[148761] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Megaupload.com seized
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Sat Jan 21 23:03:56 2012
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <2860625.5997.1327194057231.JavaMail.root@benjamin.baylink.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:03:00 -0500
To: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jan 21, 2012, at 8:00 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Lyle Giese" <lyle@lcrcomputer.net>
>=20
>> Not that I would not be a bit miffed if personal files disappeared, =
but
>> that's one of the risks associated with using a cloud service for =
file
>> storage. It could have been a fire, a virus erasing file, bankruptcy,
>> malicious insider damage... Doesn't matter, you lost access to legit
>> content in the crossfire.
>=20
> I'm not sure this is actually true. The Law generally recognizes =
'accident'
> as a means for relieving people of responsibility for criminal acts -- =
it
> can't *be* a criminal act without scienter on the part of the doer.
Actually, that's often not true in recent laws. There was an article in =
the
Wall Street Journal a month or so ago that gave some glaring examples of =
not
just laws but actual convictions.
>=20
> In this case, the doer was negligent, rather than purposefully =
malicious,
> but we have solutions for that as well.
I'm not sure what you mean by "doer" here.
=
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2012/01/copyrights-feds-push-novel-th=
eories-in-megaupload-case.html
has an interesting analysis. It presents a number of factual statements =
that
are capable of multiple interpretations. This in turn means that much =
of the
case is likely to turn on scienter, which in turn means heavy reliance =
on the
seized emails. This will be an interesting case to watch.
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
