I told my wife to fuck off. Then she bought me cupcakes.

*facepalm*

I can't escape Valentine's Day.

It depends on which party has suffered damages due to O'Dwyer's actions. If it were a case of property relating to the servers, trying him in the UK wouldn't be an issue. But that's not the grievance here. The grievance is damage through infringement, and chances are most of the damages are against American properties. It's well within reason to request extradition.

Copyright infringement of this kind (re: Enabling Theft) is not, and never has been a civil procedure in any court of the Commonwealth or the United States. Were it merely that he was practicing plagiarism, he might be tried in civil proceedings because plagiarism does not always equate actual theft of goods, only of concepts. But what O'Dwyer was doing was enabling theft, compounded by copyright infringement. Therefore it's a criminal trial. Otherwise you'd have to equally grant all cases of assisted theft a civil procedure instead of a criminal one, and the law does not work that way.

They really aren't being dickish about this at all. There's also no talk of punishment yet. O'Dwyer can even appeal extradition right now. Keep in mind, the UK's hand was not force in this matter. There does exist an extradition pact between the US and UK, but an independent ruling still has to be made, and by a judge of the country from whom an individual is being extradited.

Why isn't O'Dwyer being tried in the UK? Because they don't have any laws regarding what he did. The UK is massively behind in terms of internet legislation and has no precedent to try O'Dwyer on. But the United States, Canada, or Australia do, and since damages were most severe to US properties, that's where he goes.

This isn't an abuse of authority dude, it's pretty much due process.

Months? Two YEARS dude.

Flouting the law in addition to disobedience is pretty compounding, dude. What I'm saying is that O'Dwyer doesn't have a leg to stand on, and shouldn't be given any sympathy, especially because he was not compliant with the law, and in addition was even insulting towards it.

The O'Dwyer case is an awful example. When you comply with a cease and desist and then post up a new website that says "fuck the police" on it, you're flouting the law, and should expect repercussions. O'Dwyer's been put up as some kind of poster child for the free speech cause by guys like Jimmy Wales, but it's stupid. O'Dwyer was in the wrong. Is the force being used excessive? A bit, sure, but he's still a bad example. Proponents need to use better examples if they intend to actually fight an abuse of the law.

I ordinarily would be, but it seems the FBI may have been well within their legal rights to go and do the arrests. One of the largest reasons being that MegaUpload had servers in the USA, which gives the FBI permission to apply for seizure in other countries. When that's done, then the country has the right to accept or deny the FBI's claim. Clearly, they didn't deny it.

This isn't an abuse of the law either. In some cases diplomatic crisis arises from such disputes of jurisdiction, be it due to extradition or other matters. Other times, it's a simple arrest and the foreign powers agree with each other that jurisdiction is temporarily granted. There's nothing abusive about it.

MegaUpload had US servers, therefore it was facilitating unlawful acts on US soil. The people responsible for the service had done nothing significant to counteract the unlawful acts going on within their service, therefore it was reasonable that they were to be held responsible. Since they weren't local to the US, foreign jurisdiction was sought, granted, and arrest made. This isn't uncommon, nor something you only hear about from the United States.

From the FBI:


Now, as to some people who've argued (and Kay isn't the first, I've made this argument for Google's position against Murdoch) that MegaUpload is just the landlord being blamed for the actions of the tenant, that would hold up if the landlord was in compliance with police searches for unlawful tenants. In this case, the landlord was uncooperative, even arrogant in the face of authority. So really, what leg does MegaUpload have to stand on? It's unreasonable to support them.


And you sir, are part of the problem.

Mine was Shining Force 3, Scenario 2. I haven't bought from eBay in a long, long time, simply because I've found more affordable routes with less hassle (ie: used game shops, Amazon, etc), but I used to quite a bit.

They followed 3 takedowns, out of 14,500 claims (approx). That isn't compliance. It's just shitty lipservice.

It's a 2 year investigation which found that MegaUpload was quite deeply guilty. When 90% of your content is found to be illegal and you have taken no steps towards anti-piracy, there is a reason for your indictment.

Dude, MegaUpload are the bad guys here.

It's an RPG dude. Story is NOT something you can dispense with. Dialogue, yes. "Plot" as it were, sure. But a major component of an RPG's gameplay is the progression of the story. These are characters meant to associate with the player. The story is meant to carry the player through sequence after sequence. When a game up and discards the story, especially in a genre where story is important, it has failed as a game. It's one of the major items which distinguishes an adventure game from an RPG, and even in the adventure genre, what SO3 did would be nigh unforgivable. Maybe you like to be more forgiving, but I don't.

Let's not forget the battle system was bug-ridden, plonked you down on a boring mudball for half the experience, had some of the most illogical world construction (HI THERE 5-MINUTE-APART-CITIES), and  it featured shit like Farleen. I don't care if that was "good VA", the choice was fucking stupid.

Dude, I have no idea HOW you forgive that game. Not only was it boring and pedantic, but that plot twist, as Penny Arcade so eloquently puts it, fucking MUGGED the player.

Also, some of the most annoying characters ever, prior to SO4.

NO

NO!

NO!!!!


I DEMAND AN INTERNET FIGHT!