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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Kim Dotcom’s first TV interview: ‘I’m no piracy king’ Campbell Live has spoken exclusively with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in his first TV interview since being arrested. Dotcom faces a barrage of FBI charges relating to the operation of his file sharing company Megaupload. I spoke with the internet millionaire about the charges – which include racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering – the internet, his time in jail and the whole business model surrounding Hollywood. The full Kim Dotcom interview transcript: PART ONE Kim Dotcom: Well you know, it’s a little bit like a nightmare, I would say. Unexpected, horrifying for my family, my wife who’s pregnant with twins has nightmares and is feeling miserable and, you know, of course I’m facing a very interesting situation. John Campbell: Kim, you say it was unexpected. Was it totally and absolutely unexpected, did you never, ever think that this would happen somewhere in the world at some time? KD: Well, the business is seven years old. We have been sued only once, never by any, you know, movie company or big content company and we have spent millions of dollars on legal advice over the last few years and our legal advisers have always told us that we are secure and that we are protected by the DMCA which is a law in the US that is protecting online service providers of liability for the actions of their users, so it came completely unexpected. JC: What did your lawyers tell you about what you were doing? As we understand Megaupload, in its simplest terms, it’s a giant kind of exchange system in the sky, right? So you upload something, someone else downloads something, you’re sharing files, those files could be anything, right? How do you protect yourself against breaches of copyright by the people using Megaupload? KD: Well supposedly, and that’s what everyone believed, is that the law is protecting us. We can’t be liable for actions of third parties, you know? As long as we follow a regime of taking things down that are reported to us, which we have done over all these years, we are protected, according to the law and, you know, I find it very surprising that this is happening because like I said we had legal advice all these years telling us that we are an online service provider and we are not liable for the actions of third parties. JC: Where does Megaupload come from? What was the idea behind it? It was your idea, right, why? KD: Well, you know, one day I was sending a file to a friend via email and I got a message back saying, you know, the file’s too large and the mail server has refused to send it so I thought, you know, what can I come up with, what can I do to solve that? So I basically created a server where I could upload a file and got a unique link and then I would just email that link to my friend and he would then get the file and that’s how Megaupload was started, it was just a solution to a problem that still exists today. JC: How quickly did it take off, were you surprised by it? KD: Well I was surprised how quickly it took off, it grew virally because every time someone was sending a file to Megaupload to submit it to somebody else, that person would then also learn about Megaupload and that feature and it would just grow and everyone would use it because it was such a useful tool…and free. JC: Kevin Suh, the Senior Vice President of Content Protection at the Motion Picture Association of America said, and I quote, “You are the biggest copyright infringer in the world”. Are you? KD: Absolutely not. I’m no copyright infringer. I mean, you have to look at Megaupload in its sheer size. We are talking about a network that was running on 1.5 terabytes of bandwidth. JC: Explain that to me, how big is that? KD: That is about 800 file transfers completing every second. We are a relatively small company; you can’t expect us to police that kind of traffic. JC: So 800 file transfers occurring every second. KD: Yes. JC: 24 hours of the day, every day of the year. KD: Yes. JC: Every second. KD: Yes. JC: And you know what’s in those file transfers? You’re able to look at those 800 file transfers a second and say… KD: Well there are other laws that protect users and those are privacy laws. For example in the US it’s the Electronic Communication Privacy Act which prohibits us from looking into the accounts of users proactively and look for things. It’s like mail, it’s private, we cannot just go in there and police what these users are uploading. But that’s why we have our own terms of service in which we tell our users, “You cannot upload anything that is infringing on anybody’s rights, you can only upload things that belong to you and before any user uploads any file to Megaupload they have to click on a little box that says “I accept the terms of service”. So we have a legally binding agreement with these users that they are not supposed to upload anything that doesn’t belong to them. JC: Of course, that is a romantic notion though, isn’t it, that just because we tick the box accepting the terms of service that we’re going to behave ourselves when we’re in there, right? That, I mean, you must have known that people were doing whatever they wanted once they’d gone through the front door. They were exchanging any kind of files that they wanted to exchange. What opportunity did you have to police that? KD: Well, of course everybody knows that the internet is being used for legitimate and illegitimate uses. I think every online service provider has the same challenges that we have. YouTube, Google, everybody is in the same boat. So what you need to understand here is that we provided the content owners with an opportunity to remove links that were infringing on their rights. So, not only did they have an online form where they could take down infringing links, they had direct delete access to our servers so they could access our system and remove any link that they would find anywhere on the internet without us being involved. They had full access and we’re talking about 180 partners, including every major movie studio, including Microsoft and all big content producers and they have used that system heavily and you need to understand that that system was not even something that was even required by the law. We provided that voluntarily and they have removed over 15 million links. JC: So every member of the Motion Picture Association, every film studio who is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America had direct delete access to Megaupload.com to take out copyright-infringing material – is that the case? KD: Absolutely. JC: And yet the FBI indictment against you alleges, and I quote, “Copyright infringement on a massive scale with estimated harm to copyright holders well in excess of 500 million US dollars”. KD: Well that’s complete nonsense. If you read the indictment and if you hear what the Prosecution has said in court, it’s at least $500 million of damage were just music files and just within a two-week time period. So they are actually talking about $13 billion US damage within a year just for music downloads. The entire US music industry is less than $20 billion. So how can one website be, you know, responsible for this amount of damage, it’s completely mind-boggling and unrealistic. JC: So are you really suggesting that you are a sacrificial lamb of some description? KD: Well, there’s no other explanation for me because we’ve done nothing wrong. I’m no criminal, this website has not been set up to be a piracy haven. If you look at the comments out there and the discussion that is happening online, that’s what everybody feels like. It’s crazy. JC: Because the FBI and the people that want to prosecute you are alleging, and they’ve used these words, that you are unprecedented. That the scale of your piracy is unprecedented. That there has never been anything like it before in human history, that you are the pirate to beat all pirates. KD: Yeah. It’s kinda like weapon of mass destructions in Iraq, you know? If you want to go after someone and you have a political goal you will say whatever it takes. These are fabrications and lies. There are a hundred other companies out there that offer the same service like us. Why has not something happened to them? JC: Can you give me a name? Just name…can you give me a couple of names? KD: Many sites. Mediafire. It’s based in the US, offers exactly the same service like us. JC: File-sharing opportunities? KD: Yeah. Rapidshare, Filesurf, Filesonic. Microsoft has their own service called Skydrive. Google is launching a new service called Drive. Everyone is in this cloud arena, in the same business, has the same problems that we had battling piracy. 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. I’m no piracy king, I offered online storage and bandwidth to users and that’s it... Rest of interview and video at link: Poster Comment: Go to link for video. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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