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Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

mega.co.nz

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Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#71

Post by powertower »

bo1024 wrote: post #54
tzs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DMCA Safe Harbor works fine for companies that aren't PURPOSEFULLY attempting to violate copyright. Just don't make the mistake of getting caught berating employees for taking down infringing material, don't get caught figuring out what users upload the best pirated material so you can reward them, don't get caught ordering employees to work on improving the quality of pirated files on your site, and you won't ha…

> and you won't have the problems Mr. Dotcom (who did all the aforementioned things) had This is simply false. Legitimate non-infringing websites have been seized by the U.S. justice department without due process.[1] There is a reason to have due process and innocent until proven guilty; the reason is that otherwise power is abused by those with the power. [1] http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120505daj…

If I'm not mistaken, your first example was a case where 1 website made in on a list (a list with 100s of other entries) BY MISTAKE. And the bureaucratic process took over.

What happened to that website was an exception, not the rule.

On your second point, the evidence was so overwhelming clear on MU being a criminal enterprise, that when combined with KimDotCom's long criminal history, it was quite clear what was going on.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#72

Post by kamjam »

nitrogen wrote: post #68
kamjam wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anybody actually ever host "important files" on MegaUpload? I know people say they did, but did they actually? If they did that's just plain stupid.

MU was the only site that allowed unregistered users to upload large files with unregistered downloads, making it a great way to distribute customized Linux live CD images.

Sure, i've used a couple of upload sites recently to transfer large files... but never anything that was actually important, i didn't have local backups of or couldn't be easily replicated.

I've read about people trying to get their files back off the servers and all the other hoo-ha going on, and have nothing against people trying to do that or using the excuse that it was their main backup... just seems extremely silly to rely on it form my point of view. It's not possible to rely on Google, for fear of them shutting down your account for some violation or T&Cs (and no recourse for appeals), so to rely on these kinds of companies...

Not sure why I got down votes for a genuine question.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#73

Post by bo1024 »

tptacek wrote: post #69
bo1024 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you won't have the problems Mr. Dotcom (who did all the aforementioned things) had This is simply false. Legitimate non-infringing websites have been seized by the U.S. justice department without due process.[1] There is a reason to have due process and innocent until proven guilty; the reason is that otherwise power is abused by those with the power. [1] http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120505daj…

Bureaucrat 'bo1024, you are technically correct --- the best kind of correct! Following the strict letter of the DMCA does not in fact guarantee that nobody will make a mistake or fail to stop someone abusing process. What this has to do with the meat of the comment you're responding to, I'm less sure of; that comment was useful in that it corrects an extremely common misconception about the DMCA (that if you simply…

If you look at the comment that was responding to, it was a quote from dotcom on how the DOJ is going around the DMCA to illegally take down legitimate sites. My comment was on-topic, but the parent comment, while technically correct, was misleadingly off-topic. It implied that, if you stick to the letter of the law, you'll be fine. That's not true, and that's what the original quote was pointing out.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#74

Post by stefs »

jgroome wrote: post #11
m_d wrote: post #3

Mega Conz? Really?

First thing I noticed too! For anyone missing it, "mega.co.nz" -> Mega Conz -> Mega Cons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

at first i interpreted it as "megacunts" - a nasty joke i wouldn't put past kom dotcom.

then i realization sunk in.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#76

Post by tptacek »

bo1024 wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucrat 'bo1024, you are technically correct --- the best kind of correct! Following the strict letter of the DMCA does not in fact guarantee that nobody will make a mistake or fail to stop someone abusing process. What this has to do with the meat of the comment you're responding to, I'm less sure of; that comment was useful in that it corrects an extremely common misconception about the DMCA (that if you simply…

If you look at the comment that was responding to, it was a quote from dotcom on how the DOJ is going around the DMCA to illegally take down legitimate sites. My comment was on-topic, but the parent comment, while technically correct, was misleadingly off-topic. It implied that, if you stick to the letter of the law, you'll be fine. That's not true, and that's what the original quote was pointing out.

It would be very bad advice to site operators with expose to US law to ignore that law because it is capriciously applied.

For one thing, its application is much less capricious than the echo-chamber would like you to believe; there's a cascading availability bias at play, because it's hard for Techdirt and Torrentfreak to drive page views with stories about sites that play by the rules and don't have a problem with takedowns. You only hear about the dramatic cases, but the fact is that the boring cases are much more common.

For another, regardless of whether you can be taken down by accident or malice when you follow the rules, you will, if you're popular, be taken down, sued, and potentially prosecuted if you run a site the way Kim Schmitz ran his.

I'm less interesting in refuting you or any other commenter on this thread than I am in being clear about what the situation is. There is a widespread belief on HN that the takedown of Megaupload was unlawful because Kim Schmitz and his team responded to takedowns. Whatever technical or even Constitutional issues may or may not have tainted the case against Megaupload, we now know that Megaupload was in fact a conspiracy to evade copyright law.

We can dispute the legitimacy of the prosecution, but it's no longer possible to credibly dispute the underlying facts. And, back to this thread: those facts are instructive. There is more to US copyright law for service providers than accepting takedown requests.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#77

Post by Karunamon »

dmix wrote: post #64
pyrotechnick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine "torrents ... done properly". Imagine some kind of worldwide system, without a central server and dedicated administrator, distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another. In your dreams!

So why is golden the rule of usenet, to not talk about it? Because if people did, anti-piracy companies would start paying attention to it. Therfore making it way more expensive to run Usenet servers and expose users to legal risk. It's success depends on its relative obscurity. You have to provide a credit card to use Usenet (unless you use bitcoins). Making it easy to be targeted. Torrents "done properly" can be co…

>You have to provide a credit card to use Usenet (unless you use bitcoins). Making it easy to be targeted.

Which does nothing but say you accessed the server- not what for. Furthermore, the better providers don't keep logs.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#78

Post by AhtiK »

a1vd wrote: post #32

I am interested in which technology he would use to encrypt/decrypt the data in the browser. Most web-tools I've seen have a strict limit on number of bytes that can be encrypted in a userfriendly process.

I suspect they could use data URL scheme as in RFC2397.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2397.txt

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#79

Post by AhtiK »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #59
danielweber wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Encryption in the browser" just screams "boondoggle" to me.

I'll just leave this here. http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/

This article seems to focus mainly on digital signatures. Encryption does not necessarily involve ensuring data source authenticity.

If you have an SHA hash as part of the request url and you can trust the SHA hash calculator to verify the authenticity of the final file then you can trust the whole encryption layer to return whatever data it wants because hash verify will refuse tampered servers.

The trick is to ensure the hash calculator is 100% untampered. For the more paranoid people this means using command line hash calculator for this just as it's used for linux distro .iso files etc.

Re: Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz

#80

Post by drivebyacct2 »

AhtiK wrote: post #79
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just leave this here. http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/

This article seems to focus mainly on digital signatures. Encryption does not necessarily involve ensuring data source authenticity. If you have an SHA hash as part of the request url and you can trust the SHA hash calculator to verify the authenticity of the final file then you can trust the whole encryption layer to return whatever data it wants because hash verify will refuse tampered servers. The trick is to ensu…

The same vulnerability that would exist in the hash calculator could exist in the hash calculator locally to induce data loss, theft, etc. The same security challenges that face a hash algorithm in a browser affect encryption ability as well. Presumably the decryption happens in the browser as well which would preclude your post.
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