If feds can bust Megaupload, why bother with anti-piracy bills?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Why bother with more anti-privacy laws? Could it possibly be because the corporations demand them and the politicians are on the payroll?

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0121/If-feds-can-bust-Megaupload-why-bother-with-anti-piracy-bills

As some of the internet's biggest power players, including Google and Wikipedia, protested two fast-tracked anti-piracy bills going through Congress, the US Justice Department launched an attack on one of the web's biggest alleged scofflaws, Megaupload, and, in a counterattack, the hacker group Anonymous temporarily blacked out DOJ's website.

Techno-pundits and mainstream observers quickly connected the dots between anti-piracy protests and the Megaupload arrests, notching the dustup as potentially the biggest salvo yet in the multi-billion dollar internet copyright wars pitting, in essence, Hollywood and its Washington lobbyists against internet free speech and its hacker protectors.

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“This week has been the week of copyright warfare, but the decision to nuke the king copyright violator so spectacularly only goes to show how little the feds need bigger bombs,” writes Sam Biddle on the tech-scene site Gizmodo.

The Justice Department has not commented on the timing of its arrest of Kim Dotcom (also known as Kim Schmitz), the high-flying millionaire CEO of Megaupload, who is now in custody and being prepared for extradition to the United States from his home base of Auckland, New Zealand. The arrests came after a two year investigation.

[tridim]

1. Obviously because they want full control.

TPTB want an OFF switch.

SOPA is only partially about piracy.

[MattBaggins]

2. Because of the fact that Corps had to go through the courts and authorities

at all with this case bothers them. They want a so called "business to business" solution. They want a shoot first ask questions later one sided system. They get to wave their finger in accusation and have people arrested and sites shut down knowing full well the same will never happen in return. They want the power to declare people guilty and force those accused to prove themselves innocent in Kangaroo Kourts run by the same Corps who shut them down.

[Poll_Blind]

6. ^ What you said. Look at Universal Music's takedown requests to YouTube over the...

...MegaUpload music video. They really want it so that they can basically make DCMA complaints without having to back them up.

Electronic Arts was also caught doing this, filing DCMA takedowns on fan-made videos of either Dragon Age or Dragon Age II.

They want the power to declare people guilty and force those accused to prove themselves innocent in Kangaroo Kourts run by the same Corps who shut them down.

Yep.

PB

[TalkingDog]

7. I 2nd that: What you said. They want a Fascist solution (gov. + corp.), NOT a legal/judicial one.

You see, speaking in their terms... right now, they have to go with Law Classic (i.e. pre-9-11) instead of New Law.

With Law Classic there is innocent until proven guilty, due process, habeas corpus all those pesky things that get in the way of profit. Because the longer files are out there being shared without money changing hands the more money they lose.

[MisterP]

3. if OBL is dead, why do we have NDAA?

if the Montoneros are defeated in 1975-76, why was the Dirty War intenses 1976-80?

questions for the ages

[djean111]

4. I think that one of the important "easter eggs" in the bill

was telling Google or whoever to shut down sites that directed people to Canadian pharmacies. Since, evidently, not being able to afford your medicine is your own fault now, plus you are also to blame for being sick in the first place - it is More American to die or sicken if you cannot afford to buy your prescriptions in America.
I think the piracy thing was a "Look! There's a kitten!".

[HopeHoops]

5. SOPA isn't about anti-piracy - it is a simple payback.