A half hour interview with Dotcom well worth watching: http://ondemand.tv3.co.nz/Camp...

Whaleoil highlights one point from the interview transcript on which I disagree with Dotcom, namely over who created the piracy problem ( http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012... ). Quoting:

But we are not responsible for the problem and this is, I think, what everyone needs to understand. Where does piracy come from? Piracy comes from, you know, people, let’s say, in Europe who do not have access to movies at the same time that they are released in the US. This is a problem that has been born within this licensing model and the old business model that Hollywood has where they release something first in one country but they show trailers to everyone around the world pitching that new movie but then the 14-year-old kid in France or Germany can’t watch it for another six months, you know? If the business model would be one where everyone has access to this content at the same time, you know, you wouldn’t have a piracy problem. So it’s really, in my opinion, the government of the United States protecting an outdated monopolistic business model that doesn’t work anymore in the age of the internet and that’s what it all boils down to.

My comment on that Whaleoil thread gives my position:

With the qualification that I'm largely on the side of Dotcom: his treatment by the Keystone cops has been all out of proportion to the 'crime', if there is one. I also think, and hope, the authorities will have a lot of trouble prosecuting him, because he can't be responsible for the actions of third parties, his terms of service covered him, and he freely designed into his service access for any affected parties to go and delete pirated content.

He is no more responsible for pirates using his bandwidth, than I would be for burglars, say, using a private road I might build, to get away with their crimes. And I'm not expected to be policing my road for same.

But I don't agree with his above comment either, and it was the one point on which I did disagree with him in the Campbell interview. This might be why piracy happens, but it doesn't excuse it. Copyright is a valid property right, and should be protected for the artists on the principle only, (though the movie companies in their own interest have to introduce themselves to the 21st century now, and operate within it).

Turning it back to Dotcom again, no matter what the circumstances, FBI, or whomever, should only go for the individual pirates using Megaupload, not the owners running a legitimate service. But as is usual now, they just blunder in with force looking for the patsy target. The major thing that Dotcom demonstrates to us, again, in the same way that Mark Hotchin's unprincipled 14 month asset freeze does also , is that the NZ State, and certainly the United Police States of America, are running roughshod over the rule of law, and thus have lost 'their' right to govern. The West needs it's own Spring, to knock back the obese size of State to small state limited government.