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Apple Founder “Woz” Defends Megaupload

The U.S. government sees Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom as one of the biggest copyright criminals in history.

Many others disagree, including Apple founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak, who visited Dotcom in New Zealand recently.

CNET managed to get a few comments from Steve Wozniak on the Megaupload case, and it’s clear that Apple’s founder is on Dotcom’s side.

“When crimes occur through the mail, you don’t shut the post office down,” Woz states.

“When governments dream up charges of ‘racketeering’ for a typical IT guy who is just operating a file-sharing service, or accuse him of mail fraud because he said he had removed files [to alleged infringing content] when he’d just removed the links to them, this is evidence of how poorly thought out the attempt to extradite him is.”

“Prosecutors are attempting to take advantage of loopholes. Too bad for the U.S. government that DotCom lives in New Zealand, which is better on human rights.”


Kim and Woz

woz

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  • Vincent Giannell

    The us government will no doubt accuse people like Woz for supporting  Megaupload.

    • Guest

      The US government will now probably lay a conspiring charge on Woz. Hope more big names come out and support Kim.

    • #Internet

      and now he is a wanted terrorist accused of conspiracy against the us gov.

  • Mwhahaha

    “When crimes occur through the mail, you don’t shut the post office down,”  

    Wozniak’s point here is fundamentally flawed. The internet itself would be the post office in his analogy, MU would be a firm selling dodgy DVD copies or something similar and using the internet to deliver them.

    Still to be convinced that MU operated within the law. At least TPB openly stand up for what they are.MU can’t pretend it was a 100% against piracy when they knew how much of their revenue derived from it.The whole cyberlocker/piracy thing is such murky territory and if a cyberlocker company wants to stay legal it’s relatively easy to do so, some manage to have less piracy than others. MU encouraged piracy to get cash and now they’re playing the innocents and the victims, talking about freedoms and the suchlike when all they really want is to get their big piles of money back.They’re no better than any media company director making millions off the back of talented artists.

    • Mwhahaha

      stupid disqus paragraph errors.

    • Guest

       If MU encouraged piracy prove it.

      • Decimus

        Exactly, the term is “innocent until proven guilty.”  When Mwhahaha writes that he still needs to be convinced that MU operated within the law, that just demonstrates the opposite.  His interpretations of the law are flawed as this statement suggests that it’s MU’s job to prove innocence… or “guilty until proven innocent.”

        The basic setup of the business for MU is completely legal.  The terms and conditions protect MU.  But that’s not what the case is even about.  The case is about whether MU was promoting piracy even though the terms and conditions forbid it.  It’s the government’s job to prove that MU intentionally violated copyright laws.  Not only were the papers not served, but with an argument that the users were violating the terms and conditions and that MU was allowing copyright owners to delete the links to the illegal files.

        How parallel the analogy was to how MU works is irrelevant.  Woz wasn’t building a defense for MU, he was merely demonstrating that companies cannot completely control the actions of the users.

    • Afjhga

      The internet would be the streets and basic structure. The letters still need people of the post office to deliver the mail. You can’t just dump your letters on the street and expect them to deliver themselves.

      So I think his analogy stands.

    • Fredrika

      > “At least TPB openly stand up for what they are.”

      A fully legal site that commit no piracy nor encourages it.

      • Guest

        They do encourage it, at least back in the days when they would write emails spitting in the face of anyone asking to have their content removed.

        • Fredrika

          > “They do encourage it..”

          They do not.

          > “..at least back in the days when they would write emails spitting in the face of anyone asking to have their content removed.”

          They did not. Please re-read the emails, and quote the specific paragraph you interpret as encouraging piracy, and i will help you read it properly, and explain what they actually wrote and what they meant. To ridicule some ignorant lawyer that comes up with baseless demands regarding non-copyrighted torrents referencing irrelevant US legislation does not equal encouraging piracy.

    • Anyone

      MU did not sell copyrighted works
      they sold faster access to files you or other users uploaded

      they complied with DMCA takedowns (even though they didn’t have to), they gave delete access to many copyright holders (even though they didn’t have to)

      they did everything by the book and went beyond what was expected of them to stop “illegal” files.
      the comparison with the post office is quite accurate, the post office also only offers a service to transfer files from one place to another.

    • Andrew Lee

      So a warehouse storing drugs that they did not know about should be shut down right? Megaupload took action against all copyright violations and gave the big companies access to do it themselves.

      What did they do with their power? Well they abused it taking down legitimate files left and right.

      Everything can be abused pretty much..

      You don’t see automobiles being banned and there is massive amounts of drugs being transferred in them every single day. Even right now as I’m talking drugs are on the move. I’m sure there are people being kidnapped and being drove somewhere right now..

      I guess we should ban them right?

      • Eaze8

        Actually, any vehicle used in a criminal act faces seizure… as long as the cops do it the right way. (Arizona vs Gant). So yes, you get caught, you lose your car… as long as “dem boys” don’t violate your rights. which just happens to happen almost every time… and is why i get my S4 back bitches :-P

        • Anyone

          but not EVERY automobile gets banned because SOME might be used in crimes

    • puddipuddi

      I think he means that mega is the post office, and some of it’s users used it for illegal activities.  This same analogy could be applied to youtube and most other sites on the internet.

      Have you ever posted a copyright infringing link on a forum or in some comments somewhere?  You just did something illegal at the post office. 

    • Rained23

      I think you are the one that fundamentally flawed.
      As Internet is a Medium or transport as like the post office they will use whether land,sea,air as the transport of their item and yes as Woz said, MU == post office as they only accepting and delivering, if someone post an undetectable bomb, would you blame post office as they deliver it…

      a fundamentally flawed huh ??? lol ,….

  • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

    I don’t particularly like Apple. But i think “woz” is a cool guy he went on “dancing with the stars” For fucks sacks lol he can’t dance but he’s a cool guy. Well I’d like to see the government try shutting down apple i doubt it. It just goes to show how all this is a huge waste of time u.s. government you know you’re wrong. Mpaa/Riaa take a fucking hike in a FIREY PIT.
     

    • Anyone

      Woz is the ghost of Apple past, back when it was still a good company before it became their own 1984 commercial

      • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

        true but if it wasn’t for the woz gates etc we wouldn’t know much about computers and the story of what they went through were laughed at for making computers etc.

        Then came”LINUX” linus torvald :D

    • Decimus

      Woz is a cool guy.  He’s standing up for what he believes is right, even though the whores in the MPAA and the RIAA and probably in the White House are completely against it.  He’s a symbol of computer knowledge which is sorely needed in the legal system.  He’s also pretty smart for standing with Kim, as it could be a great way to promote both businesses.

      I didn’t know much about him, but I have a lot of respect for Woz.  I wish he’d run for president!

      • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

        Absolutely, I think think will make hollywood think a bit.

        • Guest

          Hollywood will just state that Woz is completely wrong and attach falsified made up facts and figures to support themselves in stating that Woz is wrong.

        • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

          Which reminds me of something Steve Jobs once told the riaa to get their heads out of their asses, so maybe he should do the same. It was around the time iTunes came around I think. But we all know anything that Hollywood says these days amounts to shit. Like the 2.2 million imaginary people that are losing jobs, lol.

  • Captain Buzzoverinthehead DFC

    I must be suffering from déjà vu. I swear I saw this exact same news bit a few days ago.

  • http://twitter.com/lvxvria666 ? ©???†? ??§†?? ?

    I think we need more people supporting the rights of file sharers. The concept of the internet is fundamentally based on sharing information across multiple platforms according to user preference. If an impersonal, collective entity such as a corporation or government decides to interfere with the rights of users by dictating what content is or is not systematically “approved” then I believe the very substance of the internet is severely at risk. We need more users to individually contest this fallacious notion that only an anonymous depersonalized “body” is provided so-called legalized rights to infringe on our discretion as independent consumers of information. The problem with most users these days is unfortunately centered on their lack of motivation to confront these issues directly and decisively because they seem to prefer a predominantly apathetic approach to internet politics in general. This is why we need to reformulate the basic concept of the internet in a manner which focuses on the profound importance of individual sovereign access that is unimpeded by alien, i.e. third party, interference. Until then we cannot realistically hope to achive a prosperous or profitable domain necessary to encourage the future of progressive ideological evolution.

    • Nate

       ”The concept of the internet is fundamentally based on sharing
      information across multiple platforms according to user preference. If
      an impersonal, collective entity such as a corporation or government
      decides to interfere with the rights of users by dictating what content
      is or is not systematically “approved” then I believe the very substance
      of the internet is severely at risk. We need more users to individually
      contest this fallacious notion”

      I agree but they been arresting ppl for cp sharing since about 2002. People can’t see this censorship and don’t defend it. When will this change?

      • Anyone

        owning CP is illegal, in most cases rightly so
        censoring CP is the wrong approach, going after the people that produce it is the right approach

        but they didn’t arrest the ISP of those people that helped them transfer the files, did they? or the telephone company over whose wires the files were transferred?

      • GGA

         They’ve been arresting people for sharing CP online for a lot longer than 2002. They were doing it in the 90s.

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  • http://twitter.com/Anime4PSP Anime 4 PSP

    “When you can’t stop something like a steamroller,” Wozniak wrote, “get out of the way.”
    Damn straight

  • derezzed

    nice family photo!

  • Guest

    Long live The Pirate Bay, Kim Dotcom and all people in the galaxy that care to share.

  • Pingback: Apple Founder “Woz” Visits Kim Dotcom | Mediafire Search Engine

  • Dsf

     my knowledge of Woz is he was on the big bang theory….

  • Women Are Such Hypocrites

    The FBI and MPAA are international terrorist organizations. They perpetrated an illegal search and seizure on foriegn soil. They essentially sent  in a group of armed thugs to steal a person’s property and throw him in jail without a trial or conviction. What really happened is the MPAA paid off politicians (through “campaign donations and lobbying efforts”) to rewrite the laws in an unfair and unconstitutional manner (SOPA legislation) with the goal of allowing them to storm into foriegn countries and incarcerate people and shutdown websites without a trial or conviction. The terrorist attack against Megaupload was supposed to be the first big salvo to freighten (terrorize) all the other sites in the world into submission. The MPAA assumed it would shutdown every site they don’t like without a trial, just by using the FBI terrorist organization, as soon as SOPA was passed. Much to the MPAA’s chagrin, there was too much public outrage over SOPA, and the politicians (which the MPAA thought they had bought) had to back down and abandon the bill. So the whole Megaupload seizure is now clearly illegal, but international terrorist organizations like the MPAA and FBI are not going to let a little thing like illegality stop them, so they are trying to push through their case against Megaupload anyways. They have no respect for the Americam constitution (Freedom from Illegal Search and Seizure), the basic legal principle of “innocent unless proven guilty”, or foriegn soveriegnity. These terrorist organizations (the FBI and MPAA) need to be stopped. Any legitimate court must dismiss the charges and throw the case out, and there should also be legal and civil repurcussions against all of the villians involved.  

  • :/

    Cool, but still fuck Apple and their sleezy corporate practices.

  • goosamix

    Woz visited Kim Dotcom simply because iTunes is the company that will suffer the most when megabox is launched. A classic case of ‘keep your friends at a distance, but keep your enemies close’
     

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