To
explain further, Mega’s terms say that nobody can access your stuff
without your personal decryption key. And they don’t have it. Only
you do. The company does, however, stipulate in the privacy policy
that they might cooperate with law enforcement. But big deal; what
are they going to turn over? When Twitter and Facebook cooperate with
the authorities, they have access to your data. All Mega has is an
encrypted file.
-- Max
Keiser
Hands
On With Kim Dotcom’s New Mega: This Service Could Dismantle
Copyright Forever
18
January, 2013
Kim
Dotcom's Mega officially launches tomorrow, but we're already
in. From
the membership plans we showed you this morning,
the service might look like it's just another online storage locker
like Dropbox or Google Drive. But it's way more than that. Mega is a
weapon aimed straight at copyright rights holders. It's maybe the
most private, invincible file-sharing service of all time.
From
there, you're immediately prompted to agree to terms and
conditions. Our
resident lawyertold
us they're not very well written, but in essence, they absolve Mega
for any liability whatsoever for and naughty things you might do with
the service. Smart Move, Kim.
After
agreeing, you arrive at your Cloud Drive—the file manager where all
of your everything lives. When you select one of your files or
folders to upload you realize how fast this thing is. I went ahead
and uploaded Metallica's Kill
Em All in
just a few minutes.
From
there, with a single right-click, I can generate a download link for
the album. And then I can send it to whoever I want. It's Megaupload
with a file manager.
So
what's to stop Mega from going down just the way Megaupload did?
Mega's privacy, which is a no-foolin' stroke of genius. See, all of
your files are encrypted locally before they're uploaded, so Mega has
no idea what anything is. It could be family photos or work
documents, or an entire discography of your favorite band. Poof:
online and easy to share. And importantly, Mega doesn't have the
decryption key necessary to get in. See? It's a masterstroke of
copyright subversion.
To
explain further, Mega's terms say that nobody can
access your stuff without your personal decryption key. And they
don't have it. Only you do. The company does, however, stipulate in
the privacy policy that they might cooperate with law enforcement.
But big deal; what are they going to turn over? When Twitter and
Facebook cooperate with the authorities, they have access to your
data. All Mega has is an encrypted file.
So
why is this a copyright killer? Well, actually, it's way way more
than a copyright killer; it enables the most private data exchanges
of any online service available to the public. Prying eyes will have
a hard time getting to them.
That's
important because the private exchange of your data has always been a
huge problem with online services. Take Google for example: Big G
sometimes complies with requests to hand over your data—the data
you thought was private. Google does it because it can be compelled
to do so, and because it has access. Conversely, if authorities
wanted to compel Kim Dotcom and company to hand over your data, they
wouldn't be able to do it. And getting other information out of
Mega—like the technical details about how its keys work—is
legally problematic, to say the least.
So
now two very big questions remain, and we can't answer them from
simply demoing the site. The first, is how secure is Mega? Can
hackers break in? Can the FBI?
The
second question, is what are Kim Dotcom's future plans for this
service? He's provided a vague roadmap for what lies ahead, but we
can't be sure. We're looking forward to hearing what Kim Dotcom has
to say at the launch press conference at 2:30AM EST Sunday morning.
We'll be there, red-eyed and struggling to write coherently.
All
hail Kim Dot God
---Max
Keiser
Kim
Dotcom: the internet cult hero spoiling for a fight with US
authorities
German-born
former hacker says his eyes have been opened to US tactics after his
Megaupload site was shut down last year
Toby
Manhire
18
January, 2013
In
massive, swaggering capital letters, "Mega" stretches
across the grassy slope in front of Dotcom Mansion. A huddle of
electricians and carpenters are removing the wooden stencils and
wiring in the fluorescent tubes. They are up to G. All around the
vast grounds of Kim Dotcom's luxury home just north of Auckland, New
Zealand, gardeners and technicians are busy, like Oompa-Loompas at
the Chocolate Factory, setting up for the big night, overlooked by
life-size inflatable giraffes and hippos.
On
Sunday, almost a year after the internet entrepreneur and several of
his associates were arrested in a spectacular dawn raid on the
mansion, about 200 invited guests will gather at the opulent estate
for the launch of Mega. The new cyberlocker service is a simplified,
super-encrypted successor to Megaupload, the file-sharing site that
once reputedly accounted for 4% of all internet traffic, and which US
prosecutors had taken offline moments before the helicopters
descended in New Zealand a year ago.
After
spending almost a month in prison in early 2012, Dotcom and his
co-accused were awarded bail – the first of a series of court
victories that have left the prosecution case looking increasingly
wobbly. With any hearing for extradition to the US to face criminal
copyright charges having been pushed back, it is hard not to see the
extravagant unveiling of the new site as a two-finger gesture aimed
at US authorities.
"I
don't see it like that," says Dotcom, sitting at the head of a
20-metre-long table out the back of the house, flanked by two of his
lawyers and his co-accused colleague Finn Batao – all glued to
iPads and laptops. The German-born tycoon is clearly more than
willing to be cast as the courageous leader of a crusade against the
dinosaurs of Hollywood and the politicians who enable their obsolete
ways of doing business.
"We
want to show the world that we are innovators. We want to show the
world that cloud storage has a right to exist. And, of course, when
you launch something like this, you can expect some controversy. The
content industry is going to react really emotionally about this. The
US government will probably try and destroy the new business …
you've got to stand up against that, and fight that, and I'm doing
that … I will not allow them to chill me."
The
series of setbacks to the prosecution case has prompted speculation
that the extradition hearing itself may never be heard – a scenario
that Dotcom, who turns 39 next week, says he would regret. "We
want to expose what has happened here. We have a lot of information
that shows the political interference. We feel that what happened
here was manufactured to destroy Megaupload, and we want to show
that."
The
case against Dotcom and his allies rests on proving that they were
profiting, knowingly and willingly, from the illegal sharing of
copyright-protected material – in effect, that the exchange of
pirated goods was part of the Megaupload business model. "That's
complete bullshit. Excuse my language, but that's just crap,"
says Dotcom.
"Megaupload
was created initially as a service that allows you to send large
files because email attachments had limitations … and that's still
the case today. The popularity and initial growth was all around
that. This was never set up with the intent to be some kind of piracy
haven. If the US government says that we are a mega-conspiracy, a
mafia that has created this kind of thing to be a criminal network of
pirates, they're completely wrong … for them it was about shutting
it down and dealing with it later on the fly. They are hacking the
legal system."
And
Dotcom knows a hacker. During what he has called his "young and
stupid" years in Germany he was convicted for computer hacking,
and later took a plea deal and a probation sentence over insider
trading charges, though he maintains he was "actually saving a
company and over 120 jobs". The conviction was subsequently
wiped from his record under German clean-slate legislation.
Back
then, Dotcom "thought of myself as more American than
Americans", he says. "I always had this attitude of can-do,
and if you're successful you can show it, which is a very un-German
thing, you know. And now, in hindsight, looking at this, the US has
lost a lot of its flair for me. It's becoming such an aggressive
state."
After
a year in which the Megaupload dispute has become one of the most
prominent and colourful talking points in the debate over "internet
freedom", Dotcom himself has, he says, had his eyes opened.
"When you live in your happy bubble and you have everything you
desire and you live a great life, you don't think about all the nasty
shit that is happening. I have a much better understanding now of how
the US government operates and how much spying is actually going on,
how much privacy intrusion is the reality today … we are very close
to George Orwell's vision becoming a reality."
In
Dotcom's telling of the story, his travails began when the Motion
Picture Association of America hired the veteran former senator Chris
Dodd, who used his sway over his longtime ally the vice-president,
Joe Biden, to encourage a move on Megaupload. "If you connect
all the dots, and you see who the operators are behind all of this,
you understand the political scope," he says.
"They
had a political agenda, plus they had an upcoming election, and they
needed an alternative for Sopa," says Dotcom, in a reference to
the ill-fated and draconian Stop Online Piracy Act.
"It
would probably have looked very bleak for [Obama] to go to Hollywood
and ask them to help him get re-elected when he couldn't make Sopa
happen for them. So Megaupload became a plan B."
Meanwhile,
says Dotcom, an aggressive and outdated approach in Hollywood
blinkers them from the potential to build a new business model around
the internet. "There's so much money to be made, and those fools
don't get it. They just don't get it."
While
reluctant to talk in detail about the case of Aaron Swartz, the
Reddit co-founder who killed himself last week after what some have
claimed was disproportionate behaviour by prosecutors over a hacking
case, there are "similarities in the way we have been
prosecuted", says Dotcom. "Over-reaching abuse of power, no
due process, just completely insane."
And
he sees a similar pattern in the treatment of WikiLeaks. "I
think Julian Assange's fear, that the Swedish government is
co-operating with the US government and that there might be an
attempt to extradite him from Sweden, is very real. So I sympathise
with him. I see also similarities and abuses that are happening in
the case against WikiLeaks that were happening to us."
The
technologist formerly known as Kim Schmitz – and Kimble, and Kim
Tim Jim Vestor, and His Royal Highness King Kimble the First – has
attained a strange cult hero status in his adopted home, New Zealand.
He arrived in 2009 after six years in Hong Kong, to provide his
family – he and his wife Mona have five children – with a greener
environment than that offered by the "concrete jungle".
The
saga has also turned into a domestic political sinkhole. A rightwing
government-supporting MP has seen his political career compromised,
probably fatally, by revelations of undisclosed donations from Dotcom
to an earlier mayoral campaign. Later, and more gravely, the prime
minister was forced to apologise after accepting Dotcom had been
illegally spied on.
With
the Americans on the "warpath", says Dotcom, there seems
little chance of the dispute ending amicably. But, he insists,
swatting a fly away from his forehead, he remains open to talks.
"I'm
not evil, you know? I'm a good guy. Everyone who knows me likes me …
they should really come to the table, come to their senses and work
this out. Because I'm not going to cave in. I'm going to fight this
thing. And there's no way in hell that they have any chance to win
this. I don't see it. I don't see it because I know I'm innocent, and
the lawyers know I'm innocent, and we have right on our side."
To watch video GO HERE
Posts
