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Interviews: Ask Kim Dotcom a Question
He was the founder of Megaupload, its successor Mega, New Zealand's Internet Party, and is the world's greatest Modern Warfare 3 player. He was born Kim Schmitz, but you know him better as Kim Dotcom. While he's had a number of run-ins with the law over the years, The U.S. government is currently charging him with criminal copyright violation and racketeering in association with his Megaupload site. Dotcom has recently won a court battle in New Zealand blocking the U.S. from seizing $67 million in assets. Even though he has a lot on his plate, Kim has agreed to take some time to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
Was it worth it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do you foresee an eventual end game to copyright infringement legislation in the future, or a moment when copyright holders throw their hands in the air and give up for good?
If we are ever visiting in New Zealand, can we get a picture with you?
Should have been a disclaimer on this one against flaming. Even when Kim is barely mentioned on slashdot you'll get 200+ posts calling him fat asshole hoping he gets the electric chair.
Anyway, I'll keep my question light, ask him if he ever misses living in Germany. I know his mom is still there and he isn't allowed to see her.
P.s. you're going to need to write a script to parse out all comments containing the word fat, asshole, etc after this runs it's course. Or it'll be too annoying to read them all.
I've seen some criticism from open source advocates and hackers that Mega can't be trusted because the source isn't available.
What assurance could you give someone to the point that their files may not be kept secret while hosted on your platform?
You created the "internet party" as a fight against privacy laws being tramped in your adopted country, helped shape policy and pushed for "digital rights" not just for yourself but others.
Yet your "party" formed an alliance with the "mana party" who once claimed that broadband was stealing the soul of the country and sought compensation from the Govt, a party who has never gotten more the 1.30% of the popular vote, Nationalisation of monopolies and duopolies (which means they will never get any business votes, and which constricts their only policy of "for the people" (aren't people allowed to make profit?)
I was absolutely with the "internet party" and digital rights, until they made a coalition with the "mana" party.
Was this a choice that you had a part in for the betterment of the political party you bankrolled, or was this out of control?
What is your opinion on morality, ethics, and religion?
Did you achieve your rank all by yourself, or were there other people you shared your account with?
What is your favorite...
-Game type? (Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, etc)
-Loadout
-Perks
Any other comments or stories you'd like to share about your COD experience?
What are your thoughts on the conflict of laws between jurisdictions with specific regard to how countries like the U.S. can claim jurisdiction over the actions of people and business in other countries if U.S. citizens seek to use the internet to purchase or use services not available in their own country?
Is there a market in the world for strong cryptographic file sharing? Meaning only the end users control their private keys and the "network" just connects users -- it never knows the keys.
Or does that only work on the small scale such as one user sharing some files with a few friends. If that same user shared those files with ten thousand friends, then would the sharing would be public as the keys would be "leaked" by nature of lots of people having them? (And thus those files could be examined for copyright infringement.)
What do you teach your children about fairness, morality, and legal authorities?
So you've recently taken a foray into politics with the formation of the Internet Party. What are your thoughts about what's needed to actually improve New Zealand politics? One of the stated goals of the Internet Party is to review the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which has recently become a hot topic in the US as well. What are your thoughts on the TPP?
----- obSig
Why do you think the Internet Party didn't do as well as hoped?
Learn to love Alaska
What would be your proposed copyright ruleset, so that content producers still can live off their creations?
Were you born a criminal sociopath and con-artist, or did you evolve into one?
You may personally dislike the guy, but running a public cloud storage service isn't supposed to be illegal. The service had substantial, non-infringing uses, which was previously the litmus test for whether a product exists solely to enable copyright infringement. Otherwise, we wouldn't have things like photocopiers, tape recorders, MP3 players, VCRs, DVRs, cameras, and pretty much every form of blank media.
Megaupload was used quite extensively for storing open source projects and homebrew Android ROMs. That alone should've demonstrated the service had substantial, non-infringing uses.
I understand that Megaupload was allegedly not acting on DMCA takedown requests as promptly as they should've. Still, that seems like something that should be handled with fines, not going all Gestapo by seizing the domain and servers. You wouldn't torch a restaurant to the ground for failing a health inspection, would you?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
While I understand you do not want to be extradited, are you actually planning on showing up for trial if it happens? And what are you plans when the USA grabs you and puts you in jail at that point?
Be seeing you...
I've seen many a file-sharing site shutter its doors or become overly restrictive after even the merest hint of action by law enforcement officials, doing things like requiring logins to upload or download, sometimes even requiring people to sign in via social media (4Shared). The end result is that a lot of these places become borderline unusable.
Unlike a lot of those website operators, you have personally been dragged out of your home by law enforcement and had actions taken against MegaUpload by the United States government. It could be argued that you have more to fear as a "face" of file-sharing that the Department of Justice would want to make an example out of than pretty much any other file-sharing or torrent tracker operator out there (apart from maybe the Pirate Bay founders).
So my question is this: What drives you to keep going with Mega after having such things happen to you? What kind of mindset does it take to (metaphorically) keep spitting in the face of the United States government after having them raid your house by proxy?
Well, I am that fat, with a BMI between 39 and 40. It starts like this.
At age 16, I was told to quit playing football (not hand-egg), because of scoliosis.
At age 17, I moved out of my parents place and had to cook for myself (guess what, Pizzaaaaaa)
At age 21, I got my first IT job, sitting all day
At age 25, I had grown to a BMI of 34
At age 30, I had grown to a BMI of 37
At age 40, I'm close to 40.
I don't eat two pizzas for breakfast. I just sit in a cube all day and work my ass off (or on, actually), by sitting and typing. My gut is the size of the mount Everest, and I can't see my dick anymore. Not even in the mirror, as it is concealed by a big lump of fat.
But it goes so slowly, that you won't realize until it's too late.