These were the words written in an email by Mathias Ortmann to Bram Van Der Kolk. Who, you might ask? Ortmann and Van Der Kolk are two of the recently indicted parties to the Megaupload conspiracy, and this email was publicized in the indictment. You know, that thing that happened on January 19th, the day after the tech world celebrated the shelving of SOPA and PIPA. Megaupload was what is known as a “cyberlocker,” a file hosting service, to which individuals can upload files, and through sharing the URLs of the given files, can allow others to access them. In theory and in practice, many of these sites, including Megaupload itself, are used by people who need to share such large files for their own legal purposes. (No really, trust them, they even made sure to reconfirm this legitimate purpose for the world a few months ago through a catchy YouTube video. Featuring celebrities!) However, as the Mega indictment papers make clear, the gentlemen running Mega were very aware, if not brazenly encouraging, the use of their site and its petabytes’ worth of storage space to share copyrighted material. They at times exchanged emails discussing how to make their customers’ viewing experiences of television shows such as “Dexter” more seamless. Part of the indictment even mentions the founders themselves sharing such American film classics as “Meet Dave.” In fact, as the indictment shows, the Mega conspirators apparently reposted YouTube videos to their sites just to increase their percentage of copyright-free material.
When it was shut down, Megaupload was the 70th most trafficked site on the internet, according to Alexa. The Alexa list is populated at its top by sites the likes of which must of the world depends on for daily internet use, for better or for worse; Google, Facebook, Youtube, and Yahoo! are the top four sites on its list. However, further down the list, peppered amid the countless other manifestations of Google, are cyberlockers, Bittorrent trackers, and free pornography websites. Does this mass use suggest a serious absence of morality in modern society? Or is it more a reflection of just how easy it is to break the law these days?
Back in the good ole days of piracy, pirates were adventurous individuals, sailing the high seas for adventure, debauchery, and a bit of terror (or at least this is what Disney movies that I definitely watched legally taught me). They knew where the line between good and evil lay drawn, and they very consciously crossed that line. Nowadays, people can commit a felonious act of piracy without even knowing it from the comforts of their living rooms. Most people who download copyrighted material are aware of having done so. They just don’t think much of it. So how is it that we have come to a point where felonies have become passive acts? Is the law not meant to keep up with morality? At a point in history when the Supreme Court rules that Congress can remove works from the public domain so big media companies can copyright old foreign works, including those of Stravinsky and H.G. Wells (see the recently-decided Golan v. Holder decision), what is left for the average American citizen? As Justice Breyer asks in his dissent in Golan, if the original purposes of copyright laws suggested furthering the arts, why does it only seem that copyright law prevents their distribution?
As the Mega indictment papers indicate, in the end it seems that nobody would ever get indicted over copyright infringement in this country if they do not make money through it. The Mega conspirators brazenly flaunted the law, made a few hundreds of millions of dollars, and then the law took offense. The case against Megaupload appears very sound, given how sloppy the conspirators were in violating black letter law. But their mistake wasn’t taking copyrighted intellectual property. It was in making money through doing so. After all, when providing shipping to pirates is more lucrative than piracy itself, it’s going to catch someone’s attention.
The Mega conspirators will get to have their days in court. Perhaps then, founder Kim Dotcom (no, not his given name) can finally have his day to expose the criminal activity of his former competitors, and bring them to justice, as he once told PayPal he intended to do. (See Mega Indictment, Count II ¶ uuuu.) Can a man who makes such a gesture to bring down the criminal activity of others really be such a bad guy?