This image that is going around claiming that this guy(Kim Schmitz) has been sentenced to 50 years in prison has just been bugging me. For the uninformed, he is the founder of Megaupload and lives in Australia. If anyone had enough sense to google his name a lot of people would realize that he hasn’t been sentenced 50 years, as well as the fact that the real court case isn’t even on the horizon yet. Shit, the American government doesn’t even have him in their custody. He is in the process of being extradited so that he can be brought to court in the United States for a trial involving his copyright infringement and MONEY LAUNDERING.
To the people that think this is wrong and feel like this is all SOPA’s fault, please take a knife to the throat. Although this would be wrong according to SOPA, what Schmitz was doing was wrong long before SOPA was being pushed. Have people forgotten what Megaupload was like? You could download some files for free(it was a lot slower) OR YOU COULD PAY FOR A MEMBERSHIP(files would download faster). Think about it, in some cases people PAID for files. This would be completely fine if the money was going to the owner of the files, or maybe some kind of regulated service but that isn’t the case. On Megaupload when you paid for a membership the money went directly to Schmitz. He took money from people, for things he did not own the rights to in the least bit.
It’s one thing to share information without money involved, that is an issue where the lines seem a lot more grey, but acting as the middle man and charging people to give them a place to host these kinds of transactions is just wrong. Schmitz did what some thieves do with pawn shops. Schmitz took things that did not belong to him and sold them to make a profit. Schmitz is a thief, he abused the freedom of the internet and the money of somewhat innocent people. Don’t confuse a criminal with a real reason to be against the censorship of the internet.
Hij host gewoon de site, maar dan ook meteen verantwoordelijk voor alles terwijl het aangegeven is in de regels van megaupload.
