81–90 of 129 posts
"It essentially means that there's a glass ceiling to how big you can grow your company, and how influential your company can be in the Russian internet space before the government begins to take interest in it,"
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies...
Isn't this how it's always been in Russia?
Does anyone still trust centralized social networks these days?
And the rest still seem to trust it.
This was in the related article that talked about how Putin muscled his way into the company before Durov sold off his shares: "It essentially means that there's a glass ceiling to how big you can grow your company, and how influential your company can be in the Russian internet space before the government begins to take interest in it," http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies... Isn't this how i…
Right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A worse light, perhaps? Telegram sells snake oil and ignores security recommendations while billing itself as secure. They may only be "saved" because they actually believe what they're selling (although they shouldn't after being shot down so quickly).
Snap out of that mindless Telegram bashing loop, will you? If anything, this CEO departure only shows that HN got the motivation for Telegram completely wrong. The assumption behind that gang up was that Telegram was trying to sabotage online privacy, because what else a Facebook-like entity may be doing in the domain of secure communications. Guess what? There was more to the picture than met the eye.
What part did I miss?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming it doesn't change your mind at all that Levison cooperated with a series of unrelated preceding warrants, handing over user information, and that (as I understand it) the DOJ only demanded their expansive intrusion after Levison refused to comply in a similar fashion to a warrant apparently related to Snowden, with whose politics Levison agreed.
He cooperated with warrants targeted at specific suspects. That's rather normal. He refused to cooperate with request to give them access to all users. They couldn't possibly have such warrant by considering them all suspects at once. They just told him, hand us over the keys or else. I'm not aware that he refused a targeted warrant on Snowden alone specifically. Or may be I missed that being reported somewhere.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/how-l...
I think your idea of how the case developed is fairly inaccurate.
For UK readers and or football fans, the Alisher Usmanov mentioned, who now controls VKontakte, is the same Alisher Usmanov who owns a large stake in Arsenal FC. He also owns a stake in Odnoklassniki, another Russian social media site, which is "for classmates and old friends", a bit like Friends Reunited: http://odnoklassniki.ru/
Usmanov owns shares in a lot of Silicon Valley companies.[1] Mail.ru's former chairman, Yuri Milner, funded the automatic Y Combinator investments from 2011-2013.[2]
1: http://www.usm-group.com/internet.html
Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga, Spotify, Zalando, ZocDoc, Airbnb, Alibaba and 360buy.
2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-venture-milner-...
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His list of reasons has been building up for years. Russia in 2012 passed a law allowing censorship of 'pirate websites' and has been heavily abused. Vk has been making licensing deals with Sony and other labels. Pavel is a Libertarian and is against making the website 'corporate' (like facebook, motivated by money not freedom). Both the Ukraine, arguments with shareholders and copyright pressure are recent. Putting…
Thanks for the comprehensive overview! Sounds about right to me. I hadn't heard about the 'pirate website' law though. Do you have some more info on that? Also, just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that the Ukraine conflict caused his departure. Just that it was at least a contributing factor and at worst the straw that broke the camel's back.
https://technology.ihs.com/440359/russia-introduces-first-on...
It's been in the talks since 2012, not passed until 2013. In 2012 they passed a law criminalizing viewing images of child exploitation, this was a big sign of things to come (previously to this law they were very free to do anything on the internet). I think it was also 2012 when the ROMS license was discontinued (making websites like AllofMp3, legalsounds.com illegal in Russia).
Roskomnadzor has used this new legislation to censor any website it wants to, drug, copyright, defamation, they'll find any excuse.
Here is a good article summarizing Vkontakte's recent copyright events: https://torrentfreak.com/russias-facebook-prepares-to-make-p...
They will be killing entire ecosystems of websites using Vk (video, image and audio), Pavel is against this but will get raided or censored for not complying.
It's been going downhill quickly for the past 2 years and shows my signs of slowing down.
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Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? America is no. 14 on the list of best countries to start a business in. http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/
You need to be a little careful with these rankings, because they're subjective. Forbes, for instance, drastically prioritizes taxes for its rankings. The corporate tax rate in the US is higher than that of Ireland, and (as Forbes summary straightforwardly admits) that pushes the US down in the rankings. For a startup, there are significantly more important factors to consider than the corporate tax rate, not least b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not. It's been a long coming process.
Could you provide some proof links please? Because that thing sounds really unbelievable, and given the date… That's why I hate that stupid 'holiday' so much!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming it doesn't change your mind at all that Levison cooperated with a series of unrelated preceding warrants, handing over user information, and that (as I understand it) the DOJ only demanded their expansive intrusion after Levison refused to comply in a similar fashion to a warrant apparently related to Snowden, with whose politics Levison agreed.
He cooperated with warrants targeted at specific suspects. That's rather normal. He refused to cooperate with request to give them access to all users. They couldn't possibly have such warrant by considering them all suspects at once. They just told him, hand us over the keys or else. I'm not aware that he refused a targeted warrant on Snowden alone specifically. Or may be I missed that being reported somewhere.
Orin Kerr, who is one of Andrew Aurenheimer's attorneys in his appeal of felony CFAA charges, has a good starting point for what happened in the case, here:
http://www.volokh.com/2013/11/14/thoughts-doj-brief-lavabits...