Kim Dotcom Reveals New "Mega" Strategy

[Your Fearless Captain]

This sounds really awesome. Depending on the how the service works I may switch over from Mediafire to Mega.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I guess Megavideo could work with the encryption key. The uploader would just have to give the key to whoever he wants to be able to see it.

But thecnically is it possible to decrypt a video as it streams?

It's not only possible, it's pretty common.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

"Advanced Encryption Standard" algorithm

AES, huh? Well no worries that people will be cracking the encryption unless they have a moon-sized super computer and a few thousand years to wait.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

It's a great day for child porn enthusiasts and people who don't like to pay for movies, music or games.

I mean, fucking hell. People actually support an anonymous file-sharing site with no legal accountability?

 

[piclemaniscool]

You know what could make this work better? If the service required a plugin that links the browser with the account(s) that could also write the keys onto a document folder on the user's computer. that way, if you're using the site on a day to day basis, it'll be seamless, as the browser will automatically pull the key from its cache. And if by some circumstance, your browser/plugins get deleted, you still have they keys in their raw, slightly less convenient form, of which you can backup on google docs or the like, just in case your entire computer explodes.

 

[fractured_sanity]

It's a great day for child porn enthusiasts and people who don't like to pay for movies, music or games.

I mean, fucking hell. People actually support an anonymous file-sharing site with no legal accountability?

YEAH! Let's also make public storage illegal because it might be used for illegal things too!

 

[thethird0611]

Why not just make a carbon copy of megaupload... and you know... follow the law? Sad to see alot of people praising him for it though, most of them indirectly support piracy.

Butttttt.... Hell, the encryption stuff could be good for files you really need it for. So.... Great idea, bad motive.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Well, "Mega" is now only behaving unethically, no longer illegal.

If you do something for the sole reason that you know someone is going too use your service for crimes, that is not ethical. I know some people actually use storage sites for legal purposes, I was even looking into them to start a web-show, but his responses sound more like "I am catering to the criminals, but I can not see what you are doing, so they can not force me too testify to anything".

 

[Gilhelmi]

Why not just make a carbon copy of megaupload... and you know... follow the law? Sad to see alot of people praising him for it though, most of them indirectly support piracy.

Butttttt.... Hell, the encryption stuff could be good for files you really need it for. So.... Great idea, bad motive.

I give it 5 more years until the criminal internet bubble bursts. When there is so much crime on the internet that no one can do economic business. I foresee in 10 years, treaties between nations dealing with online crime and jurisdiction. I am hoping for the victims country, but I could see a situation like US and Germany where the US can show Nazis but Germany can not, Like how the movie "Valkyrie" had too be reedited to remove prohibited material before the German release, Then I might unintentionally break German law by posting an 'unedited' picture of that movie on a German message board. (darn, now I am rambling).

I like encryption, I use it too. I will be interested in seeing how this plays out in court.

 

[BeerTent]

It's a great day for child porn enthusiasts and people who don't like to pay for movies, music or games.

I mean, fucking hell. People actually support an anonymous file-sharing site with no legal accountability?
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YEAH! Let's also make public storage illegal because it might be used for illegal things too!

I think I'm going to side with Fractured here...

Not a clue what's being uploaded? No responsibility? To me, that sounds like bad news. If you want to upload something to the internet, there are plenty of legal, free ways of doing it if your a standard user. Billions if your a company. While you may have your right to privacy, I still feel that, should you upload something that's illegal is every state and province for the entire public to see, you should still be held accountable. Google has it's own thing to share your documents to others for free. Want to share any file imaginable? Dropbox has you covered.

Want to share a file to ALL of the internet? You have torrents(Yes, you can distribute legal files via Torrents. Torrent is not synonymous with illegal.) and FTP. Also Dropbox...

Aaaaand, With the original topic? Kim's already been beat. We already have this, without the encryption.

 

[Doom972]

I guess Megavideo could work with the encryption key. The uploader would just have to give the key to whoever he wants to be able to see it.

But thecnically is it possible to decrypt a video as it streams? i think they need to download it completely before decrypting.

I've seen it done years ago, it's possible. I think porn sites were the first to use that sort of thing.

 

[Burst6]

Not a clue what's being uploaded? No responsibility? To me, that sounds like bad news. If you want to upload something to the internet, there are plenty of legal, free ways of doing it if your a standard user. Billions if your a company. While you may have your right to privacy, I still feel that, should you upload something that's illegal is every state and province for the entire public to see, you should still be held accountable. Google has it's own thing to share your documents to others for free. Want to share any file imaginable? Dropbox has you covered.

Want to share a file to ALL of the internet? You have torrents(Yes, you can distribute legal files via Torrents. Torrent is not synonymous with illegal.) and FTP. Also Dropbox...

Aaaaand, With the original topic? Kim's already been beat. We already have this, without the encryption.

You can't distribute legal files with torrents well unless you have a lot of seeders. Peer 2 peer has an advantage when there are lots of people downloading/seeding, but it's at a disadvantage if it's less popular or if people decide to be selfish and stop seeding as soon as they finish downloading.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

YEAH! Let's also make public storage illegal because it might be used for illegal things too!

No I have a better idea. Let's endorse something which has been pretty much designed to facilitate illegal activity, even though there's faster and simpler alternatives.

I mean, how is this business model in any way legit? They're not doing anything to secure people's privacy that those people couldn't already do. The only factor here is that they've found a shady loophole which lets them host illegal content with impunity.

It could only be more immoral if it was re-branded to "pedos-n-pirates.com"

 

[Denamic]

You can't distribute legal files with torrents well unless you have a lot of seeders. Peer 2 peer has an advantage when there are lots of people downloading/seeding, but it's at a disadvantage if it's less popular or if people decide to be selfish and stop seeding as soon as they finish downloading.

Of course you can.

Just seed with a seedbox/fileserver. So instead of everyone just downloading from the same server, now everyone leeches from the same seeder, as well as from everyone else too. Result = Less strain on the server, more speed for users. This is pretty basic stuff. In fact, it's the fundamental benefit of torrenting technology.

The reason unpopular torrents tend to be slow is because there's no high speed dedicated seeders. A single seed with a decent connection can easily breathe life into a dying or even dead torrent. A legal distributor would have a dedicated seedbox, so the torrent would be alive regardless of how many people decide to seed.

Why do you not know this?

 

[Jamous]

The file sharing arms race continues? It'll be interesting to see where this goes, methinks. In the mean time, good stuff all round. No matter what your opinions on piracy; what happened with Megaupload was bullshit.

 

[BeerTent]

[...]

You can't distribute legal files with torrents well unless you have a lot of seeders. Peer 2 peer has an advantage when there are lots of people downloading/seeding, but it's at a disadvantage if it's less popular or if people decide to be selfish and stop seeding as soon as they finish downloading.

Wholeheartedly false. If you have one seed that is up 24/7, anybody can utilize that connection and download from it. If user 1 gets the first file held by the torrent and user 2 comes along, User 2 can download the first file from user one if they choose to, and download file six from the primary seed. Torrents build themselves over time, they don't need to be wildly popular, just one good 100% seed.

I'd explain further, but you know the rest. In hindsight Perhaps Torrents are better suited for companies, but they will never fully adapt them just because of their piracy nature. To host/use a torrent file, you just need one dedicated connection to your tracker, and a place to host the torrent file. For something, say, a F2P game, or a Mod for a popular game, Torrents would be the way to go.

[...]A bit behind the times are we? Google got rid of the documents thing and switched to drive, you can store any files you want andshare them now so they are in full competition with drop box, and last I checked they have better rates for large storage as well ~.^

I... Did not know... I thought their Google-drive was still restricted to a select few file-types... I would look further into it, but I'm already situated quite warmly between the older version of Microsoft Sync for backups and Dropbox to manage file-hosting, MC saves, and my documents. I'm also avoiding Google Plus.

 

[Agayek]

Not really. E-mail has a 25Mb limit per file, and there are so many times that I've had to send files to people or myself and it was just over the limit. Skype is good, but not if you want to send it to yourself. Also you have to both be online so you can't send something for later.

You could always just host your own FTP server. It's not terribly hard to set up, especially with the whole cloud boom. You can rent an Amazon server for a dollar or two a month (possibly even for free if you don't need the bandiwidth that comes with public distribution) and use that for all your file sharing/sending needs.

 

[fractured_sanity]

No I have a better idea. Let's endorse something which has been pretty much designed to facilitate illegal activity, even though there's faster and simpler alternatives.

I mean, how is this business model in any way legit? They're not doing anything to secure people's privacy that those people couldn't already do. The only factor here is that they've found a shady loophole which lets them host illegal content with impunity.

It could only be more immoral if it was re-branded to "pedos-n-pirates.com"

I'd venture to guess that if this service just popped up quietly with no past history or affiliations that you'd have little issue with it.
Encryption isn't new, and neither is spreading cloud data around.
Tools are amoral not immoral.

 

[rapidoud]

Unlike, say, Dropbox where I just log in and can access all my files without having dozens of unique passwords.

To me this now makes it worse than the other services out there.

Yeah, I remember one or two called "MSN" and "Hotmail". E-mail is still a useful way of file-transfer, along with using apps like Skype. Though, there's also memory cards/sticks and external hard-drives that are just as good.

OT: But I think this has a very big issue... Especially since torrents are better. The Pirate Bay doesn't full on it's face and die because it's in a legal system, not only a search engine but (if I remember correctly), the founders aren't breaking laws where they're located. (Though, don't hold this against me. I can't remember what the actual situation was).

Still, I don't see why they don't re-open MegaUpload again but in a remote location, outside and privately/secretly fund a sub-group controlling it. I know that would be complicated but this idea's pretty shite.

Because TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Not really. E-mail has a 25Mb limit per file, and there are so many times that I've had to send files to people or myself and it was just over the limit. Skype is good, but not if you want to send it to yourself. Also you have to both be online so you can't send something for later.

You could always just host your own FTP server. It's not terribly hard to set up, especially with the whole cloud boom. You can rent an Amazon server for a dollar or two a month (possibly even for free if you don't need the bandiwidth that comes with public distribution) and use that for all your file sharing/sending needs.

I've considered that, but I use it less often than I used to. When I was in University I probably could have done with that, but the services were't as cheap then as they were today.