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Kim Dotcom's Next Venture: Free Broadband To New Zealand
First time accepted submitter damagedbits writes "So it turns out that Me.ga is only part of Kim Dotcom's resolution for 2013. Even though he's still facing extradition to the U.S. for alleged piracy, Dotcom has plans to resurrect Pacific Fibre's failed project to construct a fiber optic cable across the Pacific to the U.S. The new line will bring free high-speed broadband to New Zealanders and double the nation's Internet bandwidth, setting Dotcom back about $400m."
Some of that funding is based on optimism: "Dotcom plans on getting the majority of his funds by suing Hollywood studios and the US government for their 'unlawful and political destruction of [Megaupload].'"
Go ahead and lay the pipe to the US!
I'd say that regardless of your stance on intellectual property, if you dig below the surface then you can see there was some very grubby, nepotistic and borderline criminal politics at work in the obliteration of Megaupload and the persecution Dotcom. Not to mention all the collateral damage to busineses using Megaupload for legitimate backups (even if we do acknowledge that a huge chunk of that data was probably pirated...).
I'm doubtful of how successful any court action will be directly against the US government, but if he's willing to funnel it back into the kind of altruistic endeavour he's proposing, I say power to him. I'm sure that LOTR-notwithstanding, It's more than Hollywood's ever done for New Zealand's economy.
He's still a complete douche, right down to the bottom of his trolling little heart. I'm not exactly a supporter, but I am enjoying the show.
Put me on the jury and i'll award him billions.
What the US and NZ goverment did to him was wrong, illegal, and COMPLETE BULLSHIT!
You can't be the good guys pulling shit like that over some fucking media... not something serious... movies and music... what. the... fuck!
So i'll root for the 'criminal' here. Because all in all he's far less of a scumbag than any of the politicians or law enforcement agents involved in this clusterfuck megaupload case.
See america... this is how far we have fallen.. i'd rather support a "criminal" than law enforcement thugs or politicians.
USA! We are the worlds biggest hypocrites! Respect is earned and the USA deserves damm little anymore.
And if i had my way i'd see ALL of the politicians and pigs involved in this case thrown in jail for a decade.
Your first instincts were right. He's just rich enough now to have PR and marketing guys helping him with his image.
He's an egomaniac career criminal who by pure accident was shot this side of the street and now we think he's one of ours. He isn't. He is the exact kind of people we do not want on our side.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Real heros?
How about a guy that got raided by Delta-force with assault rifles and helicopters, a billion dollar business destroyed with no due process, and illegal spying that is pretty close to getting a prime minister redhanded in illegalities?
What has gone down would be enough to produce a pretty damn good movie and you're questioning if he's been through enough to qualify for some support? Are you perhaps a sore dick mad at the world cause someone else has done cool stuff and you never got out of your mom's basement.
he's definitely doing it right though - simultaneously stick two fingers up at the Americans, and promise the Kiwis an improvement on their piss-poor internet.
I think he's a dick, but this is a great show.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Counter-example: Rupert Murdoch is rich too, and even own media companies.
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Basically the studios have enough collective cash to put him in the poorhouse before he ever sees a dime from them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I could buy a bus today and offer people free commuting to work, but that's not going to last much beyond the point where I have to refill the fuel tank for the first time...
He is not so naive to think that he can just hook a fibre link up to an end-point in the CONUS and give everyone in NZ free data transfer.
1. Maintenance costs of the fibre link.
2. Transit costs to non-peering partners
3. Transit costs to "rest of World", you may have heard of it
4. End-mile connectivity for the NZ customers
All these have immense ongoing costs. Not sure how Mr Dotcom's traditional advertise-and-nag funding model will help there.
Actually I formed my opinion well before any of this went down. The guy's personality has been publicly known for most of two decades now.
His latest antics are much less harmful to society, and I do give him credit for that. I enjoy anyone who's a pain in the system's ass instead of causing real trouble. Larry Flynt is another fun one... but both of them, like cows, are best observed from a distance; the closer you get the more disgusting you realize they really are.
I'm sure there's plenty of disinformation being handed out as you say, but I'm confident in my independent opinion that he is still a total douche.
He has a hell of a lot of support amongst the computer-literate and young.
Which proves that being computer-literate and young doesn't prevent you from being gullible.
The guy is just another self-entitled arsehole who thinks that he has a right to make money off other people's work. If you have a philosophical objection to copyright, fine, argue about it as much as you like, boycott the organisations that impose it and press for a change in the law.
But while you're making money off the copyright laws by circumventing them with something like megaupload you're just a con artist, hypocrite and leech.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
His history doesn't make it illegal for him to start a legal business. His history only makes it kinda statistically unlikely that he will...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, the issue is that by all accounts he was operating within the law, so who's the gullible ones here?
Unlike Youtube where copyright infringement was rampant and encouraged by the leaders, MegaUpload always has seemed to follow the DMCA faithfully. Until google gets a helicopter raid you can stick that gullible thing up your ignorant ass.
Someone suing the federal government should NEVER make you happy. Where do you think the money to defend them and, if they lose, to cough up the dough comes from?
Essentially, he's suing YOU.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Someone suing the federal government should NEVER make you happy
I'm happy if the system collapses faster, so we can get Another System Started. I don't believe the system can be fixed by working within the system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Suuuure he was operating within "the law". And all those wise guys who owned speakeasies during prohibition? They were just shocked - shocked!, I tells ya - to learn that the barkeeps had been serving alcohol without their knowledge or consent.
Well.. that's the thing. As far as anyone can tell (and unless you can show otherwise), he WAS operating within the law (or, if you prefer, "the law").
Following your silly analogy, if, during prohibition, there was a specific law that said that your establishment was working within the law as long as you would kick-off any drunk people from your establishment whenever told by the authorities (i.e. the equivalent of the DMCA law, bur for alcohol) and the owner faithfully followed that law, then, by definition, he was operating _within the law_.
Your analogy totally breaks down, actually, once one sees that, unlike what happens in speakeasies, in the particular case, it's not the owner of the establishment that's supplying the illegal goods (unless you have proof otherwise, besides your witty but shallow remarks).
But, yes, keep ignoring all that (and YouTube, while you're at it). Let's just pretend copyright infringement never happens anywhere online and, whenever it does, it's obviously due to Dotcom's fault and he's obviously profiting from it. You know... as if Dotcom's "support" is required for piracy to continue thriving.