Well, aside from the fact that the authors analysis may or may not be wrong, the problem he points out certainly does exist. How does a cyberlocker assert who owns copyright or not. Megaupload certainly was shady, but actually, in germany it might be perfectly legal to rip your sopranos DVD, upload it to Megaupload and share it with friends. We do have legal provision for sharing media with friends (actually, we pay a couple of cents for each empty CD or DVD we buy that is supposed to compensate for that). Sharing an episode with the rest of the world remains illegal, but how can the hoster know?
It's certainly clear that megaupload targeted those users, but actually, so does my cable provider. Practically
noone needs 200MBit connections if not for filesharing.
> If a lawyer started posting here on HN or on a programming forum elsewhere claiming that obviously programming language X is better than Y because X has pointers and Y doesn't we'd laugh him/her out of the room too. Why do we think it's acceptable to do the equivalent to other fields?
Certainly not. If it were a lawyer who needs to be genuinely interested in my field of work because it directly influences his field of work, I'd be willing to put up with a couple of false statements as long as the general questions remain valid. And whether we like it or not, those lawyers that try to put the megaupload staff in jail may be after our own startup just as fast if we stray too close to the border to what interested parties consider illegal. And those interested parties push the border further and further deep into what used to be plainly technical territory. See SOPA/PIPA or other similar laws that try to push for solutions that are obviously (to us) not technically feasible or even damaging to the underlying technology. Thats why we as well need to try and understand what's going on on the lawyers side of things and why we need to assert how we think things may turn out. Certainly, we do make mistakes and may have incorrect ideas of how the law works, but I still think it's important to write that up and put it up for discussion. You're certainly right to point out errors, but that's just part of the process.
Well, let me counter with another wikipedia link: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopie (sorry, no english translation). Basically, the idea was that with the creation of tape machines it's impossible to control private copying and sharing without criminalizing large proportions of the population and thus a better form of payment for the rights holder was required.
So the deal is that we germans pay for each device that can be used to copy copyright-protected media a certain fee. A copy/fax machine costs roughly 10 euros in fees, the DVD writer as well, high-end dvd copiers up to 1000 bucks, the raw media a couple of cents, harddrives, ... - regardless of whether it's used to copy media or only for backups. In turn the private copying and sharing is allowed within reasonable bounds (usually family and good friends, a common limit seems to be around 7 copies that you can give away).
I'm not allowed to crack "effective" DRM schemes or protected media - whatever "effective" in this context means, but CSS has so far not been ruled effective afaik. Otherwise, this is completely legal and does not depend on the method of sharing nor does it depend on where the actual file is located.
Nor does it contradict the Berne Convention which basically treats how copyright is asserted and some minimum protection durations, but not every detail. For example american fair use permissions seem to allow for far more uses than the german "Zitatrecht" which can be actually quite limited (up to protecting single phrase or parts of phrases). (disclaimer: I'm interested in german copyright law, but I'm certainly not a lawyer)
So my example holds: If I store my ripped version of a dvd on a cyberlocker and share it with my brother, that's legal. If I share it with my ex-roommate with which I've been sharing a flat for 8 years an whom I call a good friend, that's just fine. If I share it with you, that's illegal and no one will be able to tell.
> If a lawyer started posting here on HN or on a programming forum elsewhere claiming that obviously programming language X is better than Y because X has pointers and Y doesn't we'd laugh him/her out of the room too. Why do we think it's acceptable to do the equivalent to other fields?
Certainly not. If it were a lawyer who needs to be genuinely interested in my field of work because it directly influences his field of work, I'd be willing to put up with a couple of false statements as long as the general questions remain valid. And whether we like it or not, those lawyers that try to put the megaupload staff in jail may be after our own startup just as fast if we stray too close to the border to what interested parties consider illegal. And those interested parties push the border further and further deep into what used to be plainly technical territory. See SOPA/PIPA or other similar laws that try to push for solutions that are obviously (to us) not technically feasible or even damaging to the underlying technology. Thats why we as well need to try and understand what's going on on the lawyers side of things and why we need to assert how we think things may turn out. Certainly, we do make mistakes and may have incorrect ideas of how the law works, but I still think it's important to write that up and put it up for discussion. You're certainly right to point out errors, but that's just part of the process.