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0 pointsdiminish11y ago0 comments

Think of, uber, airbnb or dropbox. if they were non-SV and non-US they could face similar attacks of having illegal business practices and even end up in a raid of the founder's houses.

Silicon Valley is the strongest lobby for novelty and innovation. Even it struggles sometimes against the established laws and businesses.

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7 comments · 1 top-level

balazsdavid98711y ago· 6 in thread

I think you are not aware of the business model of MegaUpload.

1. John uploads a file and distributes the link. 2. Jane wants to download the file. She can do it freely (low speed, daily limits) or for a little fee (fast download, no limits). 3. Jane wants to download many files, so she signs up for a premium account. 4. John gets a comission from MegaUpload.

What happens if John uploads copyrighted material and drives sales for MegaUpload using pirated software and movies? Well...the file gets removed, but nothing else. He can continue doing it again and again, even uploading the same file again.

And this was going on on a massive scale, hundreds of people were earning several thousand dollars per month from this and -- according to court documents -- Kim was very much aware of this and even actively encouraged uploaders to supply copyrighted material to the system.

lmm11y ago

Plenty of the named SV startups - AirBnB or Uber - have their whole business model fundamentally based on encouraging people to violate laws (by renting out rooms in violation of local regulations, or by acting as a taxi driver in a car that isn't insured for it). Just as with MegaUpload, you don't have to break the law to use the service, but most people do, and they turn a very blind eye to it.

davidw11y ago

Napster was a SV startup and got promptly shut down for distributing copyrighted material.

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rtpg11y ago

Even if people might think that freely sharing movies shouldn't be illegal, I think that most people feel that some random guy on the internet making money distributing camrips of The Dark Night is Not Cool(tm).

I think a lot less people have much of an opinion on unlicensed cabbies existing. AirBnB is a bit more controversial (anti-subletting clauses are there for neighbors more than for landlords, and NIMBY plays a role), but some people are cool with that so long as they trust their neighbor's judgement.

I do agree that the SV-ness of these two companies has helped immensely.

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axx11y ago

The real problem is the copyrighted material. I personally think it's perfectly OK to share revenue with your users if someone else signs up for your service and downloads something that you've share. MegaUpload makes a profit from people buying Premium because of a certain user and they reward them for that.

If the copyright-topic wasn't an issue, this would be quite a nice business model (at least a kind of fair one).

But this revenuesharing thing encourages people to upload files for a mass audience, and that's the reason why this doesn't work.

zorked11y ago

So it worked exactly like YouTube?

neolefty11y ago

Doesn't YouTube have a mechanism to divert the revenue to the copyright holder, but still keep the video up? Some overlap in functionality -- sharing potentially copyrighted material -- but the attitude of the two companies seems pretty different.

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