Slashdot Mirror
Kim Dotcom's 'Mega' Storage Site Arrives
An anonymous reader writes "After months of hype riding the coattails of the MegaUpload controversy, Kim Dotcom's new cloud storage site, Mega, is finally going live. After being available to early adopters briefly, it's now open to the public with 50GB of free storage and end-to-end encryption. Several outlets have posted early hands-on reports for the service, including Ars Technica and The Next Web. In an interview, Dotcom spoke about how Mega's encryption scheme benefits both the users and the company: 'The Mega business plan will be a distributed model, with hundreds of companies large and small, around the world, hosting files. A hosting company can be huge or it can own just two or three servers Dotcom says—just as long as it's located outside the U.S. "Each file will be kept with at least two different hosters, [in] at least two different locations," said Dotcom. "That's a great added benefit for us because you can work with the smallest, most unreliable [hosting] companies. It doesn't matter because they can't do anything with that data." More than 1000 hosts answered a request for expressions of interest on the Mega home page. Dotcom says several hundred will be active partners within months.' On top of that, the way it's designed will protect Mega from legal problems: 'It's all about the plausible deniability. Mega doesn't know what you're uploading. ... Mega isn't so much securing your files for you as it is securing itself from your files. If Mega just takes down all the DMCAed links, it will have a 100 percent copyrighted material takedown record as far as its own knowledge is concerned. It literally can't know about cases that aren't actively pointed out to it, complete with file decryption keys.'"
I wonder when/if he will be able to get back all the content from megaupload...
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Anybody poke around yet to see how they do the client-side encryption w/o a plugin? I suppose it could be done in Javascript. Another thought I had is maybe using the SSL stream its self and storing that. I would hope they are at least not using Java or Flash.
In any case, I would imagine that this would attract a lot of attention to see just how secure the mechanism is.
How is it a honeypot though?
OR, perhaps it's like a storage solution where you don't have to trust the storage company. If you store sensitive papers in a safety deposit box in a bank, you still have to trust the bank that nobody else will peek inside. With this, your privacy will be guaranteed by laws of nature.
Ezekiel 23:20
me too
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
It keeps the powers that be busy.
THL phish sticks
I can't even get the homepage to load.
Slashdotted, I'm sure... :P
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Really, that's the name?
"Legal Piracy: Take advantage of legal system loopholes!" seems to be the marketing strategy.
Well... I love it! :D
The internet police will be knocking on his door soon enough.
For once I should have read the article. Pricing tiers. Still 50GB is a lot to give away.
hookers and grits.
This will obviously be watched very closely by some fellows with a lot of power.
Yes it's obvious that unknown persons with an unquantified amount of indeterminate influence will be watching a public website with an unspecified degree of closeness through some unmentioned mechanism.
1. Setup a big, encrypted cloud storage. Make a loud rumble so everyone looks at it.
2. Charge for a) "Pro accounts" with more bandwidth and storage and b) advertising.
3. Profit.
The business plan is really no miracle or something.
So, basically, he's taken the "Swiss Bank Account" model that allows tyrants, dictators, and thieves to keep their money hidden and applied it to uploading illegal content. One major problem with KimDotcom's new model is the fact that Megaupload used to allow users to search for content (read: mostly copyrighted, illegally uploaded content). The search functionality is broken with the new model because your average user can't know the encryption key. This means most users will ignore megaupload and they will suffer from a lack of users. (Because, let's face it: the real reason Megaupload was *ever* popular was as a conduit for piracy. Kim Dotcom knows this, which is what his new move is about: enabling the piracy that makes his site popular, but trying to evade legal liability.)
Sounds more like an acknowledgment that, 'Yes, we KNEW we were hosting pirated binaries before, but now we're much more clever at it".
It's more, "it's not our job to police our members and we've made it computationally impossible for us to do so."
Since you couldn't understand what I meant: The feds, the music industry, the movie industry, the porn industry, the gaming industry and the software industry to name a few.
As far as I know, the ability to use JavaScript crypto libraries on an uploaded file relies on browser support for the File API, which isn't available in Internet Explorer before version 10 or Safari for iOS before iOS 6. This means it's not available in Internet Explorer for Windows XP, Internet Explorer for Windows Vista, or Safari for the first-generation iPad.
So if it's online file storage with no search, then what makes it any different from, say, Dropbox or SkyDrive or Google Drive, other than that Mega offers a lot more, well, megabytes? (50,000 for Mega vs. 2,000-odd for Dropbox, assuming a reasonable number of rewards earned)
No. This is a lot better than Dropbox. Dropbox has your files, knows what they're called, and knows what's in them. It is a basic, fairly bad, cloud storage service. All your data is subject to search and seizure.
On an audit of the code from Mega - which looks pretty solid - Mega has your files, but does NOT know what they're called or what's in them. Your data may still be subject to seizure - as MegaUpload very obviously demonstrated - but is NOT subject to search.
It's not the very first cloud storage service to do this, but so far as my audit shows, it's the first big one to do it properly. Seriously, look at the legit usage for this: This is the first really big cloud storage service you don't really have to trust to not leak your data. The risks are reduced: to seizure or other loss (which is ALWAYS a possibility, especially the way the US is being at the moment), or if they were made to backdoor it (though people might notice, as the JS would have to change, and that wouldn't affect client applications).
and all they will see is a bunch of encrypted files.
I don't think they store the data on DVDs.
and all they will see is a bunch of encrypted files.
Will they steal my photographs again? I don't know which trees in the background of my photos are copyrighted.
"While other browser vendors are still struggling to implement the full spectrum of HTML5’s functionality, Google Chrome has it all - today. To enjoy MEGA's full power (such as automated batch up - and downloading), we strongly suggest abandoning your current, outdated browser and upgrading to Chrome as soon as possible."
That's with Firefox nightly.
... american corporations and their complaint criminal government have no credibility. Any society that allows such insane acts to be passed over and over again is not a country who's laws and businessmen should be taken seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
Of course they don't. But you could. There are differences, but basically this is the value proposition they are offering.
I might make sense for some people, because, for example, you can't stuff 6 dvds in a smartphone. But for others, putting your stuff on a dvd is as good as putting it in the cloud. Perhaps more so, since you have control of it, and it not subject to legal scrutiny unless the police raid your house.
Somehow I don't think they'll be using DVD's to store the files. To be fair, they'll use whatever harddrive solution their hosting providers can get for the least amount of money, whatever that may be.
You don't calculate the cost of an internet connection by calculating the power consumption of all the '1' bits either.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Mega doesn't know what you're uploading... but they definitely care. Ad impressions will pay regardless of whether content is legitimate or not, but just like Megaupload their paid subscriptions (starting at 10EUR/month) will only sell if there's illegal content on the service.
I have plenty of use for a service like this, for:
* Offsite backup of my content creation and personal files. I have a backup external drive at home, but it's nice to have another copy offsite.
* Distributing technical data, which is all open-sourced. My home PC is bandwidth limited and not turned on all the time.
Note that with his distributed hosting, he can get along with a small number of users. It would just mean using fewer hosting providers to match the demand.
I really have no interest in just uploading or downloading files through my browser. When this was announced I heard that they were going to support mounting / folder syncing, but I'm not seeing anything like that yet. Am I missing something?
Facts have a liberal bias.
Someone told me that it is being DDoSed. All I know is that I can't get it yet.
from their TOS : "Our service may delete a piece of data you upload or give someone else access to where it determines that that data is an exact duplicate of original data already on our service"
http://cl.ly/image/3E1c260l1w2F
This is secure / plausibly deniable how, exactly, if they're capable of deuping across accounts?
I don't know about others, but I store data on hard discs. DVDs ae just too small and impractical, and haddiscs so cheap nowadays.
Coincidentally today all my torrents stopped working, all tracker addresses are resolving to 127.0.0.1... anyone else having the same problem?
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
"I Kim am not going to prison for you pirates again but the process have gained me some powerful insight. Take heed, we're logging user info and will sell you out if necessary just like ALL other legit cloud services. The encryption means we can't see your shit so we're not responsible and thus don't care what you store here. No hashing a db and files disappearing mysteriously. Unlike those other services, we’re warning you in plain English instead of confusing legal jargon; use tor, a disposable email address, prepaid CC, fake name and strip identifying metadata from all content if you plan on using this service for shady purposes. Enjoy and welcome to Mega!”
So, it won't be the Megaupload of old but will make for a good sneaker net alternative or, as difficult as it might seem to accept, a legitimate and safe service for your private and public data.
They mention in their TOS that they retain the right to delete duplicate files when more than one user uploads exactly the same file, which is sensible of course. But can anyone tell me how they can do this if they don't have the encryption key?
Works fine for me on Opera.
The G
This looks like a good service for me. Reasonable prices and strong encryption, universal cloud access. Heck of a deal. And it won't hurt my feelings to support the cause.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The site can't be monitored directly. That's the whole point. I'm sure they will be watching, but not directly. Were I in their place, I'd be looking for sites that link to files uploaded to Mega. A few careful google queries, a custom crawler, even entering into a few sneaky agreements with ISPs to do DPI and see where people are going. The idea not being to catch all the pirates, but to catch all the highly-visible pirates and the communities they form around. So only private, invite-only forums can survive.
Encrypt on client, then send to server? The difficulty would be in verifying that this took place, but if this is done in JS, anyone should be able to verify that it is doing it (if they have the knowledge).
How do they do they encryption before upload? If the file goes to the unencrypted initially, then surely they'd have a record of it.
Well, there are AES implementations for JavaScript.... not if I know that's what they're using or what the performance is like, but it's certainly possible to do it client side...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Before you pat yourself on the back, have a quick look at how many times that particular gem has cropped up before...
I seem to be connected to the Utah facility.... it's very fast!
On Comcast they appear to be blocking uploads to the website. I can access and interact with the site but all uploads are completely blocked.
50 GB? I know this guy's famous, but other than that, is there any other reason I should care? I measure my storage in TB, these days. 50 GB is only about 10 movies (or less).
I don't respond to AC's.
> It keeps the powers that be busy.
it allows them to request bigger budgets.
backups: you heard about amazon glacier, did you?
hosting: you heard about dropbox,amazon s3 or any other provider you like?
> It keeps the powers that be busy.
it allows them to request bigger budgets.
We can only hope that the screws are turned so tight the system blows up in their faces. Nothing else has worked so far in how many thousands of years? :(
Peace,
Andy.
"8. Our service may automatically delete a piece of data you upload or give someone else access to where it determines that that data is an exact duplicate of original data already on our service. In that case, you will access that original data."
If they can determine exact duplicates of original data your data is not encrypted. (by modern definitions.)
This looks like a great place to store a large number of heavily encrypted psuedo-random garbage files.
It's not the very first cloud storage service to do this, but so far as my audit shows, it's the first big one to do it properly.
Take a look at Spideroak and explain why you think they did it wrong.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sounds a lot like the "willful ignorance" that Aimster tried to pull off, and got smacked down for. https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/334/334.F3d.643.02-4125.html
geek. lawyer.
If they did ti correctly, they could provide the source code for the client side encryption, and let you build your own client from it.
After all, the best encryption is the kind that even if they tell you exactly how it works and show you the code, you STILL can't break it in any reasonable time frame.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They know full well that this is just a fight between vested interests, with no a priori right or wrong (if you see an inherent right or wrong it's because you've already picked a side).
What we're witnessing here is the next skirmish in the copyright wars: "You play the piracy card, we play the common carrier card".
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Why would MEGA know your encryption keys?
Why would you give them to anyone?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
No, it's really not their job to police their users. These greedy companies think they guy force everyone to do their dirty work for them and occasionally send DMCA notices (which are easily exploitable and prone to mistakes). Disgusting. I don't care what the law is; that's disgusting.
The other idea I saw is that to use their free service you have to install their ad-blocker which replaces normal advertisments on web pages with their advertisments. Its shonky as hell but I can see it working for them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'd be looking for sites that link to files uploaded to Mega. A few careful google queries, a custom crawler, even entering into a few sneaky agreements with ISPs to do DPI and see where people are going. The idea not being to catch all the pirates, but to catch all the highly-visible pirates and the communities they form around. So only private, invite-only forums can survive.
You party-pooping bastard! Thanks for destroying my new business. I shall be coming around to your mum's basement to sit on your head.
Kim Dotcom
I've been using SpiderOak instead of Dropbox for a while now for just the reasons you mention.
The old Mega-Upload did use Flash for some functions, such as directories for multiple file downloads. I believe the architecture was up- or downgrade, take your pick, to Javascirpt just before the Big Raid.
However, what made the old Mega a popular download site was that it was perfectly possible to download using simple non-browser based tools, including the commandline hacker's download manager of choice, wget. And Mega's files where infinitely resumable, even across different IP addresses even using the non-paying downloaders. You just pointed wget to the new URL, and assuming the remote and local file's name are the same, wget resumes the partially downloaded file.
Few file hosts now allow this functionality for free users.
"Since you couldn't understand what I meant: The feds, the music industry, the movie industry, the porn industry, the gaming industry and the software industry to name a few."
Echo the other responses so far.
But also: it doesn't much matter until it actually starts working; it appears to have been Slashdotted. Sample upload is frozen; doesn't work in any browser tried so far.
If Mega just takes down all the DMCAed links, it will have a 100 percent copyrighted material takedown record as far as its own knowledge is concerned.
Yeah, right. Because judges are stupid and fall for even the most transparent and obvious front. *facepalm*
You'd think his n-th run-in with the legal system would've made him a bit smarter. I feel sorry for the next bunch of naive folks he'll take down with him when they bust Mega and folks lose their data again.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If it's using public key cryptography then there is no way for it to be a honeypot. The prive encryption key determines the security of your files and the public key determines who can access your files. PKI.
Had to allow Javascript to get past the SSL error.
No, you are missing the GP's point.
The legal system doesn't fall for these lame attempts at "hack the law". They've been dealing with creative interpretations, weasel-wording, finding-of-loopholes and everything else we techies think we're masters of for more than two milennia. Ourt "brilliant hacks" are barely worth a yawn in the area of law.
GP is completely right. A judge will look at this and basically say "dude, seriously?". The prosecution will have to prove its case, sure. But Kim and most techies think that's a problem of mathematics, and by adding a tiny variable of unknown value to the equation, they can make it impossible to solve.
But that's not how the law works. At all.
Disclaimer: I'm a techie, not a lawyer. But through business I've had more then ample contact with the legal system, including many court cases.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The site can't be monitored directly. That's the whole point. I'm sure they will be watching, but not directly. Were I in their place, I'd be looking for sites that link to files uploaded to Mega. A few careful google queries, a custom crawler, even entering into a few sneaky agreements with ISPs to do DPI and see where people are going. The idea not being to catch all the pirates, but to catch all the highly-visible pirates and the communities they form around. So only private, invite-only forums can survive.
None of that will be useful when you consider the cost vs benefit. Sure if they invest a billion dollars a year in every country and treat it like the War on Drugs then they will initiate an arms race but what is the point?
But encrypting by them makes it secure for THEM.
megaupload lets you share individual files or folders with others while still keeping the contents hidden from megaupload. SpiderOak uses one encryption key for everything, which only you hold and gives only you access to your data.
SpiderOak is zero-knowledge encrypted cloud backup/storage/remote disk, MegaUpload is a an encrypted Dropbox/fileshare/(future)collaboration tool. They occupy slightly different application spaces.
It sounds like you're reading from a script buddy. How much stock do you own in Disney?
It appears the "powers that be" are already working on hijacking SSL traffic to mega.co.nz judging by the SSL errors I'm now getting. They must have some major SSL decryption hardware if they plan on routing and decrypting all SSL traffic of files uploaded to mega.co.nz.
Because remember, they don't need to inspect what's on mega's storage if they successfully inspect & grab the files that people upload, in order to catch "t3rr0r1sts" in "the 4ct".
But for people like me who just store family photos and backups of word documents, it's a great service, and with 50 gigs of space, that's absolutely fantastic. I just hope Kim manages to make money from this so that the project won't succumb under the weight of a flawed business model.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
And how exactly is Kim related to the stealing of movies? After all, files can be saved anywhere. He is not the only person offering a file sharing service.
Ultimately, the thieves are people who rip movies and distribute them to others for free or worse, for a fee! I don't remember Kim dotcom ever being accused of ripping and distributing movies for a fee?
There are double standards here: Just like the Gun industry is not held responsible for lunatics killing innocent people with guns, file sharing providers should not be held accountable to the actions of people sharing recipes of how to build your own uranium enrichment facility, or the latest LOTR movie.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Then why didn't you just say that?
What do you mean? Like, bombing brown people? Check.
Will they steal my photographs again?
Since as stated all the files are encrypted, they can't do anything with your photos.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
glacier, dropbox, s3
None of those encrypt your data by default.
MegaUpload does so automatically.
Sure you can encrypt yourself and store to S3 but it's just simpler to use a pre-packaged solution, and it seems to make sharing only fragments of things easier (for instance how would you upload a whole tree of data to S3 but share only one subdirectory while leaving the other directories unable to be accessed, without requiring complex authentication?).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That seems rather like a spamfilter-related issue. I had the same problem (not receiving the activation e-mail on my primary e-mail), so I tried a different e-mail and the link arrived almost immediately.
Most of us don't even bother with HDDs or SSDs - just DVDs.
Most of who? I somewhat doubt that.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Now got through, first upload failed. Not really important, for sure.
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Are backdoors like with hushmail (at least technically) possible?
Hushmail To Warn Users of Law Enforcement Backdoor: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/hushmail-to-war
Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
and if you're traveling for months or have no fixed address? Also, what a waste of energy, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Since Mega, like any other sensible site with personal data, uses HTTPS, Verizon can't even know what URLs the user is accessing, much less the file contents. They only know the domain.
Dilbert RSS feed
To add to that, they do have API and let you build clients with it, although you need to have it approved with them.
Dilbert RSS feed
Do we know what distributed filesystem they are using? Is it a special purpose development, or did they reuse some software?
If the only reason for the technical measures is to get around the law, then sure. But that's not really the case here. Anyway, nobody will know till it hits the courts.
When you say it that way it's down right creepy! Hey wait, were you that person who would whip up the skeer on the frightwing boards during the 1990s? HRMMMMMMMMMMMM?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
It keeps the powers that be busy.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Half a sec, this torrent is finishing... :D
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Can't they use our taxpayer money to do something other than ruin the lives of people who copy files? Even the companies waste taxpayer money in court by filing lawsuits...
Copyright infringers tend not to shoot back.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Keep in mind that if they monitor the bandwidth used by the endusers, they'll know they're getting something. After all, using massive amounts of bandwidth that's not coming from Netflix/Redbox/Youtube means you're moving something, and in today's climate in the US, that means copyrighted files, especially if the origination point is obscured. Not quite a smoking gun, but with enough campaign contributions, possibly enough to get a warrant from a media-friendly judge...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This looks like a great place to store a large number of heavily encrypted psuedo-random garbage files.
Definitely. Let the Feds waste tons of computer processor cycles trying to make sense of it to figure out whose media file is 'stolen'. It'll keep 'em outta trouble, especially if you allude to a mysterious decrypting program that's passed around by sneakernet to 'decode' the garbage files.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Let us argue it this way. US Govt is responsible for preventing crimes/murders/corruption etc. across the nation. People *still* commit those. Have any bureaucrats been jailed lately for *others* committing such acts? Better still, we all know that it is possible to outright buy senators and thus laws, via lobbying, leading to corruption of the entire US democratic process. Has the senate or any of the CEOs of lobbying corporates been jailed for such acts? It is interesting how one party can be made "morally responsible" for actions of others and punished, and people get brainwashed with THAT argument, while turning a blind eye to EXACTLY the same stuff pulled off those in power. If you argue that mega somehow has a responsibility for actions of others, then so do our senators. Since they want extra-ordinary powers like the PATRIOT act, and a super-bloated budget, it follows that a single incident of someone still managing to sneak in on an airplane with explosives, should similarly result in everyone who votes for the laws and budgets being prosecuted with similar over-zealousness. Accepting this kind of hypocrisy is precisely why your "freedoms" in USA, are the mess they are today. And worse, you are exporting the madness abroad with your IP/trade treaties etc.
What exactly is the difference between a public lockers providing company and what mega is doing? Via encryption, they have made their business exactly like public lockers. If you think they are doing something illegal, you will have to ban public lockers too, since they are providing an identical service.
You might not be a lawyer, but as a techie you are expected to utilize your brain a bit. And you are expected to know that a bought judge can be made to rule whichever way you want, and it will have nothing to do with actual justice and having fair and just laws.
So it's Amazon S3, neat.
No they couldn't. Javascript has no access to the file system, so could not encrypt a file.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The sad part, is that the mansion was constructed with the profits from a fucking Christmas Hamper company.
Think about that next time someone offers you Christmas club stamps.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
>>> The Swiss Bank Account model is also what allowed jews in Germany to keep some of their family fortune out of the claws of the Reich.
Is that so evil? >>>
State your reply after considering that those accounts went then into Swiss claws, they were lost anyway.
Meh, I don't think the RIAA/MPAA are interested in any more warrants or lawsuits; on average, they lose a lot of money on them. The Verizon deal is great to them because it cuts all those "due process" requirements and it's therefore much cheaper per user.
Dilbert RSS feed
For client-side encryption through a locally-compiled command-line interface, check out 'tarsnap': http://www.tarsnap.com/
2. AES-256 is slower than AES-128, but actually slightly weaker. Why, specifically, was AES-256 chosen? 3. What cipher modes are used, and where? I skimmed the site briefly but though some other details were disclosed,
From the API documentation (at https://mega.co.nz/#developers):
"All symmetric cryptographic operations are based on AES-128. It operates in cipher block chaining mode for the file and folder attribute blocks and in counter mode for the actual file data."
Of course their own client may work differently.
Last time around, Dotcom also seems to have been legally safe, in theory. Yet, US prosecutors still managed to wreck his business. I'd be surprised if this technical detail would stop them.
Problem here is that you will have to outright ban encryption to solve this problem.
You're thinking techie again, not legalese.
The law is quite familiar with seemingly shizophrenic approaches. For example, they have an odd thing that is neither OR nor AND nor XOR - a lawyer can claim that his client wasn't even near the crime scene at that time, but if he was he didn't do it, and if he did then he was intoxicated and not in his right mind. He can claim all of these three as true at the same time, and nobody in the courtroom will even raise an eyebrow, except for the techie whose brain has just shut down with a long list of logic errors.
What exactly is the difference between a public lockers providing company and what mega is doing?
The difference is that the law deals with humans and motivations, something you ignore entirely. If I were to set up that locker company, the case would probably be shut down. But if a formerly convicted criminal who is currently on trial for drug deals did it, and if he had made a public statement basically saying "only our company uses opaque steel doors instead of the glass doors other companies use, so even we won't know if you store, say, drugs, in them, hint hint" he would very likely be convicted if there is even the slightest bit of evidence.
And that can easily be done without making lockers illegal. It's how the law works. I've been in enough court rooms to understand that a judge will judge the particular case in front of him. Only the high courts consider the broad implications of their judgements, for good reasons. And you would be surprised how capable these people are. Kim and many techies is guilty of arrogance. You, too, seem to think that only geeks have brains. Most of the judges I've met were very smart people who can easily blow a big hole into your whole circumvention scheme.
Never forget that these people meet someone new who had a brilliant idea to get away with his crime every week. It's like your lawyer friend coming to you and saying something like "I've had this brilliant idea yesterday. Your web application you've been complaining about, it would run so much faster if you only ... (insert old idea you've heard 1000 times before here)".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
seems like you do not know the new html5 file-api.
That's a US sentence, Dotcom will certainly never go to the US out of his free will. I don't know what the law in New Zealand says about this.
Cannot access mega.co.nz from Finland.
Traceroute seems to get all the way to the target IP thought.
you sign up with a pre-paid CC and use a new email address you only use with mega? Seems pretty trivial to me
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Meh, I don't think the RIAA/MPAA are interested in any more warrants or lawsuits; on average, they lose a lot of money on them. The Verizon deal is great to them because it cuts all those "due process" requirements and it's therefore much cheaper per user.
Why should they care? It's not their money. The whole point of the *AAs getting copyright infringement redefined as a criminal act rather than a civil act was so the taxpayer foots the bill for prosecution, not the *AA. Once the complaint is signed in a criminal case, it's up to the government to investigate, serve warrants, make arrests, haul defendants in front of a judge, etc. In civil cases, it's up to the plaindiff to do all that gruntwork, without the benefit of arrest powers and police backup.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
They deliberately keep all their stuff outside the US. The DMCA is a US internal affair.
It's quite sickening that the US considers their laws and regulations to apply to the rest of the world, so much that even people with no links to the US consider themselves bound by those laws.
It's more, a numbered Swiss bank account for bytes with ATMs worldwide.
It's already an arms-race and now it's their move. And who has the money to do a cost/benefit analysis nowadays?
Howdy howdy howdy
Has any regular Joe file sharer (that is, people not involved in commercial and/or "distribution teams" (like IMAGiNE)) ever been convicted of criminal copyright infringement? As far as I know, they still need to be sued under a civil court.
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It's already an arms-race and now it's their move. And who has the money to do a cost/benefit analysis nowadays?
If it's an arms race then they already lost. The smartest minds in the field already know that. This is a political and legal batter but if it becomes a technological arms race there is no way they will be able to win there. That is why they are trying to use the law to ban certain technology and suppress certain companies from becoming profitable such as the case with Kim Dot Com.
The more they fight the technology the faster they lose because the people who make technology, who write code, virtually all the best hackers, all the best programmers, and the majority of the young people, all are against them. Time and technology are against them.
It's more important to most of us to be able to store our files in the cloud and access entertainment online unrestricted than it is to keep the old anachronistic industries alive. Those industries which think they are too big to fail just aren't useful like they once were.
Dotcom wanted to buy the house but was rejected as 'an unfit person' as he had previous convictions and had not been domiciled here long enough. Now having lived in NZ for over a year as a Resident he can purchase it.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
Given the fact that I quoted the third sentence, the first possibility you listed seems doubtful.
or do you not know sarcasm when you see it?
It's sometimes difficult. I've seen people say some things that I believed were extremely absurd, and they were completely serious.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Why would MEGA know your encryption keys? Why would you give them to anyone?
Oblig xkcd.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That is why they are trying to use the law to ban certain technology and suppress certain companies from becoming profitable such as the case with Kim Dot Com.
And what, precisely, is wrong with stopping people like Kim Dotcom making money off copyright infringement?
You can make all the high-minded "information wants to be free" arguments you like, but the fact remains that Kim Dotcom is a parasite who can only make money because of the existence of copyright and the willingness of people to pay him to get round it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What exactly is the difference between a public lockers providing company and what mega is doing?
If the authorities found drugs (or whatever illegal thing you choose) in the lockers 99 times out of 100 they checked them, they would have a very good case for closing down the public lockers providing company.
I've heard the phrase "plausible denial" bandied about by Kim Dotcom. He appears to think this means "as long as there is some not-actually-impossible explanation for something, everyone has to accept it's true". Well, they don't.
If the police raid a house and find hydroponic equipment, special lights wired directly into the mains supply, blacked out windows, scales, bundles of cash and the rest, they are going to work on the assumption that they have found a marijuana farm whose contents have just been shifted. If as the owner of the house your defence is "I was just growing rare orchids, which on a whim I sold yesterday to an eccentric collector on a gram by gram basis, who has now disappeared to North Korea" no one's going to say "oh, all right then". Especially if you've already been convicted of drug dealing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Indeed. Only works in Chrome or IE10. Not exactly "standard" though.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
It's an encrypted cloud-backup service rather than plain cloud-storage, but http://tarsnap.com/ makes the client's source available for your inspection.
like most of the html5 stuff ... nice draft, but nothing you can expect from every browser.