Woz is a great guy. He gets involved in a lot of things. I remember watching the show 'Dancing with the Stars' just to see him dance. He is a great character.
Personally, I don't support Dotcom's case because he has some blame in the entire 'Megaupload fiasco'.
It's interesting to consider how different the world might be if Jobs and Woz had been busted for selling blue boxes:
http://paulgraham.com/bluebox.html
> 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.
It was an unspoken truth, as for any other platform or protocol used primarily for the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted works (P2P networks, torrents, usenet, etc.)
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.
Unspoken truths often turn out to be false. Without hard figures it's a tough call to say what the reality really is. (I'm still amazed Netflix itself takes up ~20% of the US internet traffic, and it's all authorized.) For torrent sites it's easier to get the figures, for Megaupload it isn't. Hence my curiosity, I guess I'll just have to wait for the trial.
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.
I would personally be beyond astonished if this one turned out to be false.
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.
Demonstrated enough up until now to have an indictment written up and acted upon by law enforcement officers on the other side of the world.
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.
New Zealand is a small country highly dependent on the US for trade and tourism. If the US says "jump", our police and politicians are probably going to jump, whether or not it's merited. Hopefully now that the pressure is off a bit our court system can sort out the questions of merit properly.
Steve Jobs did not make iTunes, iPod, iPad. He might've drawn a picture and said, "I want it to look like that.", but he didn't make it.
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!
Firstly, Steve Jobs name is on many of the key patents associated with those devices and I doubt anyone would think that he didn't have a role in the design and development.
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.
You should read Founders at Work and Steve Jobs. Both paint pictures of Woz as the guy who quite literally designed and built the Apple I and Apple II (although not quite as much as Apple I), off of which the company was built. Without Woz, there is not Apple. There is not technology elements to unify without him. He is not a dime a dozen.
Woz is one of the original financial backers of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is still involved with the EFF, his main-job right now is chief scientist of Fusion-io.
I would say the importance of the EFF far outranks the importance of Apple's over-priced toys.
Right, because being the chief scientist at FusionIO is not interesting at all. FusionIO is easily one of the most interesting tech startups around, and are a company with serious engineering innovation rather than just a clever business plan.
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.
It's a shame you got downvoted for this because it is true. No one is dismissing Woz's great achievements in the past but what he is, right now, is a celebrity.
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.
Personally, I don't support Dotcom's case because he has some blame in the entire 'Megaupload fiasco'.