I know it’s not a Linux news story but I just had to discuss it.
While doing some late night reading I stumbled across this very interesting article.
Apparently when the FBI, back in March, cloned Mr Dotcoms hard drives and posted them from New Zealand to the US for investigation they didn’t break any laws, because “information is not physical material”.
Hmm… I’ll remember that the next time the Fed’s come knocking at my door…
“I haven’t stolen this movie officer, I just transferred the digital information… it’s not physical!”
I don’t know whether the Megaupload guys did anything wrong or not but I feel that the way they are being treated, and the way America thinks it can just burst into any country in the world to arrest people, is disgusting.
You see the funny thing is, the didn’t use the site to gain money from pirated movies or games at all. The used the site to gain money from memberships, and because Megaupload was cloud storage, anyone could upload anything.
This is where that stupid US government is getting things wrong, and people are going down for the wrong reasons.
I know Mediafire will be next in line, which is why I’m migrating all my stuff to another cloud, I’ll maybe try out that Azure from MS, but like you say it pi**es me off that the US government things they’re so much better than everyone else! If it wasn’t for us English, they wouldn’t know they’re country wasn’t the only one on the planet!!!
Despite that, I’m more worried about what’s going on over here. Censorship has already blocked Germany from most of the internet as it is, and the UK want to implement the same thing
How can they even think that they’ll get away from censoring the internet? I sense an uprising from Anonymous soon, and everybody knows when Anonymous strikes, s**t hits the fan.
Also, just so my post isn’t mis-read, Anonymous IS NOT a group of “hackers”. Nor are they even a group. It’s a person, whoever may decide they want to be “Anonymous”.
I agree the FBI do seem to be doing the same thing they’re accusing others of doing … and it will be majorly funny if someone uses it as a defence and gets away with it, setting a legal precedent
The US are engaged in some very nefarious cyber activities of late, including a cyber war against Iran, which in my opinion, without a declaration of war amounts to nothing more than cyber terrorism.
I lived in the US for 5 years when I was a kid, and they used to (pretty much) DAILY teach ALL the kids how the British were “Bad” because of their “empire building”, and attempts to impose their will on the rest of the world, and they’d back this up daily with the singing of the national anthem, and tales of Paul Revere’s ride, and how they’d stood up to the British tyrants and defeated us … believe me, it was pervasive, non stop, and brain washing … Now I’m 51, so you have to figure the people in charge over there are the kids I went to school with … but they seem to have conveniently forgotten their own warped message.
I’ve seen the hypocrisy from the inside … and it stinks.
You just know this type oof brain washing still goes on, you hear it in the voices of their soldiers whenever they’re interviewed …
America = Good an wholesome
Everyone else = Bad and corrupt … so they’re doing them some kind of “favour” by bombing them.
And the soldiers just can’t understand why the Iraqi people (or whoever) are shooting back, and can’t see the “favour” they’re doing them.
Oh, forgot to mention … whilst teaching us that the British attempts to impose their will on the world was tyrannical … they were in the middle of the Vietnam war :
Well when the police come busting through my door, and find the movies I have digitally converted (;)), I’ll pledge “it’s not breaking the law because the information is not physical!” and then I’ll see them, walk on out with disgust on their faces, lol.
What’s more, the thing about the UK law is, you can LEGALLY back-up your movies, i.e. rip the information from the COPYRIGHT PROTECTED disc, as long as you have the disc to hand, but even then you can just say you lost the disc. They can’t prove otherwise.
I was listening to OffTheHook yesterday and they were commenting about the whole Stuxnet/Iran/cyberwar.
They said it was ammusing that the US are currently trying to extradite a UK student for his website, which linked people to torrent sites, while at the same time attacking Iran. The sentence ‘for national security’ was mentioned.
The Yanks seem to throw that in a lot. As a get out claus it’s almost as bad as ‘God did it’.
That’s why I buy every film on DVD, back them up onto my computer and then put the DVD’s into storage… somewhere… no officer I can’t remember where I left the map to my storage…
Agreed … they seem to ignore the “National Security” of everyone else though … they’re not allowed any :
As I said, without a declaration of war it’s just cyber (or real) terrorism … “pre-emptive strikes”, erm, didn’t Japan do that at Pearl Harbour … and thazt didn’t impress them much.
It’s the same thing with nuclear weapons. No one else in the world is allowed any and the US will pay MILLIONS to investigate any country they think has some and yet they have more than every other country put together… but don’t worry, it’s for the safety of the nation…
Americans - you do not rule the world!! Stop trying to police it.
*I understand it’s not all the american people but their government… but then again, who elects the leaders!
I always thought the American constitution was setup to NOT have such a DICTATORSHIP!!
If I ever buy a server, I want it to be in Sweden, that way no law can touch me. Swedish laws are setup to protect people from internet censorship. We should all migrate there…
