Comments on: The new Mega: a privacy triumph or just more content theft?

By: JR

JR — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 03:14:54 +0000

Megaupload was attacked illegally by DoJ because a bunch of HipHop musicians were making money by getting 100s or thousands of down loads and the studios weren’t getting a cut. They committed a crime in NZ by filling false documents to get warrants. The DoJ attempted to destroy evidence and has illegally seized property of uninvolved individuals and refuses—to return it. Basically this has wasted a reputed ~$11M of tax payer money in probably criminal malicious prosecution. Even if money laundering was occurring DoJ has so bungled the case that convection is unlikely. The RIAA was unhappy about the HIPHop guys making money without the studios and should have fought its own battles without involving the Tax payers.

By: Karen Kazaryan

Karen Kazaryan — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:09:54 +0000

US Justice department made a really great job on cleaning up his image.

The cast against Megaupload will most likely go nowhere – too many screwups and outright lies and overreach.

By: alexmedawayhasleftthebuilding

alexmedawayhasleftthebuilding — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:49:49 +0000

i already used mega to upload a video too big for skydrive (2.14gb), so in that way it’s pretty cool that i finally have a copy of that other than in a pendrive. it’s quite possible, however, that this site will be taken down eventually, so i won’t trust it ever to keep an only copy of sth. the site seems to have problems. you tell it to upload all ur files and you go to sleep, then you wake up and it only uploaded the first one. in that sense, skydrive works way better with an app that turns it into just another windows explorer folder, plus microsoft isn’t going anywhere.

still, currently you have to make 7 hotmail accounts to get the same space provided by one mega account.

By: E.

E. — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 06:11:02 +0000

Won’t you agree that the point of a business, whether it’s a cloud storage company, privacy company, bookseller or whatever, exists, first, to make money? Who cares what the motivation of the owner/ founder is? All businesses exist to make profit (so they might continue to exist) Mega provides legitimate service to those who want to use it legitimately and also to those who wish to abuse it.
What motivated the founder is of no interest to me since as far ad I can tell he’s not pushing any agenda that is morally reprehensible or even illegal.

By: tufur

tufur — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 05:31:35 +0000

“Jeff John Roberts,…..snip… that still doesn’t mean you have to embrace Kim Dotcom as a good guy.”?
What a bizarre and evil thing to say about anyone. Did he step on your cat or steal your lollypop?

By: Jeff John Roberts

Jeff John Roberts — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:47:49 +0000

chromeronin, you raise a good point that American IP law is off the rails in many respects. And, unfortunately, the USA also has a habit of using trade negotiations to bully other countries into passing the same bad laws.

But that still doesn’t mean you have to embrace Kim Dotcom as a good guy.

By: chromeronin

chromeronin — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:32:16 +0000

Succumbed to Kim’s theatrics, or respected the point that they cooperated with takedown notices, and DMCA provisions, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT A US COMPANY.
Here in NZ our copyright and patent laws actually allow fair use, and media shifting, unlike the US. We can reverse enginer software to allow compatibility without being sued. We have no software patents. You can patent a whole invention, but you can’t patent the idea of one click ordering. The code that you wrote IS however protected by copyright.
I still like to think we live in a free country, unlike the USA.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:02:41 +0000

Well of course Mega’s more interested in profit than privacy. It’s a business – Kim knows what people want and he’s created a business that provides it while making him money. He’s trying to protect himself by using encryption so he can raise his hands and declare he is not legally responsible for what people upload. But he’s only in it to make money – otherwise he wouldn’t be the rich, flamboyant guy he is. Can you imagine Kim being more like Richard Stallman? No, Kim’s all about making money. And lots of it.

By: keninca

keninca — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:21:31 +0000

What Mega is doing foretells the inevitable response to walled gardens and the attempt by ISPs to control data flowing over the internet. You can’t block encrypted traffic without destroying the commercial value of the internet, and if data is encrypted, then only the parties at the end will know what is being transmitted. This should have happened already, but since most of the big Internet players want to access your information, it hasn’t happened.

There is nothing to stop copyright abusers from using Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon, or any other cloud service provider the same way. Would the government attempt to shut any of those companies down, or throw their CEOs in prison? Not likely.