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Kim Dotcom Reveals Mega Will Offer 50GB of Free Storage
An anonymous reader writes "Kim Dotcom on Thursday used Twitter to reveal some interesting new tidbits in regards to his upcoming Mega service, which will be hosted at the New Zealand-based domain Mega.co.nz. Two days before the service is to go live, Doctom says he plans to offer 50GB of free storage to all members and is also working on bringing over users' Megaupload files and data, but has so far run into legal issues." To say that Kim Dotcom has "run into legal issues" is like saying that Julian Assange is having a sleepover at the Ecuadorian embassy.
Hangin out in Middle Earth for a few months.
Tricksy Hobbitses
Will get lopped off this time! Unfortunately there is clearly one word that defines the Obama administration, vindictive! And it isn't pretty!
So the execs at MGM, Warner, AOL, MSNBC, Sony, and all those other media corps have a right to sit on their ass playing CoD all day too? Are you one of them, worried about your monopolies? Though I think Sony is probably one of the least evil offenders in this regard, they just defend their turf enough to not get steamrolled.
Thats just one industry, not even all of them.
Every single thing I used mega-upload for was legit. Mods for oblivion, quake, and other gaming uses.
Further under Kim's old model, the people who uploaded content benefited, if you uploaded your own content you actually got compensated for it, even if it was still pirated a bunch. Meaning Kim didn't run an exclusive monopoly on his ass sitting entrepreneurial lifestyle.
Stop crying because you can't control the whole godamn planet.
Use to be hosted on mega, http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/files/file/297-elsweyr-the-deserts-of-anequina/ back in the day bro. Your making a blanket assumption that Kim is an evil facilitator of destruction.
He's just an entrepreneur with his own political motivations, ones that don't align with the people in power. His sole purpose in life is not to screw over content creators as you believe.
I would make the argument that he screwed over the big monopolies, but not the individual small creators, who couldn't get published by the likes of EA, or Time Warner, or MGM. Plus he facilitated fair use, such as taping NFL and redistributing it, because fuck all people use to be able to do that. The internet made it easier yeah. The NFL also didn't go out of business. I think they've made a profit each and every year. There's no actually creativity in that, just the buying of good equipment and talent to tape already planned events. So maybe the only thing setting apart major networks from people with their home camera's is quality.
But you know, things change. Maybe we should support peoples individual rights to profit from the same thing major companies are syndicating. Might help the economy too.
Are you kidding me? Rapidshare was a goldmine of copyright infringement. It's not as much anymore simply because there are now more alternatives and it's harder to search it.
Doctom says he plans to offer 50GB of free storage to all members...but has so far run into legal issues."
I'm planning to woo Kaley Cuoco and elope to Tahiti with her, but have so far run into reality issues. Where's my free press?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Though I think Sony is probably one of the least evil offenders in this regard
I guess you've forgotten about XCP, eh? I surely never will, having been a victim. When was the last time Universal deliberately planted vandalous malwars on their customers' machines and called it "DRM"?
Sony is the worst.
Rapidshare was, at least at the time, terrible in terms of file size and speed.
Dropbox is great, but total storage size is poor.
I'm speaking of free accounts of course. I have a lot of film student friends. They need a convenient way to exchange raw footage securely. Nothing free has had enough storage space and speed to be useful, and they're too cheap/poor to pay.
And before anyone asks--we looked into ownCloud. It would be the perfect solution, if not for the fact that ISP monthly caps are too costly to get around in our area.
From the Embassy: ::sound of teenage girls chuckling::
Assange: this sleepover is amazing. Want to play truth or dare?
Ecuadorian Ambassador: No, Julian, can we just go to sleep?
Assange: How about we do some prank calls? I got a shit list we can call.
EA: Can we add Amnesty International and the EFF on there?
Assange: Sure, as long as we can call Obama
EA: Why not? I got a red phone over there.
sudo make me a sandwich
The site isn't live yet, but the information pages are *really* interesting.
1) Distributed storage?
Mega is inviting people to be a mega storage node. Allocate some storage and bandwidth on your system, and Mega will store files there.
This would imply (to me, at least) that the site will use distributed storage. If I'm right, that means it will be nigh impossible for any authority to take the data offline in a single action. All Kim needs is a list associating peoples' files with where they are physically stored, and it won't matter to *the users* if the site gets taken down - he can just publish the list and everyone can get their files from the cloud storage nodes directly. (I'm probably overlooking a more elegant solution, such as unpublicized backup domains which can be announced as alternate portals if the main site gets taken down.)
Also - They propose to *pay you* for being a mega storage node. That won't be popular, no sirreee...
2) Published API?
They propose to publish a comprehensive API and software dev kit. In their words: "We hope to see a thriving ecosystem of crypto-enabled third-party client apps emerge."
We don't need to trust Kim for security. Open source applications will sprout like weeds, and you can choose from whichever publisher you trust. (The Firefox plugin from Mozilla perhaps, or the version put out by the Apache foundation...)
2) Encryption == No liability?
In their words: "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."
This neatly avoids any liability on their part for hosting content, and at the same time protects everyone's online content from random web snooping by the likes of CIA, NSA, and various repressive regimes. Including Chinese hackers.
IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that attaching liability to this type of storage would require new laws, and a sea shift in the way liability is determined. Any such change would be unworkable, since it would also encompass broad swatches of the existing internet.
3) Better functionality
The site mentions improvements in functionality, such as having servers near the customer for speed (due to the distributed nature of storage), complete disk functionality, and so on.
====================
I have to say, this *really does* look like it will change the world, and will be the future made manifest.
Go check out Mega.co.nz and see for yourself - it's an interesting read.
(Oh, and if you would like to help erode the influence of the media conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, &c), getting a free account and storing your legally owned files would be a drop in the bucket towards that end.)
The page under "Server requirements" has this interesting tidbit:
"Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process."
Get out the popcorn, this should be fun to watch!
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
Sounds a lot like mega cons. You'd think he could have done better.
Imagine McAfee and Dotcome sitting in a hot tub together, discussing their wild techno fantasies. You're welcome.
I wish these guys weren't so creepy. I find it so hard to support them when they make my skin crawl.
Who, the US DOJ? They make my skin crawl too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The problem with Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum and his illegal theft operation is that he is clearly attempting to facilitate the theft of assets legally owned by folks other than himself, depriving these legal owners of income from their legally owned assets.
That's not a problem for me.
It's reached the point where I just don't care about the feelings or rights of the "legal owners of income" any more.
For lots of issues there are mitigating circumstances, ways to "consider the other person's point of view", ways to frame the discussion as shades of grey.
Not for these people.
I don't care about the arguments any more. No mitigating circumstances, no heartfelt appeals to starving artists, no reframing of the situation from their point of view.
There comes a point when considering their view is too much of a reach, and you admit to yourself that these people are just plain evil.
Buddah fought against evil, and so do I.
Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum is a despicable low-life (really) whose illegal operation will do more good for the world than all the media conglomerates put together. I applaud him for his sense of hurt, his outrage, and most importantly - his sense of doing something about it!
It's a problem for you, not a problem for me. I wonder how many people think it's not a problem for them, either?
Sony does an old japanese 'business tactic' where a large company spawns off all it's little sub-interests into 'companies' that share part of it's name and claim they are independent so when something goes wrong, or they want to shuffle profits around and get huge tax breaks while claiming losses, it's easy, and quasi-legal. If anything goes wrong, they just declare that it was that subsidiaries fault, and not really Sony's, so you can't nail Sony to the wall for it's activities since they claim to have no control or responsibility over what the subsidiaries do, despite their iron grip control.
It's kind of like putting sock puppets on your hands, then mugging some people, and when you get caught, blame it on the sock puppet, and claim innocence for yourself. In an act a attrition you remove the sock puppet and throw it on the ground and turn you back on it. Meanwhile the now defunct sock puppet had already transferred the money from the muggings to another sock puppet, and it is now sitting safely in your wallet, and since you are 'innocent', so it the money and your acquisition of it. After you've successfully flummoxed your accusers, you don yet another sock puppet and continue the charade.
It's apparently related to the stunts involved in Hollywood Accounting where they do such things as rent their own equipment to themselves, charge for the renting, and the depreciation and usage of the equipment, among many other dirty tricks, and claim the movie as a massive loss despite making a large amount of money way beyond their total costs of production and promotion, etc.
A friend who's got some kind of degree in business told me it's kind of like a reverse shell corporation, but honestly, I don't really understand how shell corporations really work.
So, you readers can take it however you like, but don't for a second believe Sony is anything like innocent. (I'm pretty sure that applies to all big corporations, but still...)
Disclaimer 1 - This is my system
Disclaimer 2 - The System (ScatterBytes.net) is under heavy development and not currently online. I maybe shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, but I would like to get some feedback and if you are interested in adding a storage node or using a client, please respond here or through the website,
https://www.scatterbytes.net/
I currently only want people comfortable with a Linux and a CLI and with the stomach to host data on a system in beta.
You get paid to be a storage node and other than being generally always on, it doesn't matter what type of equipment you use because the system is highly redundant and node outages are expected. Payments are handled through Paypal - both sending and receiving. I'm working on a guide to use a Raspberry Pi as a storage node so that initial costs and power usage will be minimal. The Pi would also double as media/file storage for a local network.
As a client you choose how much redundancy you want. Anywhere from 2 to 20 (or more) mirrors for your data. You can also add parity. After encrypting and splitting a file, the client uploads the pieces to different storage nodes (assigned by a control node), which transfer those pieces to other storage nodes for replication. ALL communication is encrypted and nodes are verified using X.509 certificates signed by a scatterbytes.net CA. Files are encrypted by the client and only the client has the key so ONLY the client can read the data.
You're thinking of plagiarism. Copyright infringement is infringing someone's copyright, which is their legal right to control distribution of their works. When you distribute a work in a manner that the copyright owner does not allow, you are committing copyright infringement. You should use the proper terminology instead of trying to redefine things to what you want them to mean, and then saying that those who don't agree with your redefined terms need to "learn english".