Live data from Hacker News

Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

kim.com

131–140 of 145 posts

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#131

Kiwi here and the rumour is that this new venture breaks his parole so back to the little jail cell with a mouldy mattress for him. We're not fans of people that try and bribe/blackmail our politicians here.

Also a Kiwi here and I think actually most of us are more concerned with the Police and Govt's apparent disregard for the rule and application of law.

Kim Dotcom is pretty funny and makes a good case for himself when he's given TV time, but the big story is how much damage the government will take over their buddy-buddy with the MPAA and all the insider dealings they've been up to. Dotcom has exposed a kind of corruption we didn't realise we had.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#132

Jesus people. It is possible to acknowledge that Kim is a criminal, think he is interesting, be interested in Mega, find his criminal history abhorrent AND think that raid of Megaupload was wrong and probably illegal, all at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive and there's no reason for this to be an argument. Why do Kim discussions always turn into arguments instead of discussions?

Cognitive dissonance [1]. It seems to happen a lot with discussions of Julian Assange as well. i.e. he could be both a "freedom fighter" and a sex offender, and the one person could have both very admirable traits, and abhorrent ones. See also Mike Tyson, Roman Polanski etc etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#133
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because youtubes primary purpose for existing doesn't depend on copyright infringement. MU was raided because of their alleged blatant infringement and non DMCA good faith compliance.

I suggest you read the evidence in Viacom vs YouTube, their founders admitted as much in internal emails that most of the early traffic was copyright material. http://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-intern... The real answer to my hypothetical question is that there is no difference. One just happens to be run by a German hacker while the other by upstanding citizens of Silicon Valley. One beat a civil…

Youtube isn't under indictment because they are complying with DMCA takedown requests in good faith. MU was not.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#134
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How volatile is the bitcoin right now? For example, what happens when the bitcoin raises 200% vs. the US dollar? Do you change your pricing? What happens if it then drops the next day?

History tells us that the US dollar is much more volatile than bitcoin can be. Plus I do not think that Kim will want to have anything to do with that currency.

  > History tells us that the US dollar is much
  > more volatile than bitcoin can be.
There have been at least a couple of recent periods where there was a bitcoin 'bubble.' I'm questioning how he as a merchant, would deal with that (if bitcoin was his main transactional currency)? His customers likely are all using a different currency locally, and would have to exchange that currency for bitcoins.

For example:

Let's say a month of service costs 3 bitcoins, and currently a bitcoins cost 8 rupees (24 rupees/month for service). What happens when the price of the bitcoin rises to 20 rupees / bitcoin? Does the price (in bitcoins) drop? What happens if this significant rise only happens in one market, but not another? What if one 50% of his customer-base experience significant exchange increases, but the other 50% doesn't?

It's a curious thing, because almost no one is being paid (salary/wages) in bitcoins, so they all need to exchange the local currency to pay for service.

  > Plus I do not think that Kim will want to
  > have anything to do with that currency.
I was using the USD as an example. The same comments could apply to whatever the local currency is of his potential customers.

[ Also chances are that if the bitcoin is volatile against one currency it's not not necessary stable against all others. ]

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was years ago when he was a teenager. Many people went thru an "illegal period", his was just... more successful than most. As for sociopathic, so what? Didn't you know that most CEOs are sociopaths? I find that argument... not compelling. Like it or not, sociopathy appears to be an integral/essential part of human organizations.

Steve Jobs and Woz got their start selling Blue Boxes that let you illegally make free phone calls. They just never got caught.

Exactly.

It's likely that many people get away without having their "skeletons in the closet" brought into the light of day.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#136

I was neutral on this guy until I read the wired story, and then I became a fan. He is a self made man (way more so than romney!), he suffers from persistent discrimination (overweight) and he has cycled thru the hero's journey. I have heard a lot of these "major success stories", but they are people who have been put in ideal situations and then they made the best of it. That is just emotionally dead for me. Kim's s…

"He is a self made man (way more so than romney!)"

Most every con artist is.

"he has cycled thru the hero's journey"

Now, I think he's gotten a raw, horrid deal from how his most recent case has been approached, certainly. The most he has in common with "the hero's journey" is that his persona is based entirely on myth and self-propagated legend. His claims of personal genius are for the most part fluff and lies, pushed to credulous journalists. Heck, he couldn't even win Quake and Call of Duty bouts without being caught using aimbots and other chicanery.

I may be reading too far into this and his story is more interesting than the man himself, which I agree.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#137
post #29

What sane organization would sign up to be a "hosting partner" in this situation? Let's see, most of his last venture's major unpaid creditors are hosting providers, previous hosters spent months after the indictments unable to use their servers and without an ability to bill. Not to mention that he apparently wants quotes with no capex component and requires full built and managed systems including space, power, coo…

Uh, they are not being paid because the US government decided to dismantle his business, under authority from laws from (probably) the "prohibibiton", "war on drugs" or "war on terror" eras, all of which humanity could have done without.

And they have to keep the systems running because apparently the government can't even provide secure storage of what they claim as evidence.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#138
post #127
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things he was accused of were illegal in New Zealand also.

Really? I was under the impression NZ didn't have the criminal conspiracy law the US was using. (Copyright infringement is of course illegal in NZ, but that's a civil matter and not what he was supposedly arrested for).

Really.

    131    Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing objects
        (1)    Every person commits an offence against this section who, other than 
        pursuant to a copyright licence,—
            (a)makes for sale or hire; or
            (b)imports into New Zealand otherwise than for that person's private 
            and domestic use; or
            (c)possesses in the course of a business with a view to committing any 
            act infringing the copyright; or
            (d)in the course of a business,—
               (i)offers or exposes for sale or hire; or
               (ii)exhibits in public; or
               (iii)distributes; or
            (e)in the course of a business or otherwise, sells or lets for hire; or
            (f)distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent 
            as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner—an object that is, and that the 
            person knows is, an infringing copy of a copyright work.
NZ copyright law isn't structured like US copyright law; it recognizes "primary" and "secondary" infringement like our law does, but its criminal law is is broader; for instance, creation and sale of circumvention devices is an offense directly under Section 131 of NZ Copyright Law, not some wacky add-on law like the DMCA.

Obviously, most countries don't have exactly the same laws as the US.

Re: Kim Dotcom's new Mega project

#139
post #120
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hilarious. The Safe Harbor works fine for Dropbox, YouTube, and numerous others. That's because they don't have people on staff specifically looking for infringing material in order to reward the up loaders and encourage more infringement, and their responses when they are properly notified of infringing material is to actually deal with it instead of just trying to hide it from the notifier so he'll think it…

So far it has not been proven that Megaupload has violated the DMCA, and it looks uncertain whether the cased against them will even survive long enough for the claims to even get prosecuted, so how is that hilarious? Whether or not Megaupload violated the DMCA, the US government have effectively demonstrated that if they think you've violated the right laws, it doesn't matter whether or not the courts agree, as your…

Obviously it hasn't been proven, because the case hasn't been taken to trial. But the indictment is damning; the DOJ has MegaUpload's emails and lays the case out in Kim & Co's own words. For instance:

On or about April 23, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail message to VANDER KOLK, ORTMANN, and BENCKO in which he complained about the deletion of URL links in response to infringement notices from the copyright holders. In the message, DOTCOMstated that “I told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousands from insignificant sources. I would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of “14,000” links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it justifies my reaction.”

And:

* When an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.

* Mega employees themselves uploaded copies of major motion pictures to the service, such as Luc Besson's _Taken_.

* There are Mega emails, on which Kim is apparently CC'd, in which employees enumerate the specific files uploaded to certain high-performing affiliate members, noting (approvingly) that they include copyrighted movies and TV shows. For instance, one line item in an accounting mail: 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)

There's a widespread misunderstanding of the DMCA on Hacker News and Reddit, and that misunderstanding goes like this: "to follow the letter of the law, you must somehow be responsive to individual takedown requests from rightsholders". That is in fact not correct; it only captures part of the responsibility of service providers under the DMCA. Another responsibility, clearly spelled out in the DMCA, is that you can't operate a service with knowledge of specific infringing content. You cannot know that Luc Besson's _Taken_ resides on your service at a specific URL and then simply wait for a rightsholder to request its takedown. If you operate your service knowing that there are specific pieces of copyrighted content on your site that you're "getting away with" having because nobody's sent you a takedown, and a prosecutor can show that (for instance, with an email obtained during discovery in which your staff does a line-by-line accounting of a promotional program you ran in which you paid contributors to your site to upload copyrighted material, and in that email you specifically make a case for paying one such prolific uploader more because more of their material is copyrighted), you forfeit safe harbor protections.

Finally, and orthogonally, let me just add that while we can't convict Kim Schmitz on the presumption that he is a scumbag fraudster, and the checks and balances in our system of government do require us to dot every 'i' and cross every 't' with regards to chain of custody of evidence, evidentiary standards, and cause for search --- so that if Schmitz escapes his inevitable imprisonment this time, I'll at least be comforted that our legal system takes those issues seriously --- Kim Schmitz gets no such pass in the court of public opinion. The evidence against him in that court is overwhelming. Unless you think the DoJ fabricated his emails, we know he's a crook. You can pretend there's a controversy here, but if you do, my take is you're not allowed to criticize Zynga or evil hedge fund managers and HFTs anymore.

Post reply on HN