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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!
... It really seems to be a Robin Hood type thing....
The 'rich' taking the 'richer' to the cleaners to provide broadband to the masses for free...
Lately I can't seem to fault this guy....
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
When i first read about him a few years ago he came across has a big douche, but now he has grown on me. I find myself cheering him on.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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.
Quality of connections for what you pay in NZ is awful.
Next up, Kim Dotcoms create the New Zealand based MEGAparty, waiting for the day that people vote him Prime Minister of New Zealand - with his election platform based on Free MEGAbroadband for all, for FREE!
But it's ten-times better for those who register their vote for him with the MEGApartyManager...
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
"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].'"
Oh, please. He's an attention whore and trying to stay in the news. /. willfully plays along. Will it be reported if I make a New Year's resolution, too?
There's probably half a billion people with half a billion business ideas on the planet right now. Why is Kim Criminals' being reported? Oh yes, because he broke a couple laws that we don't like.
How about you support the real heroes today? The ones like the EFF, or in Europe EDRI, who are fighting this fight where it can actually be won - the legal and politics level - and have been doing so for years?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
likely he''ll do it from NZ.. chances are probably a little better there?
Interesting, but beating a government at their own game by suing their interests simply isn't going to work. It takes arrogance to think you can beat another man's game when the other man gets to define the rules.
Did I miss anything? I included the Dr. Evil-esque finger quotes. It only works if he can successfully sue Hollywood for that much before he is extradited, and if the people of NZ are willing to turn a blind eye to his motives. Or the fact that you'd have to be batshit crazy to reveal this plan to the world while you're fighting extradition for piracy.
I believe that a lawsuit against Hollywood and the US government is hopeless. They both own too many judges. However, I hope that some investigation into the matter would bring more light on the US government's and Hollywood's roles in the matter. This whole thing looks like Hollywood just convinced the US government to destroy the Dubious Dotcom, by using whatever Dubious Means possible. It's like Hollywood ordered a drone strike in New Zealand, and the US military leadership had no say in the matter.
Some Hollywood and government folks are a wee bit too cozy together, for my comfort.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Can anyone see the irony in Hollywood studios providing the funding for unlimited quota internet in New Zealand?
To put it into perspective, currently ADSL plans in NZ start with quotas as low as 3GB for NZ$49.95/month (~US$41.25).
Funny thing is that NZ 'forgot' to demand indemnification from the US in case the raid was illegal or the charges bullshit, meaning that NZ might very well be on the hook from (almost guaranteed) compensation for the raid itself for at least quite a few million dollars and possibly, but not entirely certain, for the billion dollars estimated to have been the value of MegaUpload.
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!!!
No, the PM gave an official apology to Kim. That should be the end of it as far as Kim suing NZ is concerned.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Dude, seriously, you didn't even need to RTFA... the summary would have been more than adequate to answer your question...
RTFS:
FTFY
Hmmm, altruism? What if g**gle suddenly decided to subsidize free telephones for all: smart phones for the kiddies, non-smart phones for the non-smarties, all they asked was to be able to track and keep and use all of the data they could gather from you (net access, telco PEN trace stuff, hell google could even keep every uttered voice and word and sneeze with their HW, GPS and location info along with timing info of when you are where). Now a lot of people might fall for this and want these g**FoneZ, but would you call the motivation behind this altruism? Or could you perhaps see a business benefit that the offeror of such a plan might get
.
And now to use a perfectly parallel analogy, let's say that g**gley-minds came up with the idea of giving everyone tablets and chromebooks that came with free wifi/3g/cellular broadband access and all had strong umbilical links to the mothership. That's a strong parallel to subsidizing a wide-fiber-pipe from the USA to NZ. Would you call that altruism?
I'm sure that there are very viable profit-making opportunities to be made in putting in and having access to that wide-fiber-pipe: all of his redo-megaupload ideas would then also have an easy route of entry for any US based customers. Perhaps this is the missing step before the "Profit" step in the recipe.
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.
Hm. Needs to remember that strategy. Rob a bank and if they catch me I apologize and walk away....
I thought he was only worth 200 million?
Who says crime doesn't pay?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I wouldn't call Dotcom's plan altruistic, on that I agree with you, but his plan is clearly much less "evil" than the scenario you proposed. The plan is simple: he wants more bandwidth for his new Mega-solution, and he wants to bitch-slap back the U.S. government and all the related parties while doing so. Handing out free bandwidth to all the Joe Blows of NZ is just a means of increasing the profitability of his new venture via indirect marketing effect while also improving his own, personal reputation in their eyes. So yes, there is an ulterior motive, but luckily there are only benefits to be reaped by the common folk on this plan.
the billion dollars estimated to have been the value of MegaUpload.
What, on the basis that it would have earned a million dollars a year in advertising revenue for the next thousand years?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Rich people can pay for a good public image...
Perhaps you should have told that to Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer and the likes. Richer then rich but their public image is down the drain with all the other turds.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course there are many NZ people who feel that way, who do you think voted in this government that bent over for American interests?
Any country will have a large number of sheep, NZ is rather famous for it. Just that most countries do not allow sheep to vote, NZ does and even lets them run the country.
Hope Kim DotCom sues the shit out of them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He is not so naive to think...
The guy might be of questionable intent, but he isn't stupid. Without having much knowledge of the subject matter, at a wild guess I'd say he plans to cover the costs by serving all me.ga data from NZ to the rest of the world, which effectively makes all peering arrangements hugely profitable since most traffic is outbound. In any case I'm sure he knows more about this than you or I, so there must be a workable business model there somewhere.
P != E
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
He has to go to the US first, and face the charges brought against him. Which is a gamble I don't think Dotcom will take.
Big promises, trying to get investors, then ... well, read his history.
I wouldn't hold my breath to see it come true.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whoever loses.
We win.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The original Pacific Fibre project failed technically because of lack of funding, but just as much from international politicking. International infrastructure (intrastructure?) attracts these sorts of issues it would seem. The US didn't want China funding it and really didn't want them providing technology.
And of course theres's already speculation the US would take the same attitude to Kim Dotcom's involvement given they are trying to prosecute him for teh internet crimez.
A cynic might see this as a cynical PR move on his part. He offers The People of NZ goodies and the US government takes them away. He gets to look like the good guy again and it ultimately costs him nothing.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
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.
Estimates by people who do estimates of this sort for a living, based on prior earnings and pre-raid customer-base. Basically it's the kind of thing they do all the time in the world of business and people can earn or lose rather much money on bad estimates so they take that kind of thing seriously, unlike you.
He knows he isn't going to do it, because to bring the action against the US he'd have to do it in US court. He tries that, well he'll get arrested. Bullshit or no, the US government wants to go after him and if he's on US soil, that's quite easy. Even if the lose they can make the process drawn out and a huge pain in the ass for him. So there's no way he'd come to the US.
That aside, suing government is problematic. Look up sovereign immunity. In the US, as with many countries, it is still law. So more or less you can't sue the US government unless it waives immunity. Congress has passed laws waiving immunity in a few cases, but generally just negligence/tort related matters. Something like this wouldn't apply.
His lawyers know this for damn sure, so this shit is never going to happen. It is just a PR stunt on his part. Depending on how far they carry the stunt he may do something like sue them in a NZ court, but that'll be dismissed on account of the court not having jurisdiction. It'll never actually be brought in US court, nor would it go anywhere if it were.
He's pulled the kind of shit that people love to hate on varies wall street baddies for, just on a somewhat smaller scale. In 2001 he bought a bunch of stock for a bankrupt company, and said he'd invest 50 million Euro in it. the stock jumped, and he cashed out making a profit, leaving others to hold the bag.
In 2003 he set up a set of shell companies and pretended to have "an artificial intelligence-driven hedge fund delivering an annual return of at least 25%." It was all bullshit of course and the Hong Kong SFC shut him down.
This guy is not some shining example of human goodness, being railroaded by the US government. He's a sleaze who will screw over others to get what he wants.
Now, none of that excuses the US government from acting like jackasses, but let's not pretend like Kim is a good guy. He's not, and I personally think the US government's allegations that he at the very least was turning a deliberate blind eye to copyright infringement on Megaupload. Nobody (except the jackasses in Hollywood) would expect something to be 100% perfect, but Megaupload had many problems, and had an interesting little linking system whereby a DMCA request often resulted in a link going away, not the actual file being taken down.
Regardless, this is the case of the US government acting like thugs to a jerk, not to a great guy. You should be mad at the US for acting as it has, but you shouldn't support Kim as some sort of great person.
Actually giving the apology probably means the government has effectively admitted that it is liable for any damages Kim Dotcom tries to claim
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
...is this Dotcom guy and his homies reminding anyone of the crew from Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? 'Datahavens' and now his considering putting down cable. Does that mean he's gonna start looking for Japanese war gold soon?
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Transit costs are marginal.
Once the fiber is in place, operational expenses on a link per bit are basically zero. You'd have to get it connected to a peering hub of course, but on the scale he's talking about, it's not a big deal.
Bandwidth is (almost) free. Capital build is not. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
..don't panic
If you'd have dedicated half as much time to reading the 5 FUCKING LINES in the summary as you did to posting a stupid question you'd know the answer.
Irritating, isn't it? Welcome to the new new Slashdot troll (this week's model has red racing stripes.)
Humbug to your 'recession'! Your dwindling secondary industry may languish, but Trollish innovation strides on!
It's only a matter of time before we figure out Step 2 and then we're aaaaall about Step 3: Profit!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
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.'"
I plan on building a free airport, which will travel to every other international hub in the world. It will be funded by my leprechaun-catching business.
for the billion dollars estimated to have been the value of MegaUpload.
IANAL, especially in New Zealand, but I think the system there is not too dissimilar to the UK one. In that case he would be entitled to restorative justice, meaning the government would either have to somehow help him rebuild Megaupload into a billion dollar business again or pay him for lost earnings for the projected lifetime of the site.
For example if someone is injured and can no longer work the person responsible is liable for all the earnings they could have expected throughout their lifetime, based on reasonable career progression and so forth. AFAIK no-one has ever been awarded damages for lost billions in revenue from a company illegally shut down the government though.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
True, but we should consider it punishment for electing the people that allowed this travesty to happen. Maybe this will be the incentive to choose more wisely come the next election.
Even then there's a good bit of cost in terms of maintaining your equipment and all that jazz. Don't think that fiber is the only cost, you have ongoing costs of all sorts.
However in the event nobody wants to peer, then you have even more costs. That is one reason places like NZ get the short end of the stick is that there isn't much data there, so the big carriers aren't interested in peering. They'll sell them access, but not peer.
If there's a case to answer, then it's because YOU did something illegal.
Only by suing YOU and making YOU pay will YOU ever learn that YOU can't go around forcing YOUR will on everyone else.
I get your problems with this - I have the same thing when I hear about ambulance-chasers suing our health service, or the police because their feelings were hurt after they robbed someone and got treated roughly. However, it's how we establish precedent and the boundaries to which we are all accountable.
Conus is a large genus of small to large predatory sea snails.
Allowing the thugs in the government to continue commiting crimes without any consequences will cost us more in the long run than paying out settlements. At least once a large settlement is made, the behavior tends to stop.
Though I'd agree that the better place for these people is in jail.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In New Zealand people recognize that a thug with good PR is still a thug.
Then what are they going to do about John Key?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The average person isn't going to remember this in 6 months... they are going to blame for something they have no control over and assume that voting in someone else will change America.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
What is this world coming to, with people who RTFA but not RTFS? It's a disruption of the natural order!
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I thought he was only worth 200 million?
Who says crime doesn't pay?
The wages of sin seem to be tax-exempt. Just ask Mittens...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Interesting theory.
It would probably fly in the US, where corporations are becoming considered to be more of a 'person' than a flesh and blood, if the law allowed you to sue the government for damages. Unfortunately, you have to sue the government for the right to sue the government, THEN you can sue the government for damages.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
Is this seriously an issue? The amount of money he is going for is probably less than the cost of one fucking port-a-potty in Afghanistan.
Hmmm, altruism? What if g**gle suddenly decided to subsidize free telephones for all:
Amusingly google do offer a telephone service on which it is free to call any US number - I use this all the time for conference calls.
I'm going to sue the US government and build my own transoceanic fiber network, with blackjack, and hookers! In fact, forget the fiber!
I hope he stombs them like they do way instain mother who kill thier babbys. becuse these babby cant frigth back?
What would hobbits do with hi-speed internet?
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interesting... where do i find this? (g**gle it, i know that's the answer) what's the service called? i thought their voice was a big dial-thru call forwarding listen to all of your phone-calls and contacts service. I didn't know they ran a conference call center like those rural midwestern states local phone companies do to rack up charges from att and such...
I don't know if you live in or have visited NZ... but the lack of bandwidth is mind blowing. Seriously, I don't know how you Kiwis have been doing it. Going to NZ is like visiting a very scenic 1998 with the same per megabyte rate and everything!
Re:"google do offer a telephone service ..." Does [sic] they, now? ;)
Out of interest, I was under the impression that it is correct English to use 'do' in this context, e.g. "they do, in fact, offer a telephone service...". Perhaps this is something only the English do, or perhaps it is just widely used poor grammar?
interesting... where do i find this? (g**gle it, i know that's the answer) what's the service called? i thought their voice was a big dial-thru call forwarding listen to all of your phone-calls and contacts service. I didn't know they ran a conference call center like those rural midwestern states local phone companies do to rack up charges from att and such...
I'm sorry, my message was not clear. The service is only dial-out I believe - I use it to connect to the two-hour conference calls at work when I am not in the office, rather than racking up huge cell-phone bills. I think it may be called called Google Voice but I just use it through gmail's web UI (the little phone icon in the contact list on the left). If they do listen in on my calls I expect they have a few suicidally bored employees by now.
There is a VOIP aspect to it. It isn't intended to be a telephone service, but can be used as one (which I think is against the tos). It is intended that you can call a Google voice number and hit someone's IM app.
Hmm.... judging from the history of rebellions and revolutions, I can't say that they made anything better. Essentially it's the same crap as before, what changes is the heads, not their content.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The average person won't even KNOW about it in the first place. What the average person gets to see is that the government "wastes money", because taxes go up and services get cut, and we'll show them! Next time, we'll vote for the other guy!
And in 4 years, we'll do the same and again vote for the other guy. As if repainting the turd blue or red changes anything about the smell.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, good luck with that. Might as well say he plans to fund the project by buying lots and lots of lottery tickets.
You seem to have that backwards. It was Romney who said "let them fail".
Probably the only sensible thing the man has said in years,
Yeah, especially when everyone who gets free Internet uses it to stream movies.
Your argument only appeals to selfish faux-libertarian types who don't care about anything but not paying taxes. Some of us are happy to see litigation against authorities who commit injustices in our names, even if it means financial losses for us too. That part of it is what we get for letting them get into power. Ideally, the system would be reformed so that the majority of the liability is on the parties (industry, lobbyists, etc.) who convinced those authorities to perform illegal acts in our name, but it's everybody's responsibility to take part in making that happen.
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My understanding of the conjugation of "to do" in the present tense is that in this case, "Google" is taken as being a singular noun rather than a plural noun, or at least I took it to be a singular noun referring to the singular corporate identity of Google. I think if you conjugate to do in the present tense in USA English :
I do
you do (singular)
he does, she does, it does (singular for masuline, feminine, nongendered)
we do
you do (plural, in most of USA) or y'all do (~"you all do" for plural in South-eastern USA)
they do, they do, they do (plural masc/fem/neuter gender)
.
So the only use of "does" is for the singular third person present tense, and "Google" referred to as a company or corporate entity is a single person. So you can also see my "they do ... offer" as an incorrect response, "Google does" and "it does" matches tense. But I was only saying "they do" to use the "do" you had used. I believe third person singular is the correct pronoun for a company. (aside, I believe corporations have achieved "corporate personhood" according to the SCOTUS, though I do not believe the Supreme Court made any decision on whether to refer to the corporate entity as a singular entity or as a plural entity composed of the stockholders.)
.
If you do a search for +"google do", you get 400k results with the majority being the questioning future tense as in "What will Google do?". If you do a search for +"google does", you get more than a million results for present tense in the form "Google does XYZ" or "Google does it". I know we should not bow to the wisdom of the masses, but my understanding as a "native speaker" (of English.American.USA, subdialect Southern California teenager) is that "Google does this" is more appropriate than "Google do this" (unless that is meant in a command form and voiced to Google as a request or command for something to be done.
I am sure that the Grammar police lurking on slashdot will come to correct me if I am wrong, or possibly even if I am right. ;>)
Because always being a self interested jerk in all cases is what all the cool kids are doing. Even if it means undermining justice and allowing governments to get away with murder...literally in some cases...
Does NZ have any presence in Afghanistan? Last I heard they had sold off most of their military and (unlike Australia, who still buy into all the hubris) don't waste money on silly foreign pissing contests.
sustainable living
He's probably just hoping to attract The Woz to New Zealand...
Does NZ have any presence in Afghanistan? Last I heard they had sold off most of their military and (unlike Australia, who still buy into all the hubris) don't waste money on silly foreign pissing contests.
No idea, but Dotcom, as far as I am aware, is not planning on suing the NZ government; he is actually (at least according to the summary) planning on suing the US government to fund his venture. The poster I was replying to was suggesting that we should not be happy with anyone suing the US government as the money ultimately comes out of the US taxpayers wallet. My point was simply that $400 million, while a lot of money, is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of the war in Afghanistan ($582 billion according to google) and should not be used as an excuse to deny Dotcom justice.
No, no...they host 100,000 songs valued at $10,000 each by the RIAA itself.
They're all complete liars - don't vote for any of them.
Whoever loses.
We win.
How is the loss of megaupload and large amount of data not available anywhere else a win for you or me? Care to explain?
No, he's suing YOU.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
except in France
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
That would be nice if it actually hurt the administration that blundered. Instead, what will happen? Either some social program gets cut or tax get raised. NOTHING else will change. They will try to get away with the same kind of shit next time. And why not, they didn't have any disadvantage from getting caught.
Quite seriously, if you could brush off the cost of your speeding ticket on your boss, would you bother with the speed limit?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thanks for clarifying... after a slow read thru the thread it makes more sense.
sustainable living