this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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It's hard to feel any sympathy for the guy at this point, he went from odd eccentric file sharing site founder, to adware distributor, all the way to misinformation spreading conspiracy theorist.
no. he basically started with credit card fraud and "sueing people who fileshare". Together with a lawer he basically invented the practice of "see which IPs share copyrighted data, request the user data from the ISP and send out C&D extiotion letters to the ISP customers"
Could you provide more info? Yes he and every hosting provider did that because they were forced to by Hollywood. They and all other hosting providers/isps certainly don't want to do it because it costs money to track the infringers and then they lose a customer.
He and his lawyer started doing that in the late 90s. When the labels just started knowing what the heck this newfangled internet even is.
Source
Just one of the articles that goes into this assholes history
Translation
They mass-collected the connection data and started mass-sueing/extorting. Nobody else did on such a large scale at the time.
Wow! I had no idea.
Wasn't aware of his history before Megaupload really.
Sure, but this isn't about the person; it's about legal precidence.
I don't know anything about the guy but your comment can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes
Oh, absolutely, which is the entire point sometimes.
For example, nobody likes terrorists or pedophiles, so make laws against them, because everyone can agree with punishing them. Only problem is, our system works on precidence and doesn't limit those laws to exclusively terrorists and pedophiles, but they instead apply to everyone. An example of a bill like this that Congress has tried to pass in the past is to ban encryption, since it helps criminals communicate with each other, but non-criminal civilians also use encryption for communication, amomgst other things.
Wait what happened?!
spread russian propaganda afaik
Am I the only one who fails to see anything seriously wrong with what you list there? I'm purposefully ignoring "misinformation spreading conspiracy theorist", because that's a pretty meaningless accusation and is often added as an easy character assassination rather than something substantial, but I'd like to see you elaborate.
I mean, we're talking jail time and extradition, and nothing you've mentioned is even against the law in the slightest. Yes, there was piracy on his file sharing site, but that's true for practically any service on the internet, from Google drive to Amazon S3 and anything in-between and vaguely related.
Characters like him are targeted because they are both successful and anti establishment, the eccentricity just tops it off. But why should that result in a lack of sympathy? The world doesn't have enough of these people who rock the boat if you ask me.
You ignored the adware distribution, if you want to see him spreading misinformation feel free to check his Twitter. It runs the gamut from antivaxxer to literal Russian propaganda.
Do you mean malware?