The internet entrepreneur faces several criminal charges in the US, including copyright infringement.

The internet entrepreneur faces several criminal charges in the US, including copyright infringement.

  • ben@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7712·
    4 months ago

    It’s hard to feel any sympathy for the guy at this point, he went from odd eccentric file sharing site founder, to adware distributor, all the way to misinformation spreading conspiracy theorist.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      363·
      4 months ago

      from odd eccentric file sharing site founder

      no. he basically started with credit card fraud and “sueing people who fileshare”. Together with a lawer he basically invented the practice of “see which IPs share copyrighted data, request the user data from the ISP and send out C&D extiotion letters to the ISP customers”

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        4 months ago

        Could you provide more info? Yes he and every hosting provider did that because they were forced to by Hollywood. They and all other hosting providers/isps certainly don’t want to do it because it costs money to track the infringers and then they lose a customer.

        • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          361·
          4 months ago

          He and his lawyer started doing that in the late 90s. When the labels just started knowing what the heck this newfangled internet even is.

          In den späten 90er Jahren, kurz nachdem er wegen Kreditkartenmissbrauch verhaftet worden war, wurden in Hackerkreisen Stimmen laut, dass Kimble auch seine Freunde an die Softwareindustrie gegen Entgelt ausgeliefert habe. Der damalige berüchtigte Schwarzkopierer-Jäger und Anwalt Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth hat seinen eigenen Aussagen zufolge Kimble als sogenannten Testbesteller beschäftigt.

          Source

          Just one of the articles that goes into this assholes history

          Translation

          In the late 1990s, shortly after he was arrested for credit card fraud, there were rumors in hacker circles that Kimble had also handed over his friends to the software industry for a fee. Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth, the notorious pirate hunter and lawyer at the time, said he employed Kimble as a so-called test orderer

          They mass-collected the connection data and started mass-sueing/extorting. Nobody else did on such a large scale at the time.

      • ben@lemmy.zipEnglish
        121·
        4 months ago

        Wasn’t aware of his history before Megaupload really.

      • Entropywins@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        4 months ago

        I don’t know anything about the guy but your comment can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes

        • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          161·
          4 months ago

          Oh, absolutely, which is the entire point sometimes.

          For example, nobody likes terrorists or pedophiles, so make laws against them, because everyone can agree with punishing them. Only problem is, our system works on precidence and doesn’t limit those laws to exclusively terrorists and pedophiles, but they instead apply to everyone. An example of a bill like this that Congress has tried to pass in the past is to ban encryption, since it helps criminals communicate with each other, but non-criminal civilians also use encryption for communication, amomgst other things.

    • smooth_tea@lemmy.worldEnglish
      918·
      4 months ago

      Am I the only one who fails to see anything seriously wrong with what you list there? I’m purposefully ignoring “misinformation spreading conspiracy theorist”, because that’s a pretty meaningless accusation and is often added as an easy character assassination rather than something substantial, but I’d like to see you elaborate.

      I mean, we’re talking jail time and extradition, and nothing you’ve mentioned is even against the law in the slightest. Yes, there was piracy on his file sharing site, but that’s true for practically any service on the internet, from Google drive to Amazon S3 and anything in-between and vaguely related.

      Characters like him are targeted because they are both successful and anti establishment, the eccentricity just tops it off. But why should that result in a lack of sympathy? The world doesn’t have enough of these people who rock the boat if you ask me.

      • ben@lemmy.zipEnglish
        151·
        4 months ago

        You ignored the adware distribution, if you want to see him spreading misinformation feel free to check his Twitter. It runs the gamut from antivaxxer to literal Russian propaganda.