Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mega has launched

mega.co.nz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 272 posts

Re: Mega has launched

#241

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #96
cryptox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this allow MEGA to also get a copy of the key so they can decrypt your data?

Only if they had a copy of the original plaintext file.

Well, they could have. Unless you're generating original content. This is the problem if you are sharing nothing something which is not 100% original on block level.

This is just the reason, why sensitive data needs to be encrypted before deduplication.

OFF System is also one interesting approach to this problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFFSystem

These are more or less "funny" work-a-rounds to the actual problem.

Re: Mega has launched

#242

Post by huhtenberg »

Hupo wrote: post #197
huhtenberg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means that if there's a commonly available plaintext version of a file, then you can encrypt it, compute the hash of the encrypted version and then serve it to Mega along with a DMCA takedown notice. They wouldn't really want that, would they? So as clever as it is, I doubt they do it this way.

>then serve it to Mega along with a DMCA takedown notice. The thing with copyrighted content, though, is that even if the file you're checking might be infringing on copyrights in certain cases, in other cases it might as well be completely legit. I wrote about this on some earlier MU submission[1], so I won't repeat all that here, but all in all, even if you knew that file X existed on Mega's servers, it would be pr…

There'll be plenty of cases when the content is inherently infringing. Cam copies, for example. Additionally, if there's a jurisdiction where a DVD rip of Dora The Explorer is not considered a fair use, they may start pounding Mega to limit this jurisdiction's access to the file. This sort of thing.

Re: Mega has launched

#243

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

gjulianm wrote: post #101
jiggy2011 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they had a copy of the original plaintext file.

Which in theory they don't have, as they encrypt it on your browser.

Well, you said "encrypt", what do you mean by encrypt? What's the key? In the Freenet's solution, they encryption key for the data is the data, not any random or user provided key. So the same plaintext is always turned in to same ciphertext. Which we all know, it's very bad idea, it ruins encryption. In this case, it's quite easy to spot out all of the users having the same content in their account.

This is only reasonable method when ever you can assume that every plaintext is unique, which also makes point of deduplicationg data absolutely pointess.

Re: Mega has launched

#244

Post by jopt »

soup10 wrote: post #205
jlgreco wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "ok"? Morally ok? That is subject to opinion. I don't have a problem with them now, and I never did. Legally immune? They very well could be. Certainly any action against them is going to be much harder this time, if only because a bunch of people in New Zealand are still pissed about what happened last time without the revisions that were made. If their system works as they claim, and renders the…

However you feel about copyright, profitting off of the distribution of other peoples work, without their permission, is not something that should be encouraged or tolerated.

> However you feel about copyright

Hm. This makes it sound like your point stands regardless of personal ethics; as though

> profitting off of the distribution of other peoples work, without their permission, is not something that should be encouraged or tolerated

is a provable, obvious, non-debatable stance. I don't think it is.

I don't think profiting off it changes the basic ethics; if something is morally okay to do as a hobby, it should generally be morally okay to do as a business until proven otherwise.

I wouldn't agree you always need the permission of someone upstream to share ideas or content. That's something we can discuss. Don't make it sound like you have the answer sheet in front of you.

Re: Mega has launched

#245

Post by Hupo »

huhtenberg wrote: post #242
Hupo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>then serve it to Mega along with a DMCA takedown notice. The thing with copyrighted content, though, is that even if the file you're checking might be infringing on copyrights in certain cases, in other cases it might as well be completely legit. I wrote about this on some earlier MU submission[1], so I won't repeat all that here, but all in all, even if you knew that file X existed on Mega's servers, it would be pr…

There'll be plenty of cases when the content is inherently infringing. Cam copies, for example. Additionally, if there's a jurisdiction where a DVD rip of Dora The Explorer is not considered a fair use, they may start pounding Mega to limit this jurisdiction's access to the file. This sort of thing.

>There'll be plenty of cases when the content is inherently infringing.

True, and it seems that Mega's copyright infringement reporting page[1] has an option for that:

Takedown Type: Remove all underlying file(s) of the supplied URL(s) - there is no user who is permitted to store this under any circumstance worldwide

[1] https://mega.co.nz/#copyrightnotice

Re: Mega has launched

#246

Post by Sander_Marechal »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #62
gjulianm wrote: post #48

I just found a weird things on they ToS [1] ... 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. Duplicate check, I get that. But, how do they do it? They say the files are encrypted on the browser, so if I upload file X an…

Possibly convergent encryption, basically when you encrypt the file you use a hash of the file as the key. This key can then be encrypted with several different passwords meaning that several people can decrypt this file.

Convergent encryption sounds great. But if Mega is using this, do they have any way of finding out which users have a specific file?

Example: Alice and Bob both upload the same file to Mega. Alice is raided by the MAFIAA. They get a court order telling Mega to list all users having a copy of that file. Can Mega comply? Or does not even Mega know that Bob has the same file too?

Related question: Is there any way for Bob to share his uploaded file with friends?

Re: Mega has launched

#247

Post by aquadrop »

georgeorwell wrote: post #105

I see Kim Dotcom as a stereotypical gangster who makes money by delivering illegal products. He has the narcissistic personality and lifestyle trappings to go with it. He even wants to buy protection from New Zealand itself by bringing free fibre optic cable to the island! It's just hard for me to respect the man, because he's not fighting for information freedom, he's fighting for as much cash, status, and power as…

Totally agree. He just makes money from other people's work. And manipulate public mind by acting like martyr (for freedom). He is basically a swindler.

Re: Mega has launched

#249

Post by lucb1e »

rplnt wrote: post #189
fredsted wrote: post #34

Perhaps he should have launched it like Gmail: Gradual launch with invites. Launching a file sharing site with this much media attention is surely going to crash it.

No one would want an invite. You need huge amounts of users to successfully run a sharing portal.

I think lots of people would actually want an invite, me included.

Re: Mega has launched

#250

Post by officemonkey »

soup10 wrote: post #205
jlgreco wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "ok"? Morally ok? That is subject to opinion. I don't have a problem with them now, and I never did. Legally immune? They very well could be. Certainly any action against them is going to be much harder this time, if only because a bunch of people in New Zealand are still pissed about what happened last time without the revisions that were made. If their system works as they claim, and renders the…

However you feel about copyright, profitting off of the distribution of other peoples work, without their permission, is not something that should be encouraged or tolerated.

Congratulations, you've just made criminals of Google.

Because clearly they profit off the distribution of other peoples work without their permission every day.

Post reply on HN