Gabon Suspends Me.ga Domain, Dotcom Says "We Have Alternative Domain"

hypnosec writes "Kim Dotcom's plan to launch a 'bigger, better, faster, stronger, safer' Megaupload successor, Mega, is already in peril as Gabon's government has suspended the domain me.ga . Announcing his decision, Gabon's Communication Minister Blaise Louembe said 'I have instructed my departments... to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga' in a bid to 'protect intellectual property rights' and 'fight cyber crime effectively.' Dotcom revealed through a tweet that he is in possession of an alternative domain name and that the recent suspension 'demonstrates the bad faith witch hunt the U.S. government is on.'"

Comments

Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

ENJOY

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Mitreya]

Welcome to obamaworld

Indeed.
I am certain that Romney would make it his first act in the office to loosen the copyright/IP witchhunt. It was totally the election between pro-buisness Obama vs the liberal candidate Romney

Should have worked harder to elect someone like Ron Paul.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen who OBAMA has brought on as his Czars? For IP? If you really think Romney would have been as "big government's going to tell you how to live" as Obama, you're either REALLY in denial, or you are really gullible, or ... (anything but an intelligent, honest evaluator).

Welcome Big government. It's coming, slowly but surely. You've just ensured our police state.

You see, when Kennedy was in office, and shortly after, the Dem's were today's Repubs. Power to the People.... not the increasingly dependent (on our money and lives) Federal Government.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Forty Two Tenfold]

False dichotomy much?

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think Romney would have been as "big government's going to tell you how to live" as Obama, you're either REALLY in denial, or you are really gullible, or ... (anything but an intelligent, honest evaluator).

HAHAHAHA man, if you had chosen any words but "going to tell you how to live" this would have been nowhere NEAR as hilarious as it was, and could have been modded up +1, sad but true. But seriously? Republicans are the masters of telling people how they're going to live. Republicans are entirely about being free to live the way they want you to live. That's what they DO, that's what "social conservative" MEANS.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

Cute parody, but by voting for the status quo we have shown we support it. Probably Romney wouldn't be against it. (And maybe in my state Bob Casey's opposition would have co-sponsored PIPA as well.) But in four years our new douche bag and turd sandwich are going to look at what they need to be to win and see this and these past years and march on with it. Because even if it doesn't win elections, it doesn't lose them and that's usually reason enough (with lobbying) to do anything.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

And the sick thing is that you really believe that you can think clearly and logically.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[alexgieg]

I am certain that Romney would make it his first act in the office to loosen the copyright/IP witchhunt. It was totally the election between pro-buisness Obama vs the liberal candidate Romney

These elections are never a choice between a pro-business and an "anti-business" (?) candidate. Choosing between one and the is at best prioritizing which set of corporations will be in the front row and which one will get the afterthought treatment: the oil and military ones with Republicans, or the MAFIAA with Democrats. As things are, the MAFIAA got 4 more years of preeminence.

That isn't to mean Romney would have stopped the witchhunt. He just wouldn't "care" as much about it as Obama.

Should have worked harder to elect someone like Ron Paul.

Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

Cute parody, but by voting for the status quo we have shown we support it. Probably Romney wouldn't be against it.

While I agree with your sentiment in general, I fear we could not afford to "try" Romney on this principle. While similar in many ways, Romney would dig us even deeper in the hole -- and Ryan is even scarier

This election was already lost when our best and the brightest came down to Obama and Romney. Or perhaps it was lost when Obama was chosen on the "change and hope" platform that never materialized.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

> I fear we could not afford to "try" Romney on this principle

And that's why nothing will ever change.

> Or perhaps it was lost when Obama was chosen on the "change and hope" platform that never materialized.

You mean "hope and change" didn't materialize? Wow, America really should have held him accountable for that, because it really seems right now like they got the change they wanted.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[poetmatt]

hahahahha. Why is this not moderated +5 funny?

Nobody in the US government anywhere on the political spectrum has shown they have any intentions to end the copyright/IP witchhunt except for SCOTUS and maybe 5 senators. The entirety of congress is at fault for this travesty and the damage this copyright/IP farce is causing to our economy.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[crypticedge]

I know, it's too bad that Romney didn't make it so we can have the government legislating fucking, the right to be with someone you care about, robbing everyone to give to the rich so they can get the highest score and privatizing profits while nationalizing their debt. Instead we have a president that wants to tax the robber barons, legislate people owning property they created, and making sure people are treated when they get sick instead of dying in the street due to a toothache.

Fuck Romney, he was a failure of a man, and would have ruined this nation. Anyone who doesn't see that is a horrible person that needs to learn what it's like to be human before hurt themselves

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.
 
Indeed, indeed.
 
Hey, Republicans, do you remember when you told me that my vote for Gary Johnson was a vote for Obama? Well, you may as well have voted for Obama too. At least I feel good about the principles I stood on when I cast my vote.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Nadaka]

No no no. You need to listen to more conservative talk radio.

The proper term is Obamanation.

See, its like abomination.

That way we can get more riled up about it because it uses the dogma switch to turn off the tiny little rational parts of our brain we have not yet mananged to destroy yet.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Hatta]

Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.

That's not what I hear from the libertarians I talk to. They argue that the only rightful role of government is to defend property rights, of which intellectual property rights are one kind. A country without intellectual property is as barbaric as a country without physical property to the common libertarian. Ayn Rand was certainly a defender of IP, to her the work of the mind was the highest value, and investing that work is what made property property, intellectual or physical.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Nadaka]

Given the choice between jumping off a cliff (and into a steaming pit of shit) in order to avoid someone throwing mushitd at me? I choose to remain where I am and tolerate the the small amount of shit for a little while longer rather than drowning in a pit of shit after having broken myself from the jump.

That was the choice between Obama and Romney. Obama sucks badly. But Romney is much worse.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Anonymous Coward]

> But Romney is much worse.

"is"? Did you come from an alternate future where Romney is president and is much worse than Obama? Or is that just wild speculation? Either way I'd be quite curious how _exactly_ Romney would have been so much worse.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[alexgieg]

That's not what I hear from the libertarians I talk to. They argue that the only rightful role of government is to defend property rights, of which intellectual property rights are one kind. A country without intellectual property is as barbaric as a country without physical property to the common libertarian. Ayn Rand was certainly a defender of IP, to her the work of the mind was the highest value, and investing that work is what made property property, intellectual or physical.

I'm not acquainted with all strands of Libertarianism, my focus being on that of the Austrian School variation, which also happens to be the mainstream (as long as anything "libertarian" can be thought of as "mainstream"), and while there are some in there who argue in favor of IP, particularly the older folk, most tend to agree that you cannot go around opening exceptions to the general libertarian take on government-granted monopolies (i.e., fewer as better than many, and none as definitely better than few) or on what a government is for (preventing an individual from imposing his will over another and another's property, and protecting explicitly-signed contracts). IP violates both things, so a libertarian defending it is quite clearly confused, or more likely just someone who didn't think things through.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[morgauxo]

You mean instead of a president who would have taken us into war with Iran where we would no doubt quickly remove a very evil government only to be mired in an unwinnable war against an even more evil insurgency for the next decade we have one who takes the decision that people live or die into his own hands maintaining a kill list that nobody besides a few of his friends are privileged to see or know how people arrive on the list.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Hatta]

the general libertarian take on government-granted monopolies (i.e., fewer as better than many, and none as definitely better than few) or on what a government is for (preventing an individual from imposing his will over another and another's property, and protecting explicitly-signed contracts). IP violates both things, so a libertarian defending it is quite clearly confused, or more likely just someone who didn't think things through.

No libertarian thinks that the government should grant no monopolies. All libertarians think that the government should enforce monopolies on property. That's the essential difference between libertarians and anarcho-socialists.

Since all libertarians want a monopoly on property, the only question is whether IP is property or not. If IP is property, and I outlined one way in which a very prominent libertarian philosopher argued that it is, then it is entirely proper under libertarian thought for the government to stop me from imposing my will over your intellectual property.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Kiuas]

We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.

Yes but many libertarians seem to have no issue whatsoever with Ron Paul wanting to ban abortion (he would want to overturn Roe v. Wade and has co sponsored 4 separate bills to "To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.")

I've never understood all the hype about Ron Paul. The guy has some good ideas but also very many that are close to sheer lunacy (many of them being because he's very much a religious conservative. Among other things he sponsored the original Marriage Protection Act).

Anti-IP or not, I could never vote for someone who wants to mess with people's right to their own bodies. No-one can honestly hold a "pro-life" (quotes because I think the very term itself is loaded) stance and at the same time claim that they're for small government. It doesn't get bigger than government telling you what to do and what not to do with your own body.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[morgauxo]

Oh, Yah, 59,583,302 to 56,960,530, a 2.25% difference. It really looks like Americans are totally convinced they got what they wanted.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[JesseMcDonald]

What kind of "libertarians" have you been talking to? Ayn Rand's Objectivist variety, though quite vocal, has always been on the fringe of libertarian thought, and pro-IP libertarians in general are becoming rarer every day. Neither Objectivists nor the pro-IP faction are representative of modern libertarians.

No libertarian thinks that the government should grant no monopolies. All libertarians think that the government should enforce monopolies on property. That's the essential difference between libertarians and anarcho-socialists.

And anarcho-capitalists, agorists, etc., who make up a significant fraction of libertarians, contrary to your generalizations. We do at least agree that governments should respect property rights. You will find the idea that the government should grant property rights hotly contested, however, and very few libertarians would equate property rights with monopolies.

stop me from imposing my will over your intellectual property

Short of hitting you over the head, or otherwise interfering in your exercise of your actual property rights, there is nothing anyone can do to interfere with your use of your so-called intellectual property. The actions you are claiming the government should stop are impossible to begin with. What you are asking for is not a property right but a monopoly, the difference being that a property right is the right to use something, while a monopoly is a guarantee that others will be prevented from using it, by force, even when their use does not in any way infringe on your own.

Most uses of property are exclusive due to scarcity; two people cannot consume the same scarce good. Exclusivity does not apply, however, when there is no natural scarcity; it is not a fundamental aspect of property.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[morgauxo]

Yes, he did. We escaped together. We are the only survivors of that universe. That's how it was worse.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Hatta]

What you are asking for is not a property right but a monopoly, the difference being that a property right is the right to use something, while a monopoly is a guarantee that others will be prevented from using it, by force, even when their use does not in any way infringe on your own.

There is no difference here. Property rights encompass both. Nobody can legally use my property without my permission, even if that use does not infringe on my own. Property entails both a right to use, and a right to exclude others from use. I can even buy property with the sole intent to exclude others from using it, and never use it myself.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[alexgieg]

I could never vote for someone who wants to mess with people's right to their own bodies. No-one can honestly hold a "pro-life" (quotes because I think the very term itself is loaded) stance and at the same time claim that they're for small government. It doesn't get bigger than government telling you what to do and what not to do with your own body.

This is one of those gray areas in the theory. Pro-life libertarians argue both positions aren't incompatible on the basis, for example (and this is but one argumentative path in this direction), that if no one can interfere with the body of the mother, neither can she interfere with the body of the fetus, as the fetus has the same rights to his body she has over hers, up to and including co-domain over the organs both share for the duration of their 9-month "contract", willingly entered into by most of her body. Hence, government interference to protect the fetus' negative and contractual rights would be justified.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[alexgieg]

I can even buy property with the sole intent to exclude others from using it, and never use it myself.

Yes, that's actually a serious logical difficulty in libertarian theory. The classic way to express it is this:

"Suppose two shipwrecked individuals arrive at a small, deserted island. One of them goes to sleep. The other stays awake, and immediately starts working on the terrain of the island. He works building a fence that just happens to surround the other shipwrecked. The he wakes up, he asks indignant why the other trapped him, to what the first answers that he did no such thing, he just respected the other's property by building where the other hasn't reclaimed, leaving his property (the piece of terrain over which he was sleeping) alone. And now both of them could enjoy their own private properties as much as they liked."

There's no good libertarian reply to this. Which is why I, although still calling myself a libertarian, try to not go overboard with it. There are clear limits to what Libertarianism can meaningfully propose. Beyond a certain point is just stops working, logically or otherwise.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Flipao]

I really like how the Republicans always want to let "the market" take care of things, then it fails and we have to bail banks out with public money. A system based purely on greed and search for profit is as unsustainable as a pure communist doctrine.

You keep chasing that carrot though.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Psyborgue]

So you don't think Obama and his DEA / Justice Dept. is going to interfere with Colorado and Washington for legalizing pot. When the DEA raids the first coffeshop, i'll be sure to remind you how Obama in how way intends to tell people "how to live" or what substances are kosher to consume.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Psyborgue]

Rothbard makes a decent argument against this "implied contract" argument, but yeah, you've outlined well why some libertarians can claim to be pro-life. There's also the enforcement to consider. How do you possibly enforce prohibition against abortion without stepping on all kinds of rights.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[orgelspieler]

I think Colbert said it best about Bob Barr (L from 4 years ago). "He believes the government should be so small that it can fit in your bedroom." (paraphrasing, regarding DOMA)

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[tehcyder]

Obama is a moderate right winger (by world and historical standards) and so he's not exactly a pacifist. Fair enough, that's up to you in America, but how anyone can think that a more extreme right winger like, well, anyone in the Republican party would be less bellicose is beyond comprehension.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[tehcyder]

Most uses of property are exclusive due to scarcity; two people cannot consume the same scarce good. Exclusivity does not apply, however, when there is no natural scarcity; it is not a fundamental aspect of property.

Bullshit, you could divide up all the inhabitable land equally amongst all the people in the world and there would me more than enough for everyone. And anyway how does anyone "own" land in the first place? It is only because society agrees that it can be bought and held by one person. That is part of civilisation. In hunter gatherer societies the idea of owning a piece of land would be as meaningless as owning a piece of the sky.

All property rights are imaginary, including IP, as they are human fictions.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[tehcyder]

Property rights depend on having a legal system with enforceable penalties, as other wise I can just come and steal anything of yours if I have more friends with guns than you do.

Whatever you want to call it, the system that society creates to have this legal system is a government. Government would only be unnecessary in an deal anarchist world where everyone co-operated and shared everything equally without coercion

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[tehcyder]

That argument begs the question of whether a foetus is alive and a human being or not.

People who believe in a woman's right to choose would not agree that a collection of cells just after conception magically becomes a human being.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[alexgieg]

People who believe in a woman's right to choose would not agree that a collection of cells just after conception magically becomes a human being.

Talking about "human being", without qualifying, isn't very precise. For example, if we take the expression at face value, a possible answer could be thus made:

"Well, give those aren't cells of some non-human being, they are at a minimum cells of an human, and if anything, of another human, since their DNA isn't that of the mother (or of the father, for that matter). If it's neither of the woman, nor of the father, and also not of any other 'extra-mother' human being, whose human being is that DNA of? If the answer is 'of a human being that still doesn't exist', that strikes me as at least causative violating. Besides, if that same collection of human cells that aren't human at some point do become human, magically or not, then why not at the conception itself?"

IMHO, this kind of discussion becomes more productive if we add some adjectives to the generic "human being" expression. In the above argument it'd be "biological". In yours, I guess it'd be "sentient". The "sentient human being" is interesting, but I think it causes ambiguities, some logical problems and, at some points, violations of common sense. For example, taking sentience as a basis, many people argue that a fetus should be considered human once s/he/it develops a nervous system. What this actually means, from what I understand, is that once the mechanics for an entity to fully develop a human being level of sentience is in place, its carrier should be considered a human being. But, a pre-nervous system fetus has the mechanics for developing a nervous system that in turn has the mechanics for developing a human being. Why, logically speaking, is that mechanism okay, but not this one? On the other hand, I've also seen some ultra-radical libertarians (of the Ayn Randian-persuasion) argue in the opposite direction, i.e., that what constitutes a human being is actually possessing a human being level of sentiece, and hence that it's in principle perfectly valid to kill an infant (or otherwise use it as one would any animal, with all that implies) up to 5 years of age, since only after that point his level of sentience becomes higher than that of a chimp.

And then there are the positions that the fetus become a human being simply by matter of law arbitration ("legal human being"), so whatever the law says is what matters; by "religion name" qualification (let's say, "christian-concept human being", i.e., at conception; "jewish-concept christian being", at birth; etc.); by purely individual arbitration, which I'd call, depending on the case, "hedonistically-considered human being" or "workaholic-considered human being"; the "contractual human being" of my previous post; and so on and so forth. Each one with its own set of problems and difficulties.

All in all, a quite fascinating subject. :)

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[Arancaytar]

So wait, let me get this straight: Obama was born in Kenya, but he is also President of Gabon? Man, who can keep track of this stuff?

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[hackwrench]

That is incorrect. Pushing will protect you.

Re:Welcome to obamaworld

[morgauxo]

Wow, you think I was stating that Romney would be less likely to start wars than Obama? I guess you only read the 1/2 of my post that you disagreed with. You should move here you would fit right in! I'm simply stating that both options sucked. One may suck less but they are both really bad.

-- Look ma! I can make my point without unnecessary big words to make me look smarter!

Suspension of Disbelief

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is disappointing. I pooped in my pants yet again!

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Anonymous Coward]

It's some Third World hellhole whose economy runs on bribery and other crimes. What did he expect?

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Anonymous Coward]

That his bribe would be bigger than the other guy's?

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Joce640k]

It's some Third World hellhole whose economy runs on bribery and other crimes. What did he expect?

...to be able to bribe them for the domain registration?

The US Gov. must have some real dirt on their leaders if they didn't take Kim's money.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[ArcadeMan]

That's what she said.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[denis-The-menace]

Nah,

Big guns and navy ships to spare will do fine.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Fishchip]

That's what we need to be sending in ships for. 'We condemn the Gabon government's stance on the allocation of the me.ga domain. Sanctions are in place and US Navy ships will be patrolling your shoreline until this travesty is rectified.'

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[rs79]

I'm not sure why he wants a domain name anyway. It just adds an attack vector.

I have no trouble remembering 8.8.8.8 for dns, really.

Also, it's less likely a .arpa domain could be messed with. Ugly, but boy are they stable. They don't even expire.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[NotSanguine]

Nah,

Big guns and navy ships to spare will do fine.

Plus the several hundred thousand dollars in US foreign aid. It's the Golden Rule at work.

domain

[mschoolbus]

pee.ka!

Re:domain

[iYk6]

How about allyourdataarebelongto.us? I don't see how that wouldn't work.

Re:domain

[Anonymous Coward]

comeandhaveagoifyouthinkyourehardenou.gh

thiswontgodo.wn

Yeah, okay, yours was better ;-)

1000 times bigger than Mega?

[agentgonzo]

http://gi.ga/

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, since you're a bit thick, I'll explain it to you slowly.

Gabon just suspended their previous .ga registration, probably due to pressure from the US. gi.ga is also under the .ga TLD and thus also under Gabon's authority... do you see the problem yet?!

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[GameboyRMH]

1024 times to be precise ;)

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[cupantae]

Aw, here we go...

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[bug1]

Assuming he meant 1000 times bigger than a MegaByte, is that the same as saying kibimegabyte ?

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Bradmont]

*whoosh*

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Joce640k]

1024 times to be precise ;)

No, that would be http://gi.bi/

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[agentgonzo]

OK, since you're a bit thick, I'll explain it to you slowly.
It was a joke. Of course gi.ga is under the same TLD as me.ga. That's part of why it was funny.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know, maybe if it actually was funny, someone might realize it was a joke.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[aliquis]

When I was young...

kilo, mega and giga when talking about data meant what it was. Was what it meant? .. we spoke binary! Whatever :D

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, 'cept I fucked your dad in the arse. I have the pictures to prove it too, but I promised him I would never show them to anyone.

ji34u8fjizgjio;dj ;afsj ;4srhu9m0sv4teu9m;a23vrm;sfdmlxc m c mkl mkrim943u954m90uuqv54i;i;afmodfjkdfjkfu4vu8u904rjarj fj fjhnaehnscfjhndfgklkjs

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[drinkypoo]

obviously the answer is http://me.bi/ or perhaps http://gi.bi/

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't funny. That was your problem.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether it was a subjective success at humour is beside the point. AC failed to realize the comment was not serious. And that is why he fails.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[crypticedge]

I laughed at it. You just have a lack of a sense of humor.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[fa2k]

There's still hec.to de.ca de.ci mil.li mic.ro na.no pi.co fem.to etc but none bigger than me.ga

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[X0563511]

Shoo. The big boys are using SI prefixes over here.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

u didn't get it.

amirite?

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Beorytis]

We just need some civil war somewhere in the world to result in a new country whose TLD is .ra (for te.ra), .ta (for pe.ta, zet.ta or yot.ta), or .xa (for e.xa). Of course PETA might register pe.ta sooner.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it still does.

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha you're so dumb

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

You laughed, but still claim he has no sense of humour? You're a strange little man...

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[dalias]

Judging by their userbase, perhaps they could just go with pe.do instead of pe.ta?

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[wvmarle]

Who cares if it is 24 times more or less bigger than mega! It's at least 1000 times bigger. Another 24 times bigger doesn't matter much does it?

Re:1000 times bigger than Mega?

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know, maybe if it actually was funny, someone might realize it was a joke.

Most people don't have any trouble identifying a joke regardless of whether or not they personally find it humorous.

Witch-hunt

[agentgonzo]

I know that he is trying to sound extreme and provocative, but for Gabon to shut-down a domain name of a yet-to-be-launched service that has only said that it plans to store things online is very-much a Witchhunt. Nothing is really known about me.ga and so the only reason they have to shut it down is because it's a 'successor' to megaupload and they have a vendetta against Kim Dotcom.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it's simply the easiest way to avoid lengthy and annoying conflict with the USA.

Re:Witch-hunt

[FriendlyLurker]

...and no real surprise given Gabons political history of servitude to foreign interests under the PDG.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Compaqt]

Something's really fishy here. I mean most third world countries simply do not care if you're making copies of Hollywood movies without written permission from someone with Esq. after his name.

Someone (MAFIAA) must have leaned on the US Ambassador to Gabon to, ahem, facilitate something or another.

If anybody disagrees, please tell me what's in it for Gabon to ban me.ga, preemptively even ?

Re:Witch-hunt

[cultiv8]

^^ mod up

Re:Witch-hunt

[gl4ss]

Or maybe it's simply the easiest way to avoid lengthy and annoying conflict with the USA.

..which is what the open conspiracy is.

too bad it makes the gabon government seem like a joke. too bad they are a joke.

Re:Witch-hunt

[gl4ss]

invitation to the oscars.

you'd be surprised how petty some poor country officials are.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Nerdfest]

Strange, I thought the US were supposed to be supporters of that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Hatta]

The USA, which is engaged in a witch hunt against Dotcom.

You're both right.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. As "Funny", that is.

Re:Witch-hunt

[anyaristow]

Nothing is really known about me.ga

Seriously?

and so the only reason they have to shut it down is because it's a 'successor' to megaupload

Doesn't that say quite a bit about it? See, quite a bit is known about me.ga.

and they have a vendetta against Kim Dotcom.

Because the only way anyone would object to megaupload is if they don't like Kim Dotcom? Seriously?

Grow up.

Re:Witch-hunt

[anyaristow]

Do you even know what a vendetta is? Please explain this vendetta Gabon has.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Grow up.

Well that stunning argument has me convinced.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know what a vendetta is? Please explain this vendetta Gabon has.

It's a type of ice-cream.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could just be that Gabon has different values and rules than we do, and they made their decision accordingly?

No, of course not! Don't be silly! Everybody ought to have the exact same opinions as the good ol' USA! That's why we're the bestest country in the world! Now, let's all go discuss the wild conspiracies involved in this, all obviously thanks to the dumb ol' USA, the worstest country in the world!

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was only before the election.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Nyder]

Or maybe it's simply the easiest way to avoid lengthy and annoying conflict with the USA.

..which is what the open conspiracy is.

too bad it makes the gabon government seem like a joke. too bad they are a joke.

funny, the Gabon Government says the same thing about you!

Re:Witch-hunt

[NotSanguine]

If anybody disagrees, please tell me what's in it for Gabon to ban me.ga, preemptively even ?

As I previously pointed out. This could be a reason.

Re:Witch-hunt

[LVSlushdat]

Strange, I thought the US were supposed to be supporters of that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing.

Where have YOU been? That hasn't been in effect for at least the last 11 years.. And its USSA, if you please.. Yesterday's election cemented THAT for
at least the next four years...

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Gabon is a shitty little banana republic much like the rest of Africa. Small-minded politicians taking bribes is SOP. Dunno how this is news to anyone...

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

So if a noted ponzi scheme operator told you he had a new investment plan that was "bigger, faster, and more profitable" you, as a government regulator, wouldn't be at all suspicious?

Re:Witch-hunt

[Tom]

I wouldn't give him an e-mail address at my domain if he asked, because he's an egomaniac asshole and a criminal. Same with Gabon, except that they own a TLD and not just a domain.

It's theirs. They can decide to give him a domain within it or not. They've decided not to. Witchhunt? Please. Stop listening to cheap rhetorics. This was a trap from the start, the fucker is just in desperate need of publicity, that's all.

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the little detail of who does the actual running of Gabon's internet services

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/kim-dotcom-loses-new-domain-in-preemptive-strike-by-government/

"Dotcom was reportedly hosting the Me.ga domain with Gabon Telecom, a subsidiary of the Vivendi entertainment company"

Did he really think they wouldn't shut him down when they found out they were hosting him?

But that's not as much fun as spewing political conspiracy theories right?

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

They are, you just missed the context. If you look closer at that, it's "innocent until proven guilty unless we just don't like you."

Re:Witch-hunt

[wvmarle]

Well with the huge piles of strong and indisputable evidence they have against Dotcom he is of course obviously guilty, right? So anything he is going to do next will clearly only make him more guilty - after all it's supposed to be a successor to megaupload which everybody knows is totally guilty of breaching all kinds of laws and whatnot.

Or you really want to say that these military-style raids against Dotcom don't prove he is at least as guilty and dangerous as say Osama Bin Laden was?

Re:Witch-hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just disappointed they didn't execute Kim Dotcom the same way they did OBL during the raid Mind you if they'd disposed of KD's body at sea there'd probably have been a tsnunami..

Re:Witch-hunt

[tehcyder]

I see from wikipedia that they have large petroleum reserves.

They probably didn't want to suffer the same fate as Iraq if they argued with the US.

Re:Witch-hunt

[tehcyder]

Grow up.

Well that stunning argument has me convinced.

That is the conclusion to the argument, not the argument itself, wizz-brain.

Rich Gabon

[rodrigoandrade]

Wow, it's nice to see Gabon is in a great economic position, has eliminated all poverty, improved education, public healthcare, great mass transit systems, and can afford the luxury to turn down an offer to host what's sure to become one of the most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Hentes]

They have enough oil not to care about a website. They don't want to piss off one of the biggest oil importer.

Re:Rich Gabon

[The MAZZTer]

Not host, it's just a domain name.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Anonymous Coward]

most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.

What makes you think Gabon would have seen any of that revenue? They might only see the domain registration fees, even hosting does not have to be physically based in Gabon... The ads certainly won't be.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Anonymous Coward]

The servers won't be hosted in Gabon. That would make it too easy for Big Brother US to say "Yeah, we'd hate to have to withhold our foreign aid budget for your country unless you let our corporate enf...law officials come in and shut down some servers". All that would have beein in Gabon was the .ga registry pointing at a specific IP address in DNS entries.

Re:Rich Gabon

[maroberts]

Wow, it's nice to see Gabon is in a great economic position, has eliminated all poverty, improved education, public healthcare, great mass transit systems, and can afford the luxury to turn down an offer to host what's sure to become one of the most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.

That would be all well and good if Gabon was likely to earn millions in revenue from it. It's more likely to earn only a small fee (less than $25?) for the domain name registration.

Not withstanding that, it seems fairly obvious that this is due to US pressure.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Shoten]

Wow, it's nice to see Gabon is in a great economic position, has eliminated all poverty, improved education, public healthcare, great mass transit systems, and can afford the luxury to turn down an offer to host what's sure to become one of the most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.

Holding the TLD of the domain name and hosting the site have nothing to do with each other. First of all, the site was to be cloud-based, so as not to have a single hosting location that can easily be taken down. Second of all, absolutely no cloud services vendors have hosting facilities in Gabon. Gabon would gain nothing from hosting me.ga except diplomatic and economic pressure from North American and European countries, and I'm quite sure that such pressure is what led them to take this action. If they had anything to gain at all, that'd be one thing, but they had a lot to lose, and nothing to gain whatsoever.

This goes to Kim Dotcom's problem...that no matter how he scatters and fuzzes his infrastructure, he will still have to contend with single points of failure that can be attacked through procedural means. I don't know how to deal with it, frankly...all completely decentralized systems for content distribution and sharing that I know of (like Freenet) are somewhat awkward and a real pain in the ass. If you need to use a domain name, you've got a point of vulnerability where the powers that be have an undue procedural advantage. This doesn't even take into account the other challenges of payment processing, financial basis (gotta pay your bills from an account somewhere), hiring of personnel (what if the operation is deemed a criminal activity, and they go after the employees under RICO or an equivalent law?), and other things I probably haven't even thought of.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Joce640k]

That would be all well and good if Gabon was likely to earn millions in revenue from it. It's more likely to earn only a small fee (less than $25?) for the domain name registration.

I'm sure they could have cut a deal for a higher registration fee...

Re:Rich Gabon

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet, they still have Iran's and Hugo Chavez's oppressed oil left to free in operation freedom.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Hatta]

frankly...all completely decentralized systems for content distribution and sharing that I know of (like Freenet) are somewhat awkward and a real pain in the ass.

Gnutella worked really well from a technical perspective IIRC. Torrents got big because they were hostable on websites, which allowed for better organization and communities to form, and they downloaded from multiple streams so they were faster. But in terms of ease of use, I'd give Gnutella the edge.

Re:Rich Gabon

[Tom]

Right, because Kim Criminal will surely move to Gabon and set up his business there. Instead of, you know, crazy wild idea, just route the domain name to somewhere in some 1st world country where they have mansions and fast cars.

And that's assuming the whole thing isn't just total vaporware intended for one thing only: Publicity.

Re:Rich Gabon

[tehcyder]

Wow, it's nice to see Gabon is in a great economic position, has eliminated all poverty, improved education, public healthcare, great mass transit systems, and can afford the luxury to turn down an offer to host what's sure to become one of the most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.

Similarly, maybe they could set themselves up as the world's leading supplier of cocaine and make lots of money off that. Or how about child porn, there must be money to be made there? Snuff movies? Or maybe illegal arms sales or torture equipment to repressive dictatorships?

Money is not the be all and end all of things.

You, and apparently most of slashdot, don't seem to find it wrong that Kim Dotcom can make hundreds of millions for himself by piggybacking off the back of copyrighted material, but some of us do.

Minority Report

[scotts13]

Wow. PreCrime is here. Apparently, you don't even have to be open for business or host any files to be a 'cyber criminal' who violates 'intellectual property rights.' Once you're accused by the US governments masters, you're done for, worldwide.

Re:Minority Report

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just telling him he isn't welcome in those parts, and that's fine. He has form.

Re:Minority Report

[Desler]

Gabon isn't obligated to grant him the domain name.

Re:Minority Report

[ledow]

If you had a legal right to a domain name, you might be right. But you don't.

Similarly, you don't have a legal right to enter random countries, and they are quite welcome to tell you to go away (whether on the basis that they think you're there to work contrary to your visa, or you have previous convictions, or whatever)

It's not illegal to deny someone a domain name. No more illegal than denying them a trademark, or a particular phone number (or even phone access at all!).

The whole DNS system is a collection of private contracts to hand out naming rights within a virtual space. Hence why ICANN etc. can get people to pay them more money just by saying "Okay, let's have a new TLD!". Nobody is FORCING them to pay them money. Nobody has a legal obligation to buy those domains. And nobody has a legal obligation to fulfill those demands for domains if their contracts say so (and it hasn't been established to the contrary in a court of law).

This is like saying that me not giving you an email address at my domain is just as prejudicial. Er, no. It's my domain, my rules, and you either agree with them or not. Unless you have it in writing that I *guarantee* you those services, you can't do anything if I don't allow you to use them and/or stop you getting them in first place.

So let's not be stupid here. If you try to register a *car* with a rude number plate (licence plate to the Americans), it will get blocked in most countries (and they pre-filter those lists, but still will take yours away if it's deemed to be rude and they missed it!). Hell, some countries decide what you can put on a birth certificate. And places like Italy, it's almost impossible to get a domain name without a certified business presence in the country itself.

In comparison, a copyright infringer being denied a domain name in a country he has ZERO affiliation to is nothing.

I actually find it hilarious that people think that the US has involvement, if I'm honest. Chances are Gabon just doesn't want his type around. If he applied for a .uk, for instance, it would be denied the second he announced his intentions for it without even bothering to wait for the Americans to ask - it's a breach of Nominet policy.

Re:Minority Report

[PRMan]

So, it's okay for the government to follow an ex-con around and make sure that he doesn't buy any property? It's basically the same thing.

Re:Minority Report

[biodata]

Has he been convicted of something?

Re:Minority Report

[CannonballHead]

If he is not actually legally entitled, i.e., has the right to own property ... what's the complaint then?

It's not basically the same thing, because at least in the USA, we have the right to own property. I don't have the right to own a domain name, explicitly. Furthermore, this isn't even in the USA, this is in Gabon. Wherever that is. ;)

This would be more similar to a convicted drug dealer trying to buy a marijuana dispensary. Or maybe a pharmacy.

Re:Minority Report

[marcosdumay]

If you had a legal right to a domain name, you might be right. But you don't.

In any democratic country, you have the right of free enterprize.

It seems that in Gabon, one doesn't. Well, it's their choice, and their problem.

Re:Minority Report

[tehcyder]

Has he been convicted of something?

Was Osama bin Laden?

Re:Minority Report

[tehcyder]

If you had a legal right to a domain name, you might be right. But you don't.

In any democratic country, you have the right of free enterprize.

It seems that in Gabon, one doesn't. Well, it's their choice, and their problem.

There is no right to absolute free "enterprize" anywhere in the world that has laws. Making money does not trump obeying the law, despite what many libertarian entrepreneurs believe.

Re:Minority Report

[biodata]

I'm not sure, but I don't really see any equivalence.

Undisclosed sources...

[Type44Q]

Undiclosed sources close to minister stated that the "fee" paid by representatives from US Media conglomerates was a new Toyota Camry, a Czech slavegirl and ten boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts.

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[fearofcarpet]

All at once, or in installments? Ten boxes at once is too much, even if you share it with your Camry, and donuts don't keep.

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[Anonymous Coward]

He got a Czech Slave girl and you think the donuts are for eating!!?

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[RobertLTux]

we are talking about Krispy Kreme doughnuts so they will keep (i think you can freeze them safely)

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed you can! It's thawing them out you have to be careful about.

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[Anonymous Coward]

Undiclosed sources close to minister stated that the "fee" paid by representatives from US Media conglomerates was a new Toyota Camry, a Czech slavegirl and ten boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts.

The sad part is that the Krispy Kremes cost more than the slave girl.

Re:Undisclosed sources...

[Higher Authority]

I heard she only visits once a month.

Say what?

[Mr_Silver]

Wow, preemptively shutting something down on the basis that it might be used to infringe copyright before it's even launched?

Philip K. Dick and (to some extent) Scott Frank and Jon Cohen must be proud.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are people really stupid enough to think that Kim Dotcom's new venture doesn't have the same basic aim as his last venture? Or is this some kind of ivory tower intellectual exercise where we pretend we're that stupid, just so we can approach the issue using laughably naive and simplistic principles of fair play while ignoring the obvious facts?

Well here's a fact: the benefit of the doubt only extends as far as there is doubt.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I already pay blank-media tax, so it's not the first time this happens.

Fuck them.

Re:Say what?

[NotSanguine]

Are people really stupid enough to think that Kim Dotcom's new venture doesn't have the same basic aim as his last venture? Or is this some kind of ivory tower intellectual exercise where we pretend we're that stupid, just so we can approach the issue using laughably naive and simplistic principles of fair play while ignoring the obvious facts?

Well here's a fact: the benefit of the doubt only extends as far as there is doubt.

Please point me at the jury verdict or court ruling that MegaUpload and/or Kim Dotcom was engaged in illegal activities. What? There was no verdict/ruling? Strange. I know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing is just so darn inconvenient. We should just do away with that whole thing. I mean, if we want to send you to prison or generally fuck up your life, why should we need anything like evidence or a trial? It just gums up the works if you ask me.

Please.

Re:Say what?

[theArtificial]

Please point me at the jury verdict or court ruling that MegaUpload and/or Kim Dotcom was engaged in illegal activities.

There is plenty of evidence, perhaps you're aware of the ~500 servers on US soil which were involved. The mess in New Zealand relating to warrants and seizures is the result of incompetence. The seizures in the US were done with evidence. Nearly every site out there has Terms of Service which forbid certain uses, plus as a business you wont get very far with a defense along the lines of I didn't know it was illegal. Part of operating a successful business is knowing what is legal where you have a business presence. It's a little different when the business model is based around knowingly engaging in these behaviors, especially to the tune of millions of dollars. It's not like Kim is spotless, he's a history of embezzlement and fraud. That's a red flag for any business dealings, were you born yesterday, or did you lose access to some files you didn't make a backup of like their service explicitly told you to?

I know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing is just so darn inconvenient.

The presumption of innocence is how it works within the courts, where the accused is presumed innocent until the government meets the highest burden of proof known in American law: proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a moral certainty. As an individual you're allowed right or wrong to think as you like.

Re:Say what?

[NotSanguine]

I am familiar with the "facts" of the case that the DOJ *didn't* make against Kim Dotcom. My point is that IMNSHO it's ridiculous (as many here have tried to do on this thread) to say things like "well, he's a criminal" "He's a loser. Screw him." "He should die in a fire." etc, etc, etc. when he has (to the satisfaction of the appropriate authorities) paid his debts to society for the wrongs he has been tried and convicted for. From where I sit, he should be given the benefit of the doubt unless and until he's convicted of a crime.

That's not to say he's a stand up guy, or that I want him to marry my sister. However, there's this thing called "empathy." It's when you can put yourself in someone else's shoes and try to understand their point of view or predicament and at least try to understand what it might be like for you to be in the same situation.

It seems to me that this guy deserves the same protections under the law that I would like to have in a similar situation. Whether he was encouraging and/or profiting from copyright infringement (which, IMHO, should be a civil not a criminal matter) or not is irrelevant. The DOJ shut him down and seized his assets, destroying his business (and that of an uncounted number of perfectly legitimate people who used his service and didn't bother to retain back ups) without the evidence required to take him to trial and convict him. That's just wrong.

How would you like it if jack-booted thugs came to your business, removed the tools of your trade, seized your bank accounts and had you thrown in jail without having the evidence needed to convict you?

In any case, I don't have any stake in any of this guy's businesses, nor do I know him or anyone (AFAIK) who does. I just think it's really low to pile on someone just because you have an internet connection and some sort of axe to grind. Just as, as you put it, "As an individual you're allowed right or wrong to think as you like." Well that's what I think, right or wrong.

Re:Say what?

[theArtificial]

From where I sit, he should be given the benefit of the doubt unless and until he's convicted of a crime.

You're a fair person, unfortunately, the court of public opinion is merciless, see OJ Simpson or Casey Anthony. This is also why Jurors are not allowed media access and are instructed to make decisions based upon the law, evidence, and arguments. It's not perfect but its better than the other systems we've tried. Doesn't exactly instill confidence does it?

It seems to me that this guy deserves the same protections under the law that I would like to have in a similar situation. Whether he was encouraging and/or profiting from copyright infringement (which, IMHO, should be a civil not a criminal matter) or not is irrelevant.

It's always at least a civil matter, however it may become criminal if a . Section 501(b) of the Copyright Act details the mechanisms by which an owner of a copyright may file a civil suit

However, under certain circumstances, it may also be a federal crime. Section 506a of the Copyright Act provides that copyright infringement is subject to criminal prosecution if infringement is willful and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. If the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, during any 180-day period, of 10 or more copies having a retail value of more than $2,500, the offense is a felony; otherwise, the offense is a misdemeanor.

Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense. That means, you don't actually have to know you're infringing in order to be guilty of infringement. As they say, "Ignorance of the law is no defense".

Liability for copyright infringement isn't necessarily limited to the direct infringer. One who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes, or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may be held liable as a 'contributory infringer'. One who has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and who also has a direct financial interest in the activity, may be held liable as a 'vicarious infringer'.

(source)

The DOJ shut him down and seized his assets, destroying his business (and that of an uncounted number of perfectly legitimate people who used his service and didn't bother to retain back ups) without the evidence required to take him to trial and convict him. That's just wrong.

The collateral damage is unfortunate, and they are right to be upset, ultimately it was their choice to use the service and not to keep backups; Just as much as it was Megaupload's choice to operate their business the way they did. This underlines the importance of keeping backups in a safe place. The DOJ does have evidence, what has bungled matters is how things were handled by the New Zealand government. They royally screwed up at multiple levels.

How would you like it if jack-booted thugs came to your business, removed the tools of your trade, seized your bank accounts and had you thrown in jail without having the evidence needed to convict you?

It wouldn't be any fun. I wouldn't say its fun if its your work out there either, guess you can view it as free advertising and hope for the best. Needless to say I wouldn't operate a business which involves my organization paying users for ultimately uploading files which haven't been reviewed (think a site like 4chan and advertising money). I've hosted websites but they're not hosting 3rd party content without a license nor am I paying users of the site so it's a little different. Before a conviction can happen he needs to be extradited. If there is legislation voted for by the people New Zealand that allows extradition for what he is being charged for and there

Re:Say what?

[tehcyder]

Please point me at the jury verdict or court ruling that MegaUpload and/or Kim Dotcom was engaged in illegal activities. What? There was no verdict/ruling? Strange. I know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing is just so darn inconvenient. We should just do away with that whole thing. I mean, if we want to send you to prison or generally fuck up your life, why should we need anything like evidence or a trial? It just gums up the works if you ask me.

Except that Gambon aren't going to put Kim Dotcom in prison they're just denying him the right to exploit their TLD.

It would be the same if Kim Dotcom were to go to a bank asking for a loan. They are quite entitled to refuse him the loan based on what they know about his dealings in the past without requiring evidence of specific criminal convictions (although he has those for fraud and insider dealing already, separate from megaupload).

Re:Say what?

[NotSanguine]

Please point me at the jury verdict or court ruling that MegaUpload and/or Kim Dotcom was engaged in illegal activities. What? There was no verdict/ruling? Strange. I know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing is just so darn inconvenient. We should just do away with that whole thing. I mean, if we want to send you to prison or generally fuck up your life, why should we need anything like evidence or a trial? It just gums up the works if you ask me.

Except that Gambon aren't going to put Kim Dotcom in prison they're just denying him the right to exploit their TLD. It would be the same if Kim Dotcom were to go to a bank asking for a loan. They are quite entitled to refuse him the loan based on what they know about his dealings in the past without requiring evidence of specific criminal convictions (although he has those for fraud and insider dealing already, separate from megaupload).

Seeing as I was responding to this:

Are people really stupid enough to think that Kim Dotcom's new venture doesn't have the same basic aim as his last venture? Or is this some kind of ivory tower intellectual exercise where we pretend we're that stupid, just so we can approach the issue using laughably naive and simplistic principles of fair play while ignoring the obvious facts? Well here's a fact: the benefit of the doubt only extends as far as there is doubt.

I'm not sure what Gambon has to do with it. Please explain.

I wish him success

[GameboyRMH]

I hope me.ga gets launched, under whatever URL. It uses full, proper, user-controlled end-to-end encryption, it will be very hard to hold the host responsible for content on this one.

But then the studios had direct takedown power on Megaupload and that wasn't enough for them...

The long arm of American influence

[captainpanic]

I don't know much about Gabon, but I would not be surprised if their small economy needs American support. Either for receiving donations, IMF loans (and the interest level connected to that), or just imports/exports.

Compared to the threat of reduced economic stability, suspending one domain name is peanuts. I bet they were bullied into this suspension of the domain name.

Re:The long arm of American influence

[Joce640k]

I bet they were bullied into this suspension of the domain name.

D'ya think?

Thought Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Never think about anything that could lead your to infringe on copyright!

IN OTHER WORDS EAT SHIT AND DIE MOTHERFUCKER !!

[Anonymous Coward]

WHat'd you neame your kids ?? Moon Unit ?? Dweeeeezil ?? Freak !! If Gabon throws you out, what's left ?? HELL !! You deserve to rot in hell MOTHERFUCKIN DOUCHEBAG !!

(C) All Rights Reserved !!

don't use domain names

[Anonymous Coward]

It was pretty stupid to depend on DNS, given how centralized it is.

A better idea would be to bypass DNS entirely, by implementing an independent IP-naming system as part of his program and making himself and/or the users the sole authority for naming IPs on it.

Re:don't use domain names

[Lisias]

On a first glance, I laughed on the idea: "ridiculous".

15 seconds after, I give it a second thought and stopped laughing.

We really need a private naming system for the Internet nowadays.

Re:don't use domain names

[rs79]

"We really need a private naming system for the Internet nowadays."

We had one. It was called the DNS.

At the end of the 1990s the /. community response was "Oh, Icann doesn't look to bad, let's give them a chance" despite it being all spelled out why it was the wosrt possible idea and what would happen and oh look it just did. Again.

You really do have to RTFA, especially when it's about net.policy.

Re:don't use domain names

[Spy Handler]

Kim could bypass DNS entirely by getting a static IP address. He can advertise:

208.32.151.63
Upload all your files for free

two-oh-eight-thirty-two-one-fifty-one-sixtyTHREE
You are safe from LAPD

Re:don't use domain names

[Anonymous Coward]

Kim could bypass DNS entirely by getting a static IP address. He can advertise:

208.32.151.63
Upload all your files for free

On a Sprint IP-address? Are you crazy?

Re:don't use domain names

[Lisias]

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

By "private", I mean... "particular", alternative, decentralized, with little effort on setup and maintenance - like the walkie talkies you buy for private use.

The DNS standard is useless for private use - the vast majority of the people are not techies, what to say a skilled one. What's a good thing, as I have to feed my kid, by the way.

A gadget that can just be bought and attached to the router or something like that can do the trick. But don't expect that the masses will be able to configure theirs routers by reading some RFC.

I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[biodata]

If I lived there I wouldn't be very pleased to know that another country pwned my government.

Re:I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[Anonymous Coward]

DOX them, and we can all find out.

Re:I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lived there you might well not know. Heck, how many people in the first world do you think saw this news item? Not exactly front page of the NYT or BBC (especially not today!)

Re:I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[GodfatherofSoul]

If you lived in Gabon, you'd already know lots of other countries are pwning your government.

Re:I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[Flere Imsaho]

Some of us /.ers live in New Zealand, you insensitive clod!

Re:I wonder what the people of Gabon think

[wvmarle]

Like many other African countries the government is corrupt like hell so I think that part is the least of the worries of the average people.

Time to go native?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Wouldn't a native cross-platform app alleviate all these problems with domain names? Use a UDT based file transfer protocol with NAT traversal to connect to servers based on IP numbers that can be updated via bootstrap server or software update. Sure, at some point the user must download the app, but that would not be a big problem in this case, and afterwards the app can update itself. As a bonus you get huge perfomance benefits, at least if you do it the right way.

Just an idea. All this fuzz about domain names, really makes you wonder why people are so obsessed with web-pages.

Re:Time to go native?

[slim]

DNS isn't just for web pages, and having a layer of indirection between the app and the IP address is useful.

Wouldn't it be better to run a parallel DNS (or DNS-like) system that's not run by The Man?

Re:Time to go native?

[Anonymous Coward]

Emule?

Re:Time to go native?

[rs79]

Look at Pirate Bay DNS. The challenge is user adoption. We never hit more than 10% with alternative root servers in the 90s.

Course, that's 10X higher than the libertarian vote in yesterdays election...

Re:Time to go native?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're describing the first generation of peer to peer software, typified by napster and kazaa.

Those applications were malware. They bundled every nasty bit of malware that made their programmers money. It may surprise you to hear this, but weirdly enough, people who profit from piracy are not always very nice people and they don't particularly care if their installer bundles spyware. Especially if they can justify this by citing the cost of running the master servers.

In the second generation, Bittorrent decoupled the piracy network from the piracy client. At that point, the ads moved away from the clients and onto the pirate search engines. A plethora of clients became available, some open source, and it became much harder to bundle malware with anything.

The third generation is decentralised tracking which deals with domain name shutdowns and even IP address blocking. But you still need a pirate search engine to find the magnet links. You can always use TOR for this, and exercise your human right to get expensive stuff for free.

Re:Time to go native?

[mounthood]

Key management would also be better, both easier and safer.

Re:Time to go native?

[lee1026]

I doubt you get large performance benefits. Downloading is by and large network bound.

Re:Time to go native?

[epSos-de]

Yes, technically. An application could be run from the client side and pull the content from random servers. But in reality people need to click on something. An app can be blocked, a website can be blocked. Traffic can be blocked. There is no real way to hide, if you want to build something as big as he wants. He has to choose the Russian side of the Internet and be very friendly to the people who run Russia. America has limits too. You just have to know that Gabon is part of the US empire, but China and Russia are not. Forget sanity in US. They make up things and steal from you as much as they can. I was personally rubbed by the American system. They took my creative commons picture and said that it is theirs now, so they can sue anyone who has it, even my dead grandmother, if they want. The fun part was that they licensed the image from me and were customers at first, but never paid anything. Look at Apple, they buy parts from Samsung and sue them for copying their products. The American legal system is a joke. Germany is also nice. Our former head of state was working for Gazprom that he helped to get government contracts and licenses that he himself signed as the head of state. Officially there are no bribes in the clean Germany, but you can also give a speech at the company that will give you 50k or 75k and be happy after one hour. All legal, all nice. Kim Dot Com must pay to the right people, if he ever wants to play again.

Re:Time to go native?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've basically just described Bittorrent.

time for distributed, anonymous internet

[Anonymous Coward]

corporations and government can't be trusted to control the means of communication

tor and freenet are good starts, alas freenet is too technical for normal people to use

what we need is a distributed infrastructure that isn't under anyone's control
a good start: http://project-byzantium.org/

If me.ga is bad, let's try the reverse

[havana9]

Ask to our Romanian friends for a domain name for a site that's the reciprocal of me.ga http://mic.ro/

Re:If me.ga is bad, let's try the reverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that wouldn't be a great idea, as of last week a massive witch hunt has started against streaming and torrent pirate sites:
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/romania-authorities-shut-down-10-illegal-vod-websites--906242

The action is orchestrated by a legal video-streaming site that wants to clear the market. Also, the mic.ro domain is embroiled in a massive insolvency suit were one of the country's richest people had a failing retail bussines called micro. So it might not be for sale.

Kind of surprise this wasn't posted too here on /.

[nhat11]

http://gizmodo.com/5958415/now-kim-dotcoms-new-site-mega-has-been-hacked-too

P2P and Alternative DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there is the P2P DNS system and alternative DNS that are out there.

The problem is they are awkward to setup at best for a casual user and they simply aren't known enough to those outside of geek circles.

These 2 systems have the potential to solve EVERYTHING, but they are stagnating in the corner.

Precrime where?

[doug141]

Gabon in West Africa?

Dotcom

[Seeteufel]

I would be very pleased to see Mr. "Dotcom" behind bars. According to the news Donald Trump calls for a revolution in Dotcom style, so the media jerk role is already occupied. Kim betrayed the German hackers and hyper-trolled himself at the CCC. No doubt he would find angry masses for his children crusade against the Megacaust. Megatrash sells. Persons like Kim or Elop deserve no megamercy. Kimble's megameans are "fascism", the white trash parvenu is a paria for hackers, invader of the internet and defamation of our hacker culture. Occupy Kimble. Occupy New Zealand. We deserve better music. We deserve better trolls. Obama drones, please!

HAHAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously that is hilarious. That scammer is never going to give up.

Re:HAHAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should he? He's just succesfully tweeted himself a second term in office.

Mr Fox denied access to the hen house

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Fox objected to the ban, saying "I don't intend to eat any hens this time! I just want to visit the hen house. My business there is totally legitimate. Judging foxes for what they did in the past is just fascism, man."

Re:Mr Fox denied access to the hen house

[svick]

That's not how the legal system works. If Mr. Fox commited a crime, he should have been punished for that. And part of that punishment might be a ban to visit the henhouse in the future. But if Mr. Fox wasn't ever convicted of a crime, why do you want to punish him for something he might do in the future?

Re:Mr Fox denied access to the hen house

[tehcyder]

That's not how the legal system works. If Mr. Fox commited a crime, he should have been punished for that. And part of that punishment might be a ban to visit the henhouse in the future. But if Mr. Fox wasn't ever convicted of a crime, why do you want to punish him for something he might do in the future?

If you keep chickens, you don't invite Mr Fox in, whether you've actually seen him with blood and feathers around his mouth or not. He's a fucking fox.

Kim Dotcom seems happy to boast of the $200m he has earned from megaupload, whether that is criminal or not, it is certainly dubious ethically in many people's eyes.

Read the truth about ICANN and the DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

The rotten and corrupt Domain Name System.

from 3000 hacker org

[Anonymous Coward]

We are on his side ...omega is a hollywood hacker
target released
go nuts on him.
mega isnt the problem its hollywood
AND while i can see what omega says i and millions if not billions would far more prefer a mega then a hollywood

Re:from 3000 hacker org

[nhat11]

You might want to put your tin foil hat on there.

Re:from 3000 hacker org

[tehcyder]

millions if not billions would far more prefer a mega then a hollywood

And exactly how much original material has Kim Dotcom and megaupload provided compared with Hollywood?

Oh, that's right. None. Instead he's earned tens or hundreds of millions by facilitating freeloaders.

If anyone wants to make a movie outside of the Hollywood system, do you know what? They're perfectly free to do so, and give it away for nothing if they like. I personally hardly ever watch Hollywood movies, as they're generally either sentimental unfunny crap, or blockbustery braindead crap, but what I don't do is download them for free and then condemn them for being crap.

Just don't consume crap, it's not difficult.

And ANONYMOUS says...

[Anonymous Coward]

MEGA is going to require encryption to protect IP and prevent things from being shared to the masses in that way, so yes, this is a clear example of a witch hunt.

I seem to recall the hacker group Anonymous went after godaddy, for their support of SOPA, and it cost godaddy a lot. Now, I have to wonder if Anonymous will go after Gabon, and/or their partners and share holders. I would not be surprised to see a large DOXing happen soon. and a number of other things after that.

Re:And ANONYMOUS says...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gabon is a country. Which, sadly, does mean that it is in fact their sovereign choice if they want to be the US's bitch - the TLD owner sets the terms.

Don't worry, there are plenty more...

fail

[Anonymous Coward]

your a govt hacker fook off.
only those types use the cia er google ergo YouTube to make a point
that also is a shot at the wannabe anonymous tha uses twitter ergo the fbi message board.
its time to clean up and realize your all being played with

To be clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the Obama administration along with RIAA, MPAA and other big corporations that like to victimize the little people, all wanted to bring down Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, therefore, if they don't like it we should support MEGA. Any other group that works to take down MEGA or Kim Dotcom, is an agent of Obama, and is likely subject to response from the real warriors of cyberspace, and the real world.

I'm just saying.

MPAA owns the news

[tepples]

The entirety of congress is at fault for this travesty and the damage this copyright/IP farce is causing to our economy.

Is Congress at fault, or are constituents at fault for not paying attention to political news sources other than those operated by movie studios? In a way, news coverage of a candidate for federal elected office can be seen as a stealth in-kind donation to the candidate's election campaign. To bury a candidate that doesn't toe the party line on expansion of copyright, the major TV news outlets (Disney's ABC, Universal's NBC, Paramount's CBS, Last Century Fox's Fox News, and Warner Bros.' CNN) can just fail to remind viewers that the candidate exists.

Re:MPAA owns the news

[poetmatt]

The counter to that is simple, just congress is stupid.

Counter = internet.

Hold on...

[bistromath007]

Did the communication minister of Gabon seriously put quotation marks around the official stated intent of his actions? Have we truly reached the era of unapologetically naked horseshit?

Well... what did you expect...

[Anonymous Coward]

With obama putting a good two dozen ex-riaa/mpaa lackys into important goverment positions....

Expect this kind of thing to accelerate too. Obama has the support of hollywood for a real good reason.
money. for his campaign. for hollywood. to fight the evil pirates. for new laws like (i cant remember the latest version of the super anti piracy laws...)
and hey. it got him re-elected too.

Nope. This is not unusual at all. Favors have been made. Money has been paid.
And we get a new 'war' to fight too! The war on piracy. Cops need more money.

And you... all of you... the rest of the world... YOU ARE OUR BITCH! GET USED TO IT!

Don't like it? Talk to your goverments and tell them to tell the USA to fuck off.... Good luck with that tho. We own you all already.

Yep. "Nice TLD you've got there, Gabon..."

[jeffb (2.718)]

"...be a shame if something happened to it."

Re:Yep. "Nice TLD you've got there, Gabon..."

[u64]

For every action there may come an opposite reaction...

Nah, i'm not a DDoS fan. But it would be informative to dig out and reveal the individuals or groups of
persons responsible for the unreasonable takedown.

Drones

[ThatsNotPudding]

Dotcom has no drones; the US does - along with an itchy 'we ARE the law' trigger finger. As just about the entirety of the continent north of Johannesburg is now a US free fire zone, any African government would have quickly given in to US demands as Gabon just did.

no

[Tom]

No, it is a sign that the game he's been playing for many years now is finally over. You know, that of moving your operations to a different country each time the one you are currently in finally catches up with your crimes.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an imbecile.

Yes, the crime of allowing others to copy data! A matter of national security, in fact!

Re:no

[Tom]

You know you are lying, and you are doing it badly. The /. crowd is too smart to fall for this nonsense, so why are you doing it? The PR agency not having enough money to pay different people for twitter and /.?

Disregard Names, Acquire Addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the mischief that governments are inflicting on the DNS name space, why not just forgo a DNS name altogether? People don't really need names though they are handy. If megaupload never had a name, you would still be able to find a link via google. You can still bookmark the site. Route around government DNS mischief.

jcw

Re:Disregard Names, Acquire Addresses

[viperidaenz]

It's hard to remember an IPv6 address.

Re:Disregard Names, Acquire Addresses

[pepsikid]

You can label your browser's shortcuts with any name you want, and it's easy to migrate your shortcuts to other browsers.

Soooo.... me.ga was for pictures of kittens?

[Brannon]

Countries make their own laws, so legally they can shut down whoever they want; so we're just talking about ethics here. I don't find anything ethically wrong with pre-emptively shutting down an enterprise they (very reasonably, given the history and public comments of the proprietor) consider to encourage intellectual property piracy.

I have an idea

[viperidaenz]

What about http://mega.co.ck/ The Cook Islands could do with some publicity. They must have chosen .co.ck as their public suffix for some reason.

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What about http://mega.co.ck/ The Cook Islands could do with some publicity. They must have chosen .co.ck as their public suffix for some reason.

Your comment is even funnier than you think :-)

CK is a NZ Dependent country and even uses the NZ Dollar. It's internet heirachy follows the UK model of .co rather than .com just like NZ . Mega doing business there from his base in NZ would be very amusing

To blatently copy from wikipedia's entry on the cook islands "Defence and foreign affairs are the responsibility of New Zealand, in consultation with the Cook Islands. In recent times, the Cook Islands have adopted an increasingly independent foreign policy. Although Cook Islanders are citizens of New Zealand, they have the status of Cook Islands nationals, which is not given to other New Zealand citizens."

Establish an Alternate, Opt-in DNS System

[pepsikid]

Domain names might be considered optional if one has exclusive use of their IP address. But if you share your IP with other customers at a hosting service, you'll need something for your browser and email client to use as a target label. Folks, we're not required by law to use the established ICANN Domain Name System! At least not in most "free", first-world countries. Imagine being able to privately or publicly register any freakin' string you like as a domain name, thus sidestepping the pointless, expensive and tyrannical limitations of the current one. This could be implemented as entries in your HOSTS file, the use of a private DNS server on your LAN, or the establishment of an alternate DNS system on the Internet. Users could use it only to set up their own address-bar "shortcuts" like "slash.dot" or "pepsikids.reallycool.internet.blog", or additionally opt-in to accept other's "shortcuts" like "apple", "ebay", and "ibm" too. As an example of the opposite goal, one of OpenDNS's strengths is to intercept legitimate requests for domains that host objectionable material, and redirect them so the kiddies can't browse porn. This function can be extended, or a parallel service established, which permits the DNS resolution of additional strings which are not recognized by ICANN. Call it UCANNOW or DNSAnything. This alternate system would typically filter the use of patterns that would conflict with ICANN TLD's. It's not impossible to make exceptions for those nice, short domains that have been uselessly parked for years by speculators. Screw 'em. ICANN can be expected to do anything in it's power to sabotage this end-run around their feed trough, but will ultimately fail, since this proposed system is opt-in. It doesn't even need it's own domain name to be set up as Primary DNS on folk's PCs or routers. Some controls would need to be established to limit misuse and libel, but this work can be largely handled by it's own community. Registration would be dirt cheap, but vary according to how short or similar to ICANN TLDs a request is. One doesn't want to let IO or IBM pay just $5/yr to secure control of their DNSA counterpart. Registering something like chucks.blog.of.weird.people.at.walmart might cost just $1/life.

Re:Kind of surprise this wasn't posted too here on

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange - that pirate group doesn't exist. They've never made a release, and they just made a Twitter account when this new operation started - and registered from an IP address from the FBI liaison for the Department for Homeland Security's IP Enforcement division, and not from Gabon at all.

Good grief, they're terrible at false-flag ops.

TV is cheaper than Internet

[tepples]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're trying to tell me that an effective counter to MPAA-controlled news outlets is news through the Internet. For one thing, news through the Internet is far more expensive. In the United States, OTA TV is free with purchase of a monitor with a tuner and an antenna, while Internet access costs per month. In countries that have a TV licence and spell it "licence", OTA TV is probably still cheaper than Internet access. And in a lot of places, cable TV is free or nearly free with the purchase of Internet access because of how the cable company prices its double play bundle plans. For another thing, the MPAA-affiliated networks already have a major presence in Internet news aggregators such as Google News.

Re:TV is cheaper than Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Libraries have internet.

The cost is clothes (so you don't get arrested on the way there) and the public transport ticket.

(the real cost is society to pay for the rest of society not to tear you apart, and to subsidise - in some form - the computer at the library etc.)

Re:TV is cheaper than Internet

[tepples]

Plus the cost of waiting for the next day on which the library is open. If something happens on a Friday night, and one relies exclusively on excursions to the public library for one's news, one won't find out about it until the next Monday evening.

Plus the opportunity cost of time spent on the bus. A TV is already in one's home and takes no time to travel to turn it on at 6 PM or 11 PM.

SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they are. They are also big supporters of, "confiscate everything which is allegedly being used to violate intellectual property rights, and all funds which are allegedly profits from infringing activity, in advance of serving the other party notice that they are actually accused of doing these things (let alone being proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt)." That's SOP not only in the Megaupload case, but with regard to the ICE using its privileged position as a US Govt agency to pull strings at Verisign et al in the .com/.net/.org domains.