Without getting into all the details about what Berkshire is and what their methodologies are, the author merely wants to be nothing more than a "conglomerate" of tech/internet businesses, and was emphasizing his ability to close fast(er).
I think we can all agree thats about as similar as it gets to Berkshire Hathaway, and what the author is doing is not really that unique or similar.
I view the article as nothing more than a way to get press and hope to try and improve the author's deal flow in case anyone who reads the article is interested in selling their business, and if I had to guess the author got at least a few leads from it.
Indeed, but when don't limit how much people can upload, but then you limit how many DMCA take downs you will comply with, it is physically impossible to keep up. They've created a one -way street basically, however, they can then go and argue in front of a judge "we've implemented a 'reasonable' DMCA take down policy." - the word "reasonable" is very much up for interpretation, so Mega will argue they are complying with the law, but in reality, they are opening the floodgates to piracy, and they basically know exactly what they are doing.
Really, the bottom line is this: People know what his sites were used for. They didn't blow up to immense popularity because of the non-pirated material. He hides behind DMCA, he says his service is for legitimate purposes only and the illegitimate is just a side effect. There are legitimate services that are big, like 'YouSendIt', and those services aren't known for piracy the way his services were. It's not random, unlucky, undeserved, etc.
He's a criminal, operating internationally, trying to exploit loopholes in the law for his own financial gain. He is not a good guy, he is not noble. He is a risk-taker who tried exploiting loopholes between the law and technology. For every action there is a reaction.
His action was to use unfairness in the law to exploit it for his own financial gain. What the big companies did was use their unfair advantage with politics to pull some strings and do things that are arguably legal or illegal? What is the one takeaway? The laws are unfair. What Kim Dotcom did should not be legal, and there should be effective tools to have him comply or actually give a shit about the piracy on his websites, without "stifling innovation" around the rest of the internet for actual legitimate services that aren't built on piracy.
It's possible to build a business 100% built on piracy internationally, and still be "technically" legal or have no real recourse.
You can DMCA them, but they are given a "reasonable" time to take it down, and per the article, they never even removed the actual content, but created duplicate URLs over and over again.
You can build a wall of plausible deniability, even though you know what you are doing the whole way, and potentially even get away with it.
There are billions of impressions being sold daily for advertising from hijacked users. Big $$$.
Advertising revenue was secondary to premium memberships, but now paypal, visa/mc are shutting down file lockers payment processing and they are more reliant on ad revenue.
In any business, if you can leverage technology to steal something and sell it for less, you will do well.
It's not just movies or music. It's anything. If I can steal laptops with no repercussions and sell it for 90% off, and its just as good as the original, I am going to do really well.
Just shows how flawed the laws are with respect to copyright holders. I doubt he is the only one setting up international businesses, to skirt the law for profit, and then claim the US doesn't have jurisdiction.
The laws in Europe are very loose as well. Not only do you have people setting up businesses to profit off piracy, but you also have secondary businesses forming to monetize and indirectly profit.
Browse over to thePiratebay and go look at the ads, what the products are, and who is serving those ads. These players know exactly what's going on, and how that traffic is derived and they will do anything for a "buck" - from install toolbars and hijack browsing experiences down. But technically, its all "legal", specifically if you aren't in the US.
That shouldn't be the case imo and the book should get thrown at all these people, because when the copyright laws change eventually and people say the new ones stifle innovation, these are the guys that will be the reason for it, and rightfully so.
I think we can all agree thats about as similar as it gets to Berkshire Hathaway, and what the author is doing is not really that unique or similar.
I view the article as nothing more than a way to get press and hope to try and improve the author's deal flow in case anyone who reads the article is interested in selling their business, and if I had to guess the author got at least a few leads from it.