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Kim Dotcom Outs Mega Teaser Site, Finalizes Domain Name
hypnosec writes "Kim Dotcom has let out more information about the launch of Megaupload's successor Mega, which he claims will be 'bigger, better, faster, stronger, [and] safer.' Mega is currently looking for partners willing to provide servers, support and connectivity to become 'Mega Storage Nodes.' The prime requirement, according to Dotcom, is that the servers should be located outside the U.S. and that the companies should also be based outside of the U.S. For this reason, Dotcom has decided that the new service will be launching with 'Me.ga' domain name."
He has pretty big balls. I wish him all the best. But this time, I hope he will build a safe-room, in a safe-room because this is going to upset a lot of tier 1 criminals, eh businesspeople.
Kim,
Thanks for fighting the good fight.
Yes!
"The domain name associated with the website Me.ga has been seized pursuant to an order issued by the U.S. District Court"
(or equivalent).
The IP rights lobbyists and their flunky Legislators.
And its not going to be "America's" internet.
We are going back to our old ways of isolating ourselves from the world because of the greed of a very few.
While Kim may be greedy and potentially an asshole, he's going to win and is playing by rules far more legitimate then our current IP circus.
To those of you in the MPAA, RIAA, and software, mobile phone, and ISP industries. You cannot fight this. Learn and adapt or you will fail while people like Kim refuse to lay down and prosper.
That's funny. He feels the same way about you, and he doesn't even know you exist.
I'm sick of hearing about the US projecting its bad laws outside its jurisdiction.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I read about this a few weeks ago from the wired interview: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/ff-kim-dotcom/
Was there any doubt he would not be hosting this in the U.S.? I'm not sure what the news is here.
"You can't shut us down. The internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!"
As sick as you may be, and as much of a bastard he may be. He is currently turning into a reborn martyr of internet freedom.
I wish him luck in his ventures and hope for service that is as good as his old. The only half way decent file service out there is mediafire, but rapidshare has gained some ground in recent months by being better than they were a year ago.
OMG
Seems like our IP laws are really helping our industries right now. Soon all data centers will be located out of the reach of *AA ?
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Well you're doing it to your self as the summary makes no referance to the ongoing legal case.
I'm really not sure that .ga (Gabon) was the best choice - see: http://www.internetnews.me/2012/01/13/is-the-gabon-registry-offline/
Once it was a thing of pride to live here in America, but now unless you have a stake in Big business and/or brainwashed by those in power you see its going downhill and i agree with allot of comments that before to long nothing will be hosted or even businesses being based here because of all the crap that's going on from Music companies inability to adapt to new technology to the coal/oil industry having a strangle hold on energy. I read on here the other day i believe that Sweden was using trash to make energy....this would be a great thing for big cities in America. Nothing will change because everyone in office is getting bought off by Big Business.
So quit reading about it! And if people would just lay down and submit, then maybe the media would stop reporting it, and then you wouldn't have to worry. Preach total submission; long-term it's the only way to get what you want.
Looks like yet another classic Kim Dotcom scam.
This guy isn't an internet hero, he is a piece of shit.
There is no news. There is only the truth of the signal.
You can't stop the signal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.
Nevermore.
According the the article I read in my dead-tree Wired issue, plus speculation, the new service is going to be fully encrypted, forcing all users to encrypt their uploads so that the upload service itself cannot see what the content on its severs is, and so they have total plausible deniability, with the added bonus that the government also can't find clear-text data on their servers to incriminate them with.
This might also allow you and your trusted friends to upload anything you want, and megaupload/your ISP/the government cannot then bust you for copyright infringement or whatever, for the practical reason that they don't know what the data is. Of course this is possible now with current technology, but a cloud storage service with a good user interface with this feature 'built-in' and mandatory might be what it takes to get ordinary people to encrypt their content. Imagine Dropbox with mandatory encryption. True cypherpunks would argue that everything should have always been like this anyway.
Of course, Big Content doesn't roll over for such technicalities so I expect this to simply spawn more anti-cryptography laws.
The move somewhere else if you don't lik....oh right.
... read this if you want to know what it's like to NOT have the kind of money he does: The rotten and corrupt Domain Name System.
In a bizarre coincidence, the guy has almost the same name...
We are going back to our old ways of isolating ourselves from the world because of the greed of a very few
If it is only the very few causing the problem, then how is it possible that "we" (meaning all of "us") are causing the problem?
Let's call a spade a spade here. A government is NOT the people, and the people are NOT the government. If that was true, then logically, government wouldn't need guns -- because "we" would already be following the principles that "we" believe in.
Just wait until it is the UN dictating the rules.
They are already lining up "blasphemy" laws restricting free speech and eyeballing a global Internet Tax.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I haven't followed the case very closely but what ended up happening to the content that existed on the megaupload site? Did Dotcom get his servers back?
Also, if this service works it will be much easier that uploading truecrypt volumes. Which I will probably keep doing anyway.
I personally think this is the answer for all cloud storage. You encrypt data before it leaves and the server, God only knows where, stores your stuff. You can access it or your friends you give access to can get the data. Big deal. If Kim doesn't do it, who else does?
Thus if Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and a lot of other big companies can offer cloud storage, what is different about Me.ga except that Kim doesn't have lobbyists in Washington, DC?
The holding of encrypted data on a server is just anonymous data.
is that fat ass going to take the hint. No matter where he goes or where he hides, they will still come after him.
From the page on server limitations:
Unfortunately we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process.
When people ask "why use me.ga?" they're going to hear the Kim DotCom story. Eventually it'll be taken for granted that Hollywood has corrupted the Justice Department. This could be the PR move that turns ordinary people against Hollywood.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
As sick as you may be, and as much of a bastard he may be. He is currently turning into a reborn martyr of internet freedom.
I wish him luck in his ventures and hope for service that is as good as his old. The only half way decent file service out there is mediafire, but rapidshare has gained some ground in recent months by being better than they were a year ago.
In my opinion, he wouldn't come of as NEARLY so much an unmitigated douchebag if he didn't legally change his last name to "Dotcom". Seriously, it'd be that simple. If he didn't do that, he'd probably have far more respect than he does now.
His post was in response to a post that said they were sick of hearing stories about Dotcom.
Imagine Dropbox with mandatory encryption.
Like https://www.cyphertite.com/ ?
what? no goatse link? You're slipping, AC.
There's a procedure to follow, though. Anti-crypto laws are tricky things to get through politically. Doable, but it needs a good excuse, and 'Hollywood isn't rich enough' is not going to do it easily. The obvious justification is child porn. The mere suspicion of child pornography is toxic today, and any acts justified as opposing child porn are near-impossible to argue against without being branded a pedophile-enabler.
Imagine Dropbox with mandatory encryption. True cypherpunks would argue that everything should have always been like this anyway.
There are reasons why this isn't the default -- Dropbox relies on de-duplication to reduce their storage and bandwith costs.
Encrypting the data before upload would remove that possibility.
Not that it's not worth doing -- but it will be more expensive than a non-secure equivalent.
I get the feeling the RIAA, MPAA and the rest of the anti-piracy morons are holding us back, dragging us down.
At some point I stop caring about your "intellectual property" and "media licenses" and long for you to disappear.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Pro tip to the ordinary people out there, the current "encryption" that most pirates use today is called "yenc"
I just pointed out to a friend of mine in I.T., last week, that it seems odd how U.S. govt. largely forgot about their interest in controlling encryption. I mean, it wasn't THAT long ago that they were still forcing Microsoft to make a separate version of Internet Explorer because it was a federal crime to export it with 128-bit encryption capabilities in it. And remember how worked up they got over the Pretty Good Privacy software when it was first released to the public?
But despite CPUs getting many times more powerful and the "common man" encrypting things with 1024 bit encryption in many cases as default settings in programs, you don't really hear a peep out of govt. about it these days.
I have to assume this means they're capable of breaking it on-demand, so they're happy to let people use the stuff freely and get a false sense of security. Maybe there's a back-door or flaw in the math the NSA knows about, or they simply have such massive super-computer data centers at their disposal now, they can brute force break it? I don't know ... but it's HIGHLY unusual for government to just quit concerning itself with something it was really paranoid about just years earlier, when it purports to make sure they can't view the contents of communications between people.
>This might also allow you and your trusted friends to upload anything you want, and megaupload/your ISP/the government cannot then bust you for copyright infringement or whatever, for the practical reason that they don't know what the data is
Unless of course you post the key to decipher them on the public site where you advertise your uploads URLs which is the models the download sites rely on.
And if they instead rely on private communities, their impact will be less important and big content will have won, de facto. And big communities, if they happened to exist, will be easily infiltrated, so we will have a few heads rolling here and there during a few publicized trials, instead of just Dotcom's. So, basically, megaupload is just getting itself out of the responsability loop at the price of efficiency.
Ah yes, now we have it! Now we'll encrypt what our user's upload and for others to download because then we're not responsible for anything. Yeah, that's it.
Now our user's have no fear that their legitimate files will be seen. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
See, the issue isn't that we're trying to hide anything, because everything here is legal and above board, no, the real issue is that we're offering a service for people to store all their legitimate files safe from prying eyes. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
Honest, that's all we're doing. Just a place to store all your legitimate files. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
We could offer a no encryption service, but we need to protect the privacy of our user's and their legitimate needs. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
So again, just so everyone is clear on this, we're offering this service so people can store and trade their legitimate files without fear of anyone finding out what those legitimate files are. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Sure, the MAFIAA can trawl file sharing sites and get the password to the key. But they can't trace it back to who uploaded it, so they can't sue you. And Mega can't know that you've posted the key, so Mega can't know what's in the encrypted file. So they can't sue Mega either.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I've commented before that increasing surveillance of the Internet and increasingly draconian laws is just going to push more people to use encryption so that Governments and other agencies cannot see the data that is being transmitted. Even if they go after ISPs you will never stop people exchanging files - it is easy to set up a local Wifi network amongst neighbours, for instance.
Sssshhhh! That is where he is planning on hosting his new servers. Got to be at least 12U of server space up in there.
Then do something about it.
4 more years a hollywood in power and i bet its game over for IT in the usa.
SO vote for obuma and tank for the next 50 years.
... the file upload encryption will take place "on the fly" ... utilizing plug in technology - ;-) with "additional" features ( think Ad substitution )
get ready for a plug in
Why would he be re-launching his site (the explicit topic at hand)? I'll give you a hint, it' because the US projected it's power outside its jurisdiction.
Meh, the Internet will just route around the damage. The problem is that the "damage" is the USA.
Learn to love Alaska
Ah yes, any service that doesn't make it easy for copyright holder to oppress the masses must be "child porn." After all, you don't have anything to hide, do you?
Learn to love Alaska
Is the wrong way to go. It provides several points of failure that are hard to get around, and has proven to be vulnerable time and time again as we lose sites like Demonoid and Library.nu ( and countless others before them ).
Best bet is to go underground with something like Freenet or I2P. Sure, it may not be as 'transparent', but that is fixable by creating brain dead installers and multiple public access points. ( then you play whack-a-mole as those are shut down ). The days of the 'open net' is limited.
This way there is nothing specific to shut down.
Of course if there is a money trail, and there will be with Kim, that is still vulnerable.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Can they then submit a take-down notice? What do they have to do to support it? Since there does not appear to be a cost associated with submitting incorrect / false take-down notices, then they could take a shotgun approach and take-down pretty much everything. Of course, mega won't have to implement this (not being US based), but the question is: what happens then? Another raid?
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Funny isn't it? If they don't encrypt anything and people get in and take it, they are at fault, but if they do encrypt it, then there are more laws to try and force you to give the government the keys.
The US Government passed a law about five years ago requiring any new encryption developers to provide the US government enough of a key that they could decrypt it in short order. It was about that time, that I decided to encrypt several terabytes of random data, just to shove it up their ass for them to suck on.
It's funny how right wingers in the USA seem to think the United Nations is all-powerful.
Guys, the UN has no power whatsoever, it cannot dictate laws to member states, much less enforce them.
No sig for the moment.
The problem is that the "damage" is the USA.
HARDLY
The USA is not alone in this bullshit by any stretch. There are just as many problems in the EU right now. ALL governments right now are corrupt and owned by very powerful groups with intense interests in protecting the revenue from their copyrights.
Nobody wants to change, and there are a bunch of rent seeking sociopaths that are trying to kill freedom as quickly as possible, because it is the most direct route to having the control required to protect their business models and assets.
To say it is the USA only, gives a huge pass to those governments in the EU.
He's screwing you over because a book you might theoretically write 100 years from now has already been shared?
Learn to love Alaska
I'm sick of publishers and rich folks from the world over lobbying US Congress and messing with US politics.
I'm also sick of Europeans passing bad laws, letting the US do their dirty work, and then blaming Americans for the mess.
Copyright infringement of Daft Punk.
There are tons of bad treaties that come out of the UN and that are nearly impossible for member nations to leave. For example, the US couldn't legalize drugs however much it may want to. These treaties often represent policy laundering and are imposed undemocratically by the executive branch. Furthermore, the UN has something much stronger than military, namely the power to punish states through trade penalties, and those penalties are imposed on any nation that steps out of line, including the US.
The UN isn't all powerful, but it is also far from powerless. And we should never forget that the UN is not a democracy and has no moral authority; the majority of its members are undemocratic or worse. The UN is merely a body where states can try to work out their differences, nothing more.
I'm sick of hearing about this dude.
I'm sick of a lot of things. Hearing about "this dude" is nowhere near the end of that list.
kdc's trials and tribulations are very entertaining, especially how he's managed to tie two separate countries' legal systems in knots. We can only dream to get those !@#$%^&* as worked up about us as he's managed to. Good on him.
"How !@#$ed up is the US' DoJ? How incompetent are they?" Well, sic kdc on 'em, and let's find out. Now "That's Entertainment!" From what I've heard, I wouldn't like the guy personally, but he sure puts on a good show. Rock on!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Hold on a minute - are other countries involved with this prosecution too? If not, what you have just said is irrelevant.
Nah, the US is the damage. Just like nobody outside China is affected by the great firewall, and most inside don't know or aren't affected by it (the damage routing has already been done), the routing around the US is happening now. Europe and such are better, at least most placed don't allow patents on math, yet, so no software patents. Strange that the US law prevents a sorting algorithm on paper from being patented, but if you patent it "on a computer" that patent can be applied t the algorithm on paper. That kind of insanity is damage and will be routed around.
THe ??AA have the choice to adapt before irrelevance is complete, or they will be routed around, no matter how may of who they buy. Sure, they can shut down Napster and megauploads, but how's that doing for online piracy? Still going up? How about CD prices? Still increasing as downloads increase? You can (economically) prove the system is broken just from that. Demand goes down and supply goes up while prices go up. A person sufficiently cynical would argue they are keeping CD prices artificially high (and restricting authorized online availability) to push people to illegal downloads to then go out and make all that illegal, when dropping the price on CDs to $5 or $10 each for everything would greatly increase profits and revenues.
Learn to love Alaska
That's going to be quite problematic in practice with technology like TrueCrypt.
1) Outlawing crypto, or forcing the keys to be available is the clearest act of war against civilians by a government, and a perfectly just cause to rebel and overthrow the government. Anonymity, and the right to conduct private transactions and conversations was held to be sacrosanct the founding fathers in the US. They, more than anybody, understood the value, and how absolutely critical it was to prevent tyranny.
2) The operations can be divested from each other. Creating a crypto product that can manage data stores on service like Drop Box would create multiple companies, or a larger attack surface for law enforcement and the courts. Neither company would have the required information and access to data to comply with court requests, and neither company might be breaking the law either.
3) Technologies like TrueCrypt allow for the dissemination of a crypto key, while not disseminating the real data store. I've not heard of any real weaknesses yet, and complaining to the judge that the defendant did not comply because there was no incriminating evidence will not hold a lot of water either.
Pedophile enabler is the stupidest thing I've heard of yet when characterizing data storage services. That's like saying gun manufacturers are enablers of murders. No, it's worse. It's like saying construction crews that create roads are enablers of childhood obesity because ice cream trucks can use them.
The fact that politicians use such tactics is pathetic, and that some citizens fall for it, even more pathetic.
For the record, I would rather be enabling some pedophiles to transfer data around privately, than to give up all our freedom for some perceived gains in security for our children.
Sure, your child might have a %.000001 chance less of taking it up the ass by PedoBear, but they will have a dangerously high chance of growing up in a world where they can put in jail, or education camps, for dissenting speech.
No it isn't.
The poster made the claim that the damage the Internet needs to route around is the USA.
That's clearly not true in all cases, and ignores quite a bit of legal cases and laws being proposed in the EU, Australia, etc.
I have to disagree.
There are far too many articles about incidents in the EU regarding just about everything we are complaining about.
What about Canada? What about Australia?
The USA is not alone in this at all. The damage the Internet needs to route around is governments curtailing freedom, privacy, and anonymity, in the name of protecting these broken business models, while at the same time gaining the intelligence tools they claim will be used to protect us.
Possibly. But encryption is needed for internet commerce, which is worth $684B in the US. If there is anything that talks louder than the military, it's money.
Australia wants to be the US. Especially the bad parts. Every movie from there has as many or more warnings than the US ones. Though they had some sensible laws passed before they turned the wrong corner, and it's illegal to lock down regions, as that's anti-consumer. Canada arguably alllows unlimited legal downloading because you've paid for the piracy with a levy on the media.
No, no place is as bad as the US, and even then, only the English Speaking world is following the US lead. Some others may pass some laws for aid and such, but they don't spend their money enforcing them. allofmp3 was so hard to take down because it was explicitly legal, both in Russia and in the US (though that law will be challenged again soon with the student importing textbooks being taken to court). to take down allofmp3, it took threats and bribes from the US government and ??AA to lean on it, but it was never legally challenged in Russia or the US, and both agree it was legal, in so far as no legal action was *ever* taken against allofmp3.
So no, the US isn't the only place with "damage" but it is largely localized, and is being routed around. That's happened in business for 10 years now, as I know a number of international deals that went to Europe companies, as the Chinese and Indian engineers working on the infrastructure projects couldn't get in the US to buy from the US supplier.
Learn to love Alaska
Panem? Check. Circenses? Check. Revolution averted.
You're right. Pedophile enabler is stupid. And yet, it works. Do not underestimate public ignorance and desire for a good old-fashioned moral outrage, or a legitimate target to hate. Pedophiles are the new communists, or witches. A little flimsy evidence is all you need to ruin someone's life. After all, if they won't reveal the key, they must be guilty.
There are tons of bad treaties that come out of the UN and that are nearly impossible for member nations to leave. For example, the US couldn't legalize drugs however much it may want to. These treaties often represent policy laundering and are imposed undemocratically by the executive branch. Furthermore, the UN has something much stronger than military, namely the power to punish states through trade penalties, and those penalties are imposed on any nation that steps out of line, including the US.
Huh? How is the UN suppose to enforce anything on any country without the cooperation of other countries. If the UN decided to launch an embargo against the US, it would find that no one would follow along and its notice would be a worthless as the paper it is written on. If the UN says, "Drugs are bad, mmkay?", and bans them, they have no way to enforce their rules. None. Nadda. Zilch. If California legalizes it, how is the UN going to force California to decriminalize drugs? Without a standing army, the ruling of the UN is as worthless as, well, the UN.
The UN isn't all powerful, but it is also far from powerless. And we should never forget that the UN is not a democracy and has no moral authority; the majority of its members are undemocratic or worse. The UN is merely a body where states can try to work out their differences, nothing more.
The UN is powerless and since we (The US) pays a good chunk of their bills, they will do what we tell them.
Linux O Muerte!
What I want to know is just what algorithm they plan to use for this encryption and whether they plan to be open and honest about what the crypto they are using or whether they are going to be another snake-oil salesman that promises "strong crypto" but then uses something so weak that a kid in his bedroom could crack it easily.
For example, the US couldn't legalize drugs however much it may want to.
Unlike, say, the Netherlands? Yeah, right...
Furthermore, the UN has something much stronger than military, namely the power to punish states through trade penalties, and those penalties are imposed on any nation that steps out of line, including the US.
No, it doesn't. It's member states do. The UN is merely the place where they agree to do it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
California can legalize drugs all it wants (and it should). The treaty is between the US federal government and other nations, and that treaty is hard to get out of. The UN is one mechanism by which the US gets stuck with such treaties.
Countries enforce treaty provisions against each other by whatever mechanisms the treaties provide. The UN is the mechanism by which these treaties get created, often in an undemocratic way and contrary to the interests of Americans.
That doesn't mean that we should give up on the UN, but it means that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with using the UN as a political tool. The UN is a tool, it has no moral authority.
That's amateur legal theory and pretty dangerous.
Of course they can sue Mega. You can sue anyone for anything at any time. Whether they succeed is the interesting question. And that's not quite as easy to say, because courts are pretty good when it comes to looking at the spirit of things, not the letter.
The court would take a good, hard look at Mega and probably conclude that its primary purpose is to trade copyrighted material illegally while taking considerable steps to hide it. That's a criminal conspiracy.
They don't need to look into the files. They just need the internal e-mails, like they did in the Megaupload case.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Netherlands have not legalized drugs, they have reduced enforcement.
Are you confused about how judiciary and police relate to each other? Oh, yes, I see you are.
You can (economically) prove the system is broken just from that. Demand goes down and supply goes up while prices go up. A person sufficiently cynical would argue they are keeping CD prices artificially high (and restricting authorized online availability) to push people to illegal downloads to then go out and make all that illegal, when dropping the price on CDs to $5 or $10 each for everything would greatly increase profits and revenues.
You could also argue that people that will pirate have already been priced out. If your're making 80k the difference between free, 12 and 20 isn't that big. However if you're making 25k the difference between free, 12, and 20 is huge. Mostly people are just paying for convenience and organization now. That's why iTunes has been such a success even though it competes directly with free.
To say it is the USA only, gives a huge pass to those governments in the EU.
The thing is, though, it seems very much to be USA driven., and the Euros (from what I've read) have been fighting against it harder than pretty much anyone. TPB is Swedish, yes? SOPA, PIPA, TPP, DMCA, yada, yada, yada: USA! When it showed up in Poland, thousands (tens of thousands?) of people actually hit the streets (literally) in lousy weather and scared Polish politicians silly enough to kill it. France is "this close" to killing their "N Strikes" (HADOPI?) thingy. Portugal, Spain, ... don't appear to think this's a problem worth their time, or that kind of a solution to the problem is worse than the problem itself.
The US, on the other hand, continues full speed ahead; damn the torpedos! The USA's legacy entertainment industry is definitely the prime mover behind most of this madness.
[I love Poles. :-) This world needs lots more people like them.]
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Of course, Big Content doesn't roll over for such technicalities so I expect this to simply spawn more anti-cryptography laws.
They can pass all the anti-cryptography laws that they want. It doesn't mean I'll stop using it. George Washington would approve, I think.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Imagine Dropbox with mandatory encryption.
Like https://www.cyphertite.com/
Thanks for mentioning it. Looks cool.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The pirates come back if the product "sold" isn't worse than the pirated one. The store-bought one doesn't work (DRM and such) and the pirated one works better (no unskippable ads and such). But when the paid version is as good as the pirated one, and at a reasonable cost, people buy the paid version (Steam, iTunes, etc.) It's conveneince and cost. and it doesn't matter if they sold it for free, the inconveneince of the DRM store versions is enough to push people to pirate.
Learn to love Alaska
So that makes it okay?
And it's not just "right wingers", and it's not just the USA.
The UN is a fucking horrible waste of space and money. They are an incredibly corrupt organisation, and they get the dregs of our troughing failed/retired politicians.
I hate the fact that my taxes go to support this organisation that I have no control of, and can write laws that I have no influence over.
It's powerlessness is it's only good point. I'm glad that I don't live in Europe though - the EU seems a much more nasty (and expensive) equivalent. And they can enforce laws.
AES
Another possible explanation is that they gave up because they realised trying to control the export of encryption techology that was already well-known outside the US was pointless and only served to hurt US buisnesses.
Also if there is anything the past decade or so has taught us it's that even if the underlying encyrption algorithms are sound the cryptosystems built round them often aren't. SSL is a good example, it relies on certificate authorities to determine whether you are really communicating with the server you think you are. I'm quite sure that if the US government needed a cert for a particular domain to use in a MITM attack they would have no trouble getting it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Sorry, just reminded me what hole ACTA came out of it and where it was defeated?
It came out of the US and It was defeated by the EU - not national governments, no, governments like the UK's were willing to sign us right up to ACTA.
The EU is actually the only political entity that did listen to people and did then kill off ACTA as a result.
But keep telling yourself the US isn't the problem if it makes you feel better. I agree EU nations follow US demands for stricter copyright enforcement, and the EU does have some copyright fascists (Sarkzy was a good example, Jeremy Hunt still is) but the facilitation of this ideology comes purely from the US. Jeremy Hunt is only where he is because the US has assisted Murdoch in exporting the Atlanticist ideology for so long for example.
DRM is more of a philosophical than practical problem. It annoys geeks, but doesn't seem to matter to most normal consumers.
Personally, I think that if you have philosophical objections to material with DRM then you should just not buy that material. If enough people did this, DRM would be abandoned. If you pirate it instead, nothing changes. If not enough peple care to boycott DRM-encumbered products, that just means DRM isn't that important to must people.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Blah blah blah shut the fuck up you ignorant xenophobic prick.
The only way the UN can line up and pass blasphemy laws and a global internet tax is if the US and every other country in the world votes for it too which is better than the current status quo where only the US has to vote for it.
You do know that the very UN treaties you're talking about are hard to get out of precisely because the US uses it's political, economic, and military weight to enforce them right?
It's not because the UN has some mystical power to enforce these things, they can only be enforced when global heavyweights insist on that.
In other words it's not the UN per-se that is the problem, but the US. If you blew up the whole of the US tommorrow and completely erased it from the equation, I guarantee such laws would soon relax.
You're trying to blame the UN as if it's some separate self-concious entity that comes up with shit like the WTO all by itself. It's not, it's merely there to facilitate global discussion and implementation of the likes of the WTO once a nation like the US has proposed it and bullied everyone into signing it.
If "the MAFIAA can trawl file sharing sites and get the password to the key" it can determine the file is illegal, issue a notice to the mega to take down the file, remove the account and give infos about the uploader, and also targets the blog or forum that gathers the file (like they did with the piraye bay) if it's too successfull.
So basically' all this is going to do is add a layer of complexity which will undermine its success in order to remove the people of mega from the legal responsability loop.
I fail to see how it can be a game changer.
I never said the US was not part of the problem, or that it is attempting to export its extreme copyright protectionist policies.
Keep telling yourselves that the US is where it all comes from though. Purely? That's a load of crap.
A lot of the scariest ideas coming down the pipeline are from the UK and Australia when it comes to surveillance and Internet powers. Not all of that is being justified by copyright either, which your claim that is purely driven by the US.
ACTA was defeated in the US because enough people in the US stood up to it, not because it was also defeated in the EU.
It's a mistake to give the rest of the governments a pass as just being under the bad influence of the US. They have their own agendas when it comes to the Internet, and freedom, and not all of it is driven by copyrights at all. In fact, copyright most often is just another excuse, like think-of-the-children.
"A lot of the scariest ideas coming down the pipeline are from the UK and Australia when it comes to surveillance and Internet powers. Not all of that is being justified by copyright either, which your claim that is purely driven by the US."
But all that's national and none of it's exported. The UK internet censorship regulations to date have all been driven by the US media industries and this is why people have a problem.
No one gives a shit about China's censorship if China keeps it to itself it's China's problem the problem is that the US exports all it's bad ideas and forces them on everyone else.
"ACTA was defeated in the US because enough people in the US stood up to it, not because it was also defeated in the EU."
ACTA was never defeated in the US full stop, the US government signed up to it and were it not for the EU defeat it would've come into power there. It was signed on the basis that everyone would sign up to it but the EU would not, hence preventing it from becoming law in the US. The US never withdrew it's signature prior to the EU killing the bill so what you say here is completely and utterly false. Perhaps you're confusing it with SOPA/PIPA?
"It's a mistake to give the rest of the governments a pass as just being under the bad influence of the US. They have their own agendas when it comes to the Internet, and freedom, and not all of it is driven by copyrights at all. In fact, copyright most often is just another excuse, like think-of-the-children."
No but most of that ideology IS driven by the US. Much of the non-copyright bad legislation in the UK stems from Murdoch's lobbying (it is his papers that drive it) and it is the US that allows Murdoch to act as a vehicle for pushing it's policy as it does.
This doesn't absolve the UK of blame, the UK should stand up to it, but it doesn't absolve the US either because the US can stop it also by stopping the export of it's ideas abroad in the various ways it does.
Sometimes, smaller markets (less demand) actually result in higher prices per unit sold, because the fixed costs associated with creating and distributing ANY amount of supply have to be spread across fewer units sold.
In Reason We Trust
No, it does annoy most consumers. The issue is that it would never annoy my mother. She doesn't and wouldnt buy anything online. That makes her a non-consumer, like so many others. When you consume only DVDs and paper books, then DRM won't annoy you so much The DVD DRM is trivial, though she does get annoyed sometimes by Disney, as they no longer meet the DVD standard due to their DRM, and playback in a DVD player can fail, but she attributes most of the errors to scratches and other things that are easier to understand.
But those that it would annoy don't consume DRMd products (partially because of the DRM).
Learn to love Alaska
Other countries are trying to enforce the same kind of moves
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
THe UN isn't any worse as a source of lousy treaties than the WTO, except that the WTO seems to be more reflective of "American interests".
Of course, both are better than IMF recommendations, which always seem to be the same (sell everything which provides the government with a source of non-tax income at knock-down prices, cut all foreign trade restrictions, cut public services, cut corporate taxes and raise income taxes, and take away whatever workers' rights you can get away with), and almost always leave the country even more messed up than before (since now they're broke and have nothing to sell). Whether that's stupidity (not noticing that it doesn't work), insanity (thinking it ail work this time), religious fervour (it will work, if only they go a bit further - just like faith healing, if it isn't working, it's because you're not praying enough), evil (they actually don't want it to work), or just plain laziness (they keep getting paid a lot of money to give the same lousy advice, so they're not going to bother to try anything new), isn't exactly obvious.
DRM is more of a philosophical than practical problem. It annoys geeks, but doesn't seem to matter to most normal consumers.
No. I spent most of yesterday and the day before talking/negotiating with Apple tech support trying to fix my parents' Mac. They were all great and wonderful to deal with. I even had a manager call me to inform me that the people who sold it to them sold them the wrong support contract, but he could fix it automatically from their end if that was alright. Great! :-)
Then, I could ask them technical questions. Not before. That's DRM.
I bill corporates ca. C$75.00/hr. for this !@#$.[*] I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for my Mom owning a geekboy son, it never would've been fixed. I like how Macs work. I don't like the price all that proprietary corporate !@#$ sells for. Why do I have to waste a day and a half proving to them what they sold me? The richest corp on the planet *ought* to have this down flawlessly by now.
Nope. Sucks.
[*] I'm considering talking to NCIS. Leon Panetta appears to need my help. Still thinking about it ... (http://www.ncis.navy.mil/Careers/Cyber/Pages/default.aspx). Interesting.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Sometimes, smaller markets (less demand) actually result in higher prices per unit sold ...
Otherwise known as the Ferrari vs. Volkswagon Principle. Filet Mignon or Big Mac? Nippon Sikis or Adidas? Cotton or polyester? Virginia or Turkish? Pleistocene or Cretacious?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Sheesh, take a cold shower or something. Opening a debate about something doesn't equal lining up laws. It seems that in the country of freedom, some things (like putting limits on said freedom) cannot even be talked about.
And moderators, what's the thing with this being modded +5 interesting? Apparently, the US hive mind still hasn't gotten over the UN making poor Dubya go to Iraq without its stamp of legitimacy. Which is weird considering that most do admit the war itself was, in fact, not really legitimate.
I hate the fact that my taxes go to support this organisation that I have no control of, and can write laws that I have no influence over.
Assuming that you're an US voter, I'll would like you to know that your elected government has a vote in most if not all UN organs. Yes, you're not directly voting for the proposals that are on the table. Yes, your vote is not weighted by the population of your country. Sounds a bit like, say, electoral colleges, don't you think?
I'm glad that I don't live in Europe though - the EU seems a much more nasty (and expensive) equivalent. And they can enforce laws.
Have you tried talking to a few Europeans? I for one enjoyed living under my EU overlords. They're much more pragmatic in their decision making and there's much less over-the-top ideological drama/gridlock. Comparing it with the US federal government, I'm always amazed that this country hasn't collapsed under its own inertia yet.
Admittedly, the EU still has far less power over its member states than the federal government.
I hate pirates.
I hate greedy publishers even more.
At least the pirates are honest.
Publishers, however, are happy to give lip-service to respect for IP when they consider piracy just as unwanted competition and also treat indies the same way.
The acid test: If piracy stopped, would DRM stop too?
It wasn't defeated in the US, only in Europe and thus cannot enter into force.