneSomewhere:

I'm no Musk fanboy, but self-driving is reasonably feasible and working kinda OK in some situations. There are major issues and their insistence on only using cameras (no LIDAR) is giving them a really hard time, but most of what I've seen is over-optimistic marketing and future-gazing. It'll work someday.

Theranos was a bucket full of lies from day one and never produced even proof-of-concepts.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the difference. Both claim it'll work someday.

Full self drive since over a decade and still it's no full self drive and some people have died using it.

If you call full self drive marketing, then Theranos is also marketing no?

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#3272748 17-Aug-2024 01:08

My understanding is that some of Theranos's claims fundamentally violated physics - think fitting 15 grams of drug in a 2 gram patch. Ain't gonna happen. Anyone with a calculator and whiteboard could figure it out, so they effectively either had to know they were making impossible claims, or were completely reckless. They were pushing tech that didn't even exist at room-scale-machine level and saying it would fit in a nicotine patch. The medical industry equivalent of those boxes you can plug into a wall outlet that claim to halve your power bill.

People die all the time in cars, and the messaging has I think mostly been that FSD isn't perfect but is/will be better than people. The issue with software is that errors tend to be repeatable and that can look really really bad even if the statistics aren't terrible. My understanding is that FSD is sitting in a state where it performs pretty well on highways (better than humans?), but is very touchy on some city roads, especially with odd layouts. It's easy to deliberately manufacture a situation where it will fail.

It's clear that they have major false marketing issues at this point - cars sold as being FSD-ready are probably now reaching end of life with it still not reaching 'full'. Arguably they should look at retiring the name and decent compensation.

But it's still not clear that it reaches the level of malice that Theranos had.

I need to go take a shower; I feel like a Musk apologist.

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#3272750 17-Aug-2024 01:15

SomeoneSomewhere:

My understanding is that some of Theranos's claims fundamentally violated physics - think fitting 15 grams of drug in a 2 gram patch.

I'm not sure about that. From the books and the documentary, the whole thing was about blood tests not working with the small sample and then using standard industry lab gear to run the tests because of the failure to create the actual working testing equipment. And when the tests were run on their equipment instead, they got wildly wrong results.

The lawsuit wasn't about this though. It was about investors feeling cheated out of their money.

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#3272751 17-Aug-2024 01:18

I'm not sure about that. From the books and the documentary, the whole thing was about blood tests not working with the small sample

I think that might be the example I'm thinking of - they were claiming to detect stuff when there wasn't actually going to be enough blood to expect a particle to appear?

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#3272752 17-Aug-2024 01:30

SomeoneSomewhere:

I'm not sure about that. From the books and the documentary, the whole thing was about blood tests not working with the small sample

I think that might be the example I'm thinking of - they were claiming to detect stuff when there wasn't actually going to be enough blood to expect a particle to appear?

Correct.

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#3272753 17-Aug-2024 01:44

Yeah, that falls into my sort of 'whiteboard maths' view: if you can disprove it that easily, and there isn't a ready answer for why that's wrong,* you're in the 'fraud or reckless disregard' bucket. For example, the solar-powered self filling water bottles.

I haven't seen those kinds of claims made effectively about FSD, with the possible exception of cameras vs LIDAR.

They have a beta product that ticks most of the boxes most of the time, and the improvement required is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

There's still a pretty good argument that they should be admitting defeat in a more legal manner after ten years of trying.

*e.g. you could run the test 10,000 times on different drops of blood - assuming reagents, waste, time, energy, not bleeding them dry...

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#3272755 17-Aug-2024 05:49

elpenguino:

I'm sure it helps to be committed. I dont actually know if his lawyers are working pro bono, now you mention it. Didn't KDC get to keep at least some of his assets after the initial seizures?

I personally knew well a senior NZ lawyer who did a lot of defence work for KDC in his early days here. It certainly wasn’t pro bono and a bill of $millions was racked up - and not paid. Lawyer dropped him.

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