I do find it frustrating how news articles will often describe a complex case and refer to the "victims" of the guilty party, while omitting any discussion of who those victims were, and (sometimes maliciously) leaving the reader to fill in the blanks.
For example, if all you knew about Theranos was that Elizabeth Holmes was an archetypical sociopath CEO who ran a fraudulent blood testing company, then an uncritical reading of a headline like "Elizabeth Holmes appeals compensation payments to Theranos victims" might pull on your heartstrings - that damn sociopath sold fraudulent blood tests to cancer patients and now she's stiffing them for the compensation she owes them! But if you have a bit more context on the case, then you know that her "victims" were actually some of the richest, most powerful people in the world, like venture capitalists with billions of dollars under management, and war criminals like Henry Kissinger and former members of the Intelligence Community. They failed to do any due diligence, and were duped into investing other people's money into a founder selling vaporware. Instead of cutting their losses, they leveraged their power to weaponize the media and justice system to enact their retribution on her.
The same applies here. The only "victims" of Megaupload are massive corporations with teams of lobbyists who have spent decades capturing politicians to protect their monopolies by legislating barriers to entry and criminalizing threats to their otherwise fragile business models.
Meanwhile the users of Megaupload just want to watch some movies, but the corporations can't figure out how to distribute their content in any reasonably usable or affordable way. So instead of fixing their business model, they deputize their pocket politicians to prosecute the only people who managed to provide what the users actually wanted.
So yes indeed, it's hard to muster much sympathy for the "victims" of Megaupload, aside from the innocent users of the service who just want to pay some reasonable amount of money to watch movies and TV shows.
For example, if all you knew about Theranos was that Elizabeth Holmes was an archetypical sociopath CEO who ran a fraudulent blood testing company, then an uncritical reading of a headline like "Elizabeth Holmes appeals compensation payments to Theranos victims" might pull on your heartstrings - that damn sociopath sold fraudulent blood tests to cancer patients and now she's stiffing them for the compensation she owes them! But if you have a bit more context on the case, then you know that her "victims" were actually some of the richest, most powerful people in the world, like venture capitalists with billions of dollars under management, and war criminals like Henry Kissinger and former members of the Intelligence Community. They failed to do any due diligence, and were duped into investing other people's money into a founder selling vaporware. Instead of cutting their losses, they leveraged their power to weaponize the media and justice system to enact their retribution on her.
The same applies here. The only "victims" of Megaupload are massive corporations with teams of lobbyists who have spent decades capturing politicians to protect their monopolies by legislating barriers to entry and criminalizing threats to their otherwise fragile business models.
Meanwhile the users of Megaupload just want to watch some movies, but the corporations can't figure out how to distribute their content in any reasonably usable or affordable way. So instead of fixing their business model, they deputize their pocket politicians to prosecute the only people who managed to provide what the users actually wanted.
So yes indeed, it's hard to muster much sympathy for the "victims" of Megaupload, aside from the innocent users of the service who just want to pay some reasonable amount of money to watch movies and TV shows.