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I hope Dotcom comes out of this victorious and relaunches MegaUpload. It was the best free one-click hosting site out there - everything available at the moment

I hope Dotcom comes out of this victorious and relaunches MegaUpload. It was the best free one-click hosting site out there - everything available at the moment sucks. Not to mention it would be a wonderful "fuck you" to the US government, abusing its global hegemony for personal purposes.

kintamanimatt 14y ago
If it does relaunch, the constant publicity Kim and MU have been receiving will only help their numbers.
- gscott 14y ago
  Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back. He won't be able to pay for hosting, and because his servers are here in the United States the government won't let him have them back/turn them on.
  - kintamanimatt 14y ago
    Maybe, but even if that's the case he started from nothing before. I honestly think he could even pull off a fundraiser. I thought his money has been seized by the NZ government though.
    - steveh73 14y ago
      Yes, NZ govt. Some of it has been returned to cover living expenses. Although I understand he also had/has some money in Hong Kong.
  - Zirro 14y ago
    "Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back." If the seizure of his assets is deemed illegal by the court, must they not be returned? Potentially, along with compensation for the damages caused to infrastructure and reputation of Megaupload, not to mention the unnecessary force used with the raid of his house. After all this time and attention in media, such a sum would be enormous.
    - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
      Because of the 1980's anti-drug seizure laws; No, they dont. Technically, the US government can 'subpoena' a wad of cash, or all your property. And because the Bill of Rights only applies to people, they keep the stuff. End of story.
      - mindslight 14y ago
        Actually it's more like because the "Bill of Rights" is an inanimate piece of paper that has no bearing on the present-day government. In fact, it does more harm by letting people think that USG is bound by logical rules. Run through its amendments and see how many could possibly be considered effectual. I count three.
    - A1kmm 14y ago
      Under New Zealand law, courts must consider whether evidence was collected illegally when deciding if it admissible in court, but that doesn't automatically prevent evidence from being admissible. If the breach was minor, technical, and unintentional, and doesn't significantly affect the rights of the defendant beyond if the law had been followed, then the evidence is usually considered admissible. If the courts decide that the police deliberately broke the law, they are far more likely to rule evidence inadmissible. So this does not necessarily mean that he has won the extradition hearing. The actual ruling (here http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-general/at_download/fileDecision http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-ge...) was based on the argument by Kim Dotcom's lawyers that the search warrants were too vague and broad (they didn't say they were for alleged breaches of US law, they allowed too much stuff to be seized beyond the alleged offending, they didn't say how seized property that turned out to be irrelevant or was no longer needed for the investigation should be dealt with, and they didn't say how property belonging to employees living at Kim Dotcom's house would be handled) and the fact that the NZ Police had allowed evidence to be transferred overseas without permission from the Attorney General as required by law. The court ruled that because the search warrants were too broad, they were invalid, and therefore the seizure was illegal. Under New Zealand law, people generally get property that was seized for investigation back, unless there is a law specifically allowing it to be kept. They didn't rule that all seized property must be returned yet, but the ruling grants "an order requiring that all items identified as containing no relevant material be returned forthwith to the plaintiffs" and "an order that complete clones of those seized items which are found to contain any relevant and non-privileged material be provided to the plaintiffs as soon as possible, and in any case, not later than the disclosable clone of that item is provided to the United States authorities". Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, it is a political discussion about seizure laws in relation to a high profile case.
udp 14y ago
You really liked MegaUpload better than Dropbox? I remembered it as being covered in adverts with long waiting times, capped speeds, no parallel downloads from the same IP address, etc.
- Goronmon 14y ago
  You can't use Dropbox to serve content to more than a handful of people.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  File syncing, not hosting, is Dropbox's primary use. Many people have used Dropbox in a manner similar to one-click hosting services, but that is in violation of the spirit (and maybe terms) of the service. Those who use excessive amounts of bandwidth on Dropbox by using it in that manner have been banned. I'd rather not abuse Dropbox when a perfectly good alternative was available. > covered in adverts If advertisements concern you, use AdBlock. Or use JDownloader, like I do, and avoid viewing the site entirely. > long waiting times If you created a free account, you would only have to wait for 25 seconds, better than the vast majority of other similar sites (MediaFire being one of the few sites that doesn't have a wait time). JDownloader alleviates this issue as well - it supports "logging in" to reduce wait times, and once you've passed it the link, it'll auto-start the download after the wait time. > capped speeds Nothing could be further from the truth. MU was one of the only sites that didn't cap speeds. Downloads from MU always maxed out my (24 mbit fiber) connection. Slow download speed is one of the biggest problems with the hosting sites that have remained online. > no parallel downloads from the same IP address Considering that it maxed out your connection, this didn't seem to be an issue. JDownloader again - it'll automate serial downloads of a large number of files.
  - ricefield 14y ago
    What about MU did you like better than MediaFire? I used to use MediaFire a lot and found it overall much nicer than MU...
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
planetguy 14y ago
You do realize that if people like Kim Dotcom ... is that really his name? Fuck him, apparently his name is Kim Schmitz and I don't care what stupid name he changed his name to. Wait, sorry, I got distracted, let me start my paragraph again. You do realize that if people like Kim Schmitz win their legal cases it'll just mean a massive push to change the law? If current laws aren't good enough to stamp out things like MegaUpload (which, let's face it, is a massive scale piracy site which exists to make money off other people's IP) then the laws will be changed until they can.
- drcube 14y ago
  How was MU different from any other cloud storage provider, or for that matter, Google? They let people store data on their servers and access it over the web from their browser. That's it. You might as well say "Fuck Tim Berners-Lee, if current laws aren't good enough to stamp out things like the Web, then the laws will be changed until they can." Which, frankly, seems to be happening, unfortunately.
  - tzs 14y ago
    > How was MU different from any other cloud storage provider, or for that matter, Google? Google, Dropbox, and so on were not founded by people who had been convicted of fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement, and in their entire adult lives only seemed to not be involved in criminal activity when they were still on parole from their previous conviction and so HAD to keep clean to avoid having parole revoked. That tends to make people, including law enforcement, give Google and the others the benefit of the doubt when they say that any misuse of their service is not intended on their part and they will try to stop it.
    - drcube 14y ago
      This is simply ad hominem. I asked how the web service differed in specific ways related to copyright, not how the founders differed in general.
      - 14y ago
shellox 14y ago
Maybe the service wasn't illegal, but he is still a criminal. Just look up his history what he did to the warez scene with his friend Gravenreuth. He also was involved in other criminal activities, so I don't know how people can say "The poor guy". I don't think he care much about internet freedom and he would probably sell his mom if he could make money with it. PS:(google translation of a paragraph on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz) "Schmitz, who claimed to be a "highly talented high school" placed at the boarding school at Plön have visited, in reality, Henry Harms school, a school principal Plön. After leaving school he spent two years in boarding school Rohwedder, a facility for adolescents with behavioral problems." I would sum him as fat, retarded, wannabe hacker chav with a strange drain to criminal activities, who try to place himself in the center of attention. He couldn't get attention without doing this things, because nobody would give a fuck about him.
- untog 14y ago
  I would sum him as fat, retarded, wannabe hacker chav I was with you up until this point. None of those things are relevant to whether he engages in criminal behaviour.
  - shellox 14y ago
    I agree with your point, but would you really trust sensible data to such a person, which is known as a liar? I think the risk is too high. Lying to customers can also be fraud in some cases.
    - iRobot 14y ago
      You trust your fucking Country to a bunch of them.. Get real!
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Regardless, prosecuting someone in an illegal fashion for something that wasn't a crime is something a government shouldn't do.
pippy 14y ago
I'm very proud of the ingenuity of New Zealands high court. So far the government, police and court systems have all bent over backwards to the Americans. It's nice to know at least one public service still serves the people.
- rdl 14y ago
  I think you mean integrity, not ingenuity.
- koide 14y ago
  and by Americans, you mean people of the United States of America. I wish police and court systems all around the world bent over backwards to the chileans, mexicans, peruvians, bolivians, etc.

kintamanimatt 14y ago

If it does relaunch, the constant publicity Kim and MU have been receiving will only help their numbers.

gscott 14y ago
Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back. He won't be able to pay for hosting, and because his servers are here in the United States the government won't let him have them back/turn them on.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  Maybe, but even if that's the case he started from nothing before. I honestly think he could even pull off a fundraiser. I thought his money has been seized by the NZ government though.
  - steveh73 14y ago
    Yes, NZ govt. Some of it has been returned to cover living expenses. Although I understand he also had/has some money in Hong Kong.
- Zirro 14y ago
  "Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back." If the seizure of his assets is deemed illegal by the court, must they not be returned? Potentially, along with compensation for the damages caused to infrastructure and reputation of Megaupload, not to mention the unnecessary force used with the raid of his house. After all this time and attention in media, such a sum would be enormous.
  - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
    Because of the 1980's anti-drug seizure laws; No, they dont. Technically, the US government can 'subpoena' a wad of cash, or all your property. And because the Bill of Rights only applies to people, they keep the stuff. End of story.
    - mindslight 14y ago
      Actually it's more like because the "Bill of Rights" is an inanimate piece of paper that has no bearing on the present-day government. In fact, it does more harm by letting people think that USG is bound by logical rules. Run through its amendments and see how many could possibly be considered effectual. I count three.
  - A1kmm 14y ago
    Under New Zealand law, courts must consider whether evidence was collected illegally when deciding if it admissible in court, but that doesn't automatically prevent evidence from being admissible. If the breach was minor, technical, and unintentional, and doesn't significantly affect the rights of the defendant beyond if the law had been followed, then the evidence is usually considered admissible. If the courts decide that the police deliberately broke the law, they are far more likely to rule evidence inadmissible. So this does not necessarily mean that he has won the extradition hearing. The actual ruling (here http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-general/at_download/fileDecision http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-ge...) was based on the argument by Kim Dotcom's lawyers that the search warrants were too vague and broad (they didn't say they were for alleged breaches of US law, they allowed too much stuff to be seized beyond the alleged offending, they didn't say how seized property that turned out to be irrelevant or was no longer needed for the investigation should be dealt with, and they didn't say how property belonging to employees living at Kim Dotcom's house would be handled) and the fact that the NZ Police had allowed evidence to be transferred overseas without permission from the Attorney General as required by law. The court ruled that because the search warrants were too broad, they were invalid, and therefore the seizure was illegal. Under New Zealand law, people generally get property that was seized for investigation back, unless there is a law specifically allowing it to be kept. They didn't rule that all seized property must be returned yet, but the ruling grants "an order requiring that all items identified as containing no relevant material be returned forthwith to the plaintiffs" and "an order that complete clones of those seized items which are found to contain any relevant and non-privileged material be provided to the plaintiffs as soon as possible, and in any case, not later than the disclosable clone of that item is provided to the United States authorities". Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, it is a political discussion about seizure laws in relation to a high profile case.

udp 14y ago

You really liked MegaUpload better than Dropbox? I remembered it as being covered in adverts with long waiting times, capped speeds, no parallel downloads from the same IP address, etc.

Goronmon 14y ago
You can't use Dropbox to serve content to more than a handful of people.
w1ntermute 14y ago
File syncing, not hosting, is Dropbox's primary use. Many people have used Dropbox in a manner similar to one-click hosting services, but that is in violation of the spirit (and maybe terms) of the service. Those who use excessive amounts of bandwidth on Dropbox by using it in that manner have been banned. I'd rather not abuse Dropbox when a perfectly good alternative was available. > covered in adverts If advertisements concern you, use AdBlock. Or use JDownloader, like I do, and avoid viewing the site entirely. > long waiting times If you created a free account, you would only have to wait for 25 seconds, better than the vast majority of other similar sites (MediaFire being one of the few sites that doesn't have a wait time). JDownloader alleviates this issue as well - it supports "logging in" to reduce wait times, and once you've passed it the link, it'll auto-start the download after the wait time. > capped speeds Nothing could be further from the truth. MU was one of the only sites that didn't cap speeds. Downloads from MU always maxed out my (24 mbit fiber) connection. Slow download speed is one of the biggest problems with the hosting sites that have remained online. > no parallel downloads from the same IP address Considering that it maxed out your connection, this didn't seem to be an issue. JDownloader again - it'll automate serial downloads of a large number of files.
- ricefield 14y ago
  What about MU did you like better than MediaFire? I used to use MediaFire a lot and found it overall much nicer than MU...
  - w1ntermute 14y ago

planetguy 14y ago

You do realize that if people like Kim Dotcom ... is that really his name? Fuck him, apparently his name is Kim Schmitz and I don't care what stupid name he changed his name to. Wait, sorry, I got distracted, let me start my paragraph again. You do realize that if people like Kim Schmitz win their legal cases it'll just mean a massive push to change the law? If current laws aren't good enough to stamp out things like MegaUpload (which, let's face it, is a massive scale piracy site which exists to make money off other people's IP) then the laws will be changed until they can.

drcube 14y ago
How was MU different from any other cloud storage provider, or for that matter, Google? They let people store data on their servers and access it over the web from their browser. That's it. You might as well say "Fuck Tim Berners-Lee, if current laws aren't good enough to stamp out things like the Web, then the laws will be changed until they can." Which, frankly, seems to be happening, unfortunately.
- tzs 14y ago
  > How was MU different from any other cloud storage provider, or for that matter, Google? Google, Dropbox, and so on were not founded by people who had been convicted of fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement, and in their entire adult lives only seemed to not be involved in criminal activity when they were still on parole from their previous conviction and so HAD to keep clean to avoid having parole revoked. That tends to make people, including law enforcement, give Google and the others the benefit of the doubt when they say that any misuse of their service is not intended on their part and they will try to stop it.
  - drcube 14y ago
    This is simply ad hominem. I asked how the web service differed in specific ways related to copyright, not how the founders differed in general.
    - 14y ago

shellox 14y ago

Maybe the service wasn't illegal, but he is still a criminal. Just look up his history what he did to the warez scene with his friend Gravenreuth. He also was involved in other criminal activities, so I don't know how people can say "The poor guy". I don't think he care much about internet freedom and he would probably sell his mom if he could make money with it. PS:(google translation of a paragraph on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz) "Schmitz, who claimed to be a "highly talented high school" placed at the boarding school at Plön have visited, in reality, Henry Harms school, a school principal Plön. After leaving school he spent two years in boarding school Rohwedder, a facility for adolescents with behavioral problems." I would sum him as fat, retarded, wannabe hacker chav with a strange drain to criminal activities, who try to place himself in the center of attention. He couldn't get attention without doing this things, because nobody would give a fuck about him.

untog 14y ago
I would sum him as fat, retarded, wannabe hacker chav I was with you up until this point. None of those things are relevant to whether he engages in criminal behaviour.
- shellox 14y ago
  I agree with your point, but would you really trust sensible data to such a person, which is known as a liar? I think the risk is too high. Lying to customers can also be fraud in some cases.
  - iRobot 14y ago
    You trust your fucking Country to a bunch of them.. Get real!
SatvikBeri 14y ago
Regardless, prosecuting someone in an illegal fashion for something that wasn't a crime is something a government shouldn't do.

pippy 14y ago

I'm very proud of the ingenuity of New Zealands high court. So far the government, police and court systems have all bent over backwards to the Americans. It's nice to know at least one public service still serves the people.

rdl 14y ago
I think you mean integrity, not ingenuity.
koide 14y ago
and by Americans, you mean people of the United States of America. I wish police and court systems all around the world bent over backwards to the chileans, mexicans, peruvians, bolivians, etc.