Personally, I don't support Dotcom's case because he has some blame in the entire 'Megaupload fiasco'.

His achievements are still impressive though.

Edit: clarity

Also, it's awesome that Woz turned Kim onto the EFF.

https://twitter.com/#!/KimDotcom

> The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead. Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you. http://instagr.am/p/MHNAsPMkep/

Just another piece of evidence that Megaupload doesn't want to hurt the artists; they intend to do quite the opposite.

I wouldn't want to be the one arguing that case.

Sure, some artists used Megaupload to share their own works, but these uploads were far outnumbered by their illegitimate counterparts.

Has this been demonstrated yet? (I currently slightly favor your belief but I could see it being the other case.) I know that Megaupload provided tools for the labels et al. to remove infringing content in a very easy way (just like Youtube offers), and there was a lot of outcry from people over their personal files being lost because they were treating it like dropbox.

When called into question, users will argue these platforms/protocols can be used for legitimate purposes, and point to examples of people using them as such. In this case it was Megaupload attempting to do this to defend itself.

It doesn't, however, change the reality of the situation.

The more interesting case to me is whether one paints a service on distinct counts of items or on total traffic per item. PirateBay makes it easy to see what the hottest torrents are (http://thepiratebay.se/top/all); I'd be surprised if any are authorized. If we assume a power law then most of torrent traffic certainly infringes. For Megaupload, perhaps it was the same. But I'm more inclined to think Megaupload's distinct counts fall closely in line with Youtube's--it's trivial for copyright owners to take their content down with either a DMCA request or the tools the sites provide, meanwhile tons of user-generated content is appearing that actually belongs to the user. MediaFire seems like the place to go these days for sharing your songs, even professional artists use it sometimes. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to consider that for Youtube and perhaps Megaupload, there is more non-infringing content than infringing in absolute terms even if the infringing content takes up the supermajority of traffic.

It's interesting you point to The Pirate Bay's list of most popular torrents though. The Mega indictment cites an email from one of the alleged conspirators to another employee instructing said employee to alter the Megaupload 'Top 100' list. Elsewhere it is alleged that this list did not accurately reflect the most popular downloads on the site, and that this was done deliberately to make the site appear more legitimate than it was.

Not sure why I'm being downvoted, but the simple fact is that there was enough evidence to have an indictment written up, signed off on and then authorities in another country agree it had enough merit to be acted upon.

Steve Jobs made iTunes, iPod, iPad, iPhone. Woz said some things and was on dancing with the stars.

If I simply drew an interactive touchscreen toilet seat, and had an army of minions to actually get it to the market, all I'd need to do is sell it. That's what Steve Jobs did. I'm not saying he's not worthy of your love, but to say "Steve Jobs did XYZ... what has Woz done?" is quite ignorant, considering Woz did make the original Apple machines!

Secondly, engineers are a dime a dozen. I am one and have met hundreds over my lifetime. The really key people in business and most rare are those that can unify the business, marketing, design and technology elements together in a way that doesn't suck.

I would say the importance of the EFF far outranks the importance of Apple's over-priced toys.

While you're at it, you can go and bust on Paul Allen for wimping out when he contracted a potentially fatal disease and had to leave Microsoft.

Steve Jobs told other people to make iTunes, iPod, iPad, iPhone. And, really, did he do anything apart from telling people to make it smaller or shinier?

Woz knew how to make things smaller, simpler, better.

iTunes is a horrific barking dog piece of software. Many people only use it because they are forced to do so by vendor lock in with their mp3 playing device.

And it is a shame because his tacky, D-list behaviour demeans what was one of the more remarkable eras in world history i.e rise of computing and the famous Apple-Microsoft rivalry.

Ric Romero has more on this breaking story at 10.