Filesonic has disabled sharing services - Page 23

On January 24 2012 11:40 tehneXus wrote:
Piratebay is based in sweden, so it cant go down due to american laws

On January 24 2012 11:40 tehneXus wrote:
Piratebay is based in sweden, so it cant go down due to american laws

Yoshi- wrote:
Also piratebay is not hosting anything, while file hoster, are obv hosting the files

On January 24 2012 11:40 tehneXus wrote:
Piratebay is based in sweden, so it cant go down due to american laws

On January 25 2012 04:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

But then you forget what kind of power and influence the US has over most of Europe, including Sweden. Just a few weeks ago, the US told Spain to enact internet censorship laws and they did so with little hesitation, and Spain is I'd say at the lower tiers of US influence. Yes, if the US wants Sweden to do something like this, they will do it. You underestimate how hegemonic we are. Don't worry, the Urartians underestimated a hegemonic power too, but it didn't turn out well for them (see Tiglath-Pileser).

In the post–Cold War (1945–1991) world, the French Socialist politician Hubert Védrine described the USA as a hegemonic hyperpower, because of its unilateral military actions worldwide, especially against Iraq; while the US political scientists John Mearsheimer and Joseph Nye counter that the USA is not a true hegemon because it has neither the financial nor the military resources to impose a proper, formal, global hegemony.

Though that's just from 1945-1991, but since neither USA's power nor it's economy have grown since then(I'd say the opposite is the case, especially with China, India, Brazil and other countries have grown much stronger since then), it probably only adds to my point.

On January 25 2012 05:01 SilentchiLL wrote:



Actually, the US has probably more power over spain than over Sweden or Germany.
Sure, they could threaten us with higher taxes or something like that for our products, but the US gov. won't risk so much political tension with Germany just because of censorship laws for the internet, especially since the internet lobby is relatively strong in Germany AND in Sweden and they'd lose money(e.g. through taxes) if they'd raise taxes for german products.
And I think that you overestimate the hegemonic power of the USA(looking it up on wikipedia might help), and I've heard a few times lately that the USA is a hegemony, but when I learned about it in my history classes and had to compare it with imperialism(the ancient form and the modern forms) I kinda learned something else about it than you guys think it is.


EDIT: Yay wikipedia agrees with me:

Though that's just from 1945-1991, but since neither USA's power nor it's economy have grown since then(I'd say the opposite is the case, especially with China, India, Brazil and other countries have grown much stronger since then), it probably only adds to my point.

On January 25 2012 04:24 DeepElemBlues wrote:


It's just naive to believe things like this anymore. These are the same kinds of arguments we've heard for years, and they sound as good now as they sounded then, and mean just as much. Which is nothing other than "the government of Sweden wouldn't go along with it," or the government of some other country where sites like TPB are hosted.

Trusting any government to not cave in or to not honestly change its mind and jump on the US anti-piracy bandwagon is not something I think is going to work.

On January 25 2012 08:21 hinnolinn wrote:
About MegaUpload's De-Duplication process. I don't understand how people can say that all use of a file is infringing if one use is infringing.

Just because one person infringed with the file does not mean that some use of the file was not fair-use. It makes perfect sense to me to just disable the individual links that were considered infringment while keeping the file as long as at least one link still references it.

On January 25 2012 13:06 JonnyBNoHo wrote:


Because putting the file on MegaUpload is, in and of itself, a violation of fair use.

Under fair use you do not have the right to make a copy of a copyrighted material and distribute it throughout the world just because someone *might* be downloading it for a fair use reason.

On January 25 2012 06:45 DeepElemBlues wrote:


The US economy and military power have grown quite a bit since 1991... economy is almost twice as big (8 trillion 1991, 15 trillion today), military much more technologically advanced...

Dunno how people think that because other countries are also stronger than they were, the US is weaker.

On January 25 2012 10:41 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

The US influence and presence in Europe is best seen in Germany. I think the US has quite a bit with Germany. Additionally, the US doesn't have to risk political tension with countries that are in some way or another subservient, and i'm quite sure the German govt. is regularly compliant to US demands. Also, what the German govt. thinks is independent of what the German lobby groups think. If pressured by the US, I'm certain the German govt. will try to enact this legislation, and then we'd have to see what the countering lobbies would be able to do. The point is that those lobbies are separate entities from the govt.

Imperialism need not be territorial. It can be hegemonic (note how I mentioned the Assyrians, a very famous ancient empire), and I'd very certain that most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and a couple other countries are strongly in our grip.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US gained spheres of influence in the rest of Germany and much of eastern Europe. That's a COLOSSAL strategic gain. The US has become a lot more powerful since 1991.

On January 25 2012 21:23 SilentchiLL wrote:


Since other countries have grown aswell and Obama signed a law not that long ago which says that the american army doesn't need to be able 2 fight a two front war anymore(which basically means that the army get's less money and therefore shrinks) I think I'm going to disagree with you here.



So you actually think that the american gov. could pressure the german one into signing laws to censor the internet although we don't even censor our tv programs and in berlin the pirate party has more voters than the smaller one the CSU coalated with to get enough seats in the Bundestag to get a majority there.

Because I don't think so and for a country that's "regularly subservient" we went directly against the US gov. and the rest of Europe(which was pretty retarded, but the sense of it isn't the point here) in the decission if we should send soldiers south to help the citizens in africa to throw over the regimes down there.
And since military operations are basically "the thing" of the US to operate in the world and we already openly disagreed with you there the gov here doesn't seem that subservient to the US to me.
Additionally in the year 2009 only 10% of the exports from germany's exports went to America(not the USA the whole continent) and the demand of states like Brazil, China and India grows more and more every year, so we don't depend on the imports of the US as much as you might think we do.
And since Germany is the biggest media market(music, films, games...) in europe the lobbies here are mighty enough already and the last time the german gov. wanted to sign a law which wasn't nearly as bad as the SOPA, and was intended to block childpornography sites, the gov. got massive heat from the citizens and other parties just because we thought that if we don't stop them there they might demand harsher laws(including those against filesharing) for internet censorship in the future.
And can you give any reasons why the influence of the USA has grown since 1991 because that would actually interest me.

EDIT: Yes we do take our internet freedom and privacy pretty serious here.

Trusting any government to not cave in or to not honestly change its mind and jump on the US anti-piracy bandwagon is not something I think is going to work.

Don't underestimate US power and influence, and don't underestimate US power in Germany following WW2 and the Soviet fall.

We already have your soldiers in Afghanistan, 5,000 in fact, which is the most after Britain and US :S. And for a particularly minor thing like this stuff in Africa that no one cares about and I haven't even heard of, whatever it is, why would we need you.

You mention German exports to the US, but then you randomly throw in imports. They're different things. In any case, you're implying that importing stuff from the US implies how hegemonic it is. No, it doesn't work that way. One thing (of very, very many) we can do and did just with Spain a few weeks ago is threaten trade restrictions, and Merkel will be on her knees no doubt about it.

November exports of $177.8 billion and imports of $225.6 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $47.8 billion

In case you're wondering, the media industry is FOR laws like SOPA, not against. I highly doubt the German entertainment industry would oppose it unless there are inhumanly strange circumstances in Germany I'm not aware of. I don't care if there's counter-lobbies because we have those here too, and they just happen to be among the world's biggest web service companies, like Google.

Why did the influence of the US grow, you ask? Well look, after WW2, the western half of Europe was dominated by the US, while the eastern half was dominated by the Soviet Union. Now 20 years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, along with their hegemony in Eastern Europe. The US took advantage of the opportunity and is now heavily in eastern Europe and Balkans. We didn't just gain, we gained at the expense of our rival, Russia. We're the big dogs in Eastern Europe now. We also have a much larger grasp in the Mideast (well, IDK about now after Mubarak was overthrown), one of the most important strategic regions in the world. Our practical monopoly over world affairs following the USSRs collapse, before the last decade with the resurgence of Russia and a growing China, allowed us to significantly increase our global power and influence overall, most particularly in the Mideast and Balkans and eastern Europe. Colossal gain.