4 ms·

It's not because of end-to-end encryption. It's in response to allegations that MEGA.nz and other "cyberlockers" exist primarily for the purpose of facilitating

It's not because of end-to-end encryption. It's in response to allegations that MEGA.nz and other "cyberlockers" exist primarily for the purpose of facilitating copyright infringement. MasterCard and Visa blocked payments in response to this letter from Senator Leahy: http://www.leahy.senate.gov/download/binder1 http://www.leahy.senate.gov/download/binder1 The letter cites this report, which concludes that MEGA.nz, among many other services, exists mostly to facilitate copyright infringement: http://www2.itif.org/2014-netnames-profitability.pdf http://www2.itif.org/2014-netnames-profitability.pdf I doubt that this information is reliable, though I suspect it also happens to be true (if you understand my distinction). I have little doubt that mega.nz is mostly used to store pirated content, but I don't think this report is an adequate justification for a U.S. senator to pressure CC companies to block payments. But I think it is important to emphasize that this is not really about encryption. MEGA.nz would, of course, want us all to think that it is...

mike_hearn 12y ago
But I think it is important to emphasize that this is not really about encryption. MEGA.nz would, of course, want us all to think that it is... Well, the part about encryption is in quotes and attributed to PayPal. It seems pretty clear to me - they're saying that due to Dotcom's history and the fact that he can't prove it's NOT piracy, because of the encryption, means they can't touch him. That's a very bad precedent, terrible actually. Your service is encrypted. Someone claims it MUST be used primarily for bad stuff. You cannot prove your innocence because it's encrypted. Therefore, no payment processing for you. It's the definition of guilty until proven innocent. That said, I agree that given Mega's past, it seems likely there's a lot of piracy on there. And I hate piracy. But even so, this sort of thing cannot stand. ISPs make lots of money off piracy too. They shouldn't be cut off from Visa or MasterCard either.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
  I think its fairly clear that real story is simply that PayPal didn't want to jeopardize its relationships with Visa and MasterCard, and was only trying to explain in good faith why PayPal and MEGA.nz are in this position. > Visa and MasterCard then pressured PayPal to cease providing payment services to MEGA. As you observed, from a practical perspective it's a real problem for these types of services that they can't do much to rebut accusations of piracy, making it particularly important to behave as a "good corporate citizen" in other ways. And while Visa and MasterCard are free (I would think) to do business, or not, with anyone they choose for any reason, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the other hand, should be expected to act on more solid information that some industry report before he tries to shut down someone's business. In any event, MEGA.nz is clearly trying to claim they they were targeted because they provide end-to-end encryption. This is false. They were targeted because they are widely viewed as promoting copyright infringement. That they offer end-to-end encryption really plays only a tangential role in these accusations.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    It's quite easy to declare that anyone claiming to need end-to-end encryption has something to hide. The NSA, and by extension pretty much any agency of the US government won't stand for being truly locked out of a person's online activities, and can put extreme pressure on a foreign company through US companies, through government reach - in this case through a Senator. And that's all that needs to be said to put one company with extreme security out of business through the use of other companies is "they're pirates, or they'd show us their files." Won't someone think of the children and whatnot. Wasn't it nice, pre-Snowden, when you could read the above paragraphs and think "that's a crazy conspiracy theory..."
- powertower 12y ago
  > but PayPal has advised that MEGA's "unique encryption model" presents an insurmountable difficulty. > Well, the part about encryption is in quotes and attributed to PayPal. Putting 3 words in quotes, attributing them to someone, not providing the full communication (i.e., without context), and generating a sweeping conclusion from all that, is a clear sign that someone is producing a false narrative. People that have the truth on their side don't need to do that. > ISPs make lots of money off piracy too. They shouldn't be cut off from Visa or MasterCard either. I seriously doubt that people sign up with their ISP so they can pirate vs. getting a general internet connection to browse Facebook. But that's a moot point since ISPs, fiber carriers, etc, just provide connections and transit, they don't generally host anything. Complaining about ISPs making a profit from piracy is like complaining about highways and roads making a profit from people that commit crimes and use cars. It does not make sense. I have no idea how bad the piracy is via Mega, but considering their previous business was driven by piracy, outright promoted and rewarded piracy, and generated 400MM from piracy, I think it's wise to take everything said and done with some salt.
  - sarciszewski 12y ago
    > I seriously doubt that people sign up with their ISP so they can pirate "Thanks for fixing up my computer/Internet, now can you show me how to get the free HBO TV shows?" quoth several people I've helped before.
Pxtl 12y ago
That's not what cryptolocker means. It means something really really different.
whyever 12y ago
I don't get this. I can use Mega in exactly the same way as Dropbox. Why does Mega exist to supposedly facilitate copyright infringement? The content lobby paper you are referencing claims that the differences between a legitimate service and an illegitimate "cyberlocker" are the following: * Bandwith for sharing is limited. * User accounts are terminated for copyright infringement. * Infringing material cannot be searched and found. * Users are not paid for sharing material. As far as I know most of those apply to Mega as well as to Dropbox. (Mega pays users that recruit new premium users, this can be seen as encouraging infringement, if you think that this gives incentive to host content in hope of users downloading the content and becoming premium users.) That it is about infringing copyright is what the content lobby would want us to believe. I don't see how the material you are referencing is less biased than Mega's blog post. You just replaced one biased opinion with another.
- markdown 12y ago
  > Mega pays users that recruit new premium users, this can be seen as encouraging infringement Dropbox pays you (in lifetime free storage) for referring new users.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
  I don't think you read my post carefully. I was very careful to say that I don't think the report is very reliable, much less that it is adequate justification for cutting MEGA.nz off from CC payments. You also didn't read very far into the report; they allege finding much more direct evidence of infringement than what you say: >For direct download cyberlockers, 78.6 percent of files were found to infringe copyright. For streaming cyberlockers, 83.7 percent of files were found to infringe copyright. Again, I don't think these claims should be taken at face value. But the chain of events here is pretty clear: 1) report is published, 2) Senator['s staffer] reads report, gets agitated about copyright infringement (probably at the suggestion of industry groups), 3) Senator writes letter to Visa/Mastercard, accusing them of facilitating copyright infringement, 4) Visa/Mastercard freeze out MEGA.nz. Given all the pressure that we know the content lobby brings to bear on legislators, and how eager democratic legislators like Leahy have historically been to do this lobby's bidding, I find nothing farfetched about this chain of events whatsoever. And there is certainly no evidence that Visa and MasterCard cut off MEGA.nz because it uses end-to-end encryption. As others in this thread have pointed out, there are many "legitimate" services that use end-to-end encryption, that have not been targeted in this way. As for the difference between Dropbox and MEGA.nz, I suspect it's that, allegedly MEGA.nz's content is overwhelmingly infringing. Dropbox's probably is not.

mike_hearn 12y ago

But I think it is important to emphasize that this is not really about encryption. MEGA.nz would, of course, want us all to think that it is... Well, the part about encryption is in quotes and attributed to PayPal. It seems pretty clear to me - they're saying that due to Dotcom's history and the fact that he can't prove it's NOT piracy, because of the encryption, means they can't touch him. That's a very bad precedent, terrible actually. Your service is encrypted. Someone claims it MUST be used primarily for bad stuff. You cannot prove your innocence because it's encrypted. Therefore, no payment processing for you. It's the definition of guilty until proven innocent. That said, I agree that given Mega's past, it seems likely there's a lot of piracy on there. And I hate piracy. But even so, this sort of thing cannot stand. ISPs make lots of money off piracy too. They shouldn't be cut off from Visa or MasterCard either.

pdabbadabba 12y ago
I think its fairly clear that real story is simply that PayPal didn't want to jeopardize its relationships with Visa and MasterCard, and was only trying to explain in good faith why PayPal and MEGA.nz are in this position. > Visa and MasterCard then pressured PayPal to cease providing payment services to MEGA. As you observed, from a practical perspective it's a real problem for these types of services that they can't do much to rebut accusations of piracy, making it particularly important to behave as a "good corporate citizen" in other ways. And while Visa and MasterCard are free (I would think) to do business, or not, with anyone they choose for any reason, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the other hand, should be expected to act on more solid information that some industry report before he tries to shut down someone's business. In any event, MEGA.nz is clearly trying to claim they they were targeted because they provide end-to-end encryption. This is false. They were targeted because they are widely viewed as promoting copyright infringement. That they offer end-to-end encryption really plays only a tangential role in these accusations.
- themartorana 12y ago
  It's quite easy to declare that anyone claiming to need end-to-end encryption has something to hide. The NSA, and by extension pretty much any agency of the US government won't stand for being truly locked out of a person's online activities, and can put extreme pressure on a foreign company through US companies, through government reach - in this case through a Senator. And that's all that needs to be said to put one company with extreme security out of business through the use of other companies is "they're pirates, or they'd show us their files." Won't someone think of the children and whatnot. Wasn't it nice, pre-Snowden, when you could read the above paragraphs and think "that's a crazy conspiracy theory..."
powertower 12y ago
> but PayPal has advised that MEGA's "unique encryption model" presents an insurmountable difficulty. > Well, the part about encryption is in quotes and attributed to PayPal. Putting 3 words in quotes, attributing them to someone, not providing the full communication (i.e., without context), and generating a sweeping conclusion from all that, is a clear sign that someone is producing a false narrative. People that have the truth on their side don't need to do that. > ISPs make lots of money off piracy too. They shouldn't be cut off from Visa or MasterCard either. I seriously doubt that people sign up with their ISP so they can pirate vs. getting a general internet connection to browse Facebook. But that's a moot point since ISPs, fiber carriers, etc, just provide connections and transit, they don't generally host anything. Complaining about ISPs making a profit from piracy is like complaining about highways and roads making a profit from people that commit crimes and use cars. It does not make sense. I have no idea how bad the piracy is via Mega, but considering their previous business was driven by piracy, outright promoted and rewarded piracy, and generated 400MM from piracy, I think it's wise to take everything said and done with some salt.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  > I seriously doubt that people sign up with their ISP so they can pirate "Thanks for fixing up my computer/Internet, now can you show me how to get the free HBO TV shows?" quoth several people I've helped before.

Pxtl 12y ago

That's not what cryptolocker means. It means something really really different.

whyever 12y ago

I don't get this. I can use Mega in exactly the same way as Dropbox. Why does Mega exist to supposedly facilitate copyright infringement? The content lobby paper you are referencing claims that the differences between a legitimate service and an illegitimate "cyberlocker" are the following: * Bandwith for sharing is limited. * User accounts are terminated for copyright infringement. * Infringing material cannot be searched and found. * Users are not paid for sharing material. As far as I know most of those apply to Mega as well as to Dropbox. (Mega pays users that recruit new premium users, this can be seen as encouraging infringement, if you think that this gives incentive to host content in hope of users downloading the content and becoming premium users.) That it is about infringing copyright is what the content lobby would want us to believe. I don't see how the material you are referencing is less biased than Mega's blog post. You just replaced one biased opinion with another.

markdown 12y ago
> Mega pays users that recruit new premium users, this can be seen as encouraging infringement Dropbox pays you (in lifetime free storage) for referring new users.
pdabbadabba 12y ago
I don't think you read my post carefully. I was very careful to say that I don't think the report is very reliable, much less that it is adequate justification for cutting MEGA.nz off from CC payments. You also didn't read very far into the report; they allege finding much more direct evidence of infringement than what you say: >For direct download cyberlockers, 78.6 percent of files were found to infringe copyright. For streaming cyberlockers, 83.7 percent of files were found to infringe copyright. Again, I don't think these claims should be taken at face value. But the chain of events here is pretty clear: 1) report is published, 2) Senator['s staffer] reads report, gets agitated about copyright infringement (probably at the suggestion of industry groups), 3) Senator writes letter to Visa/Mastercard, accusing them of facilitating copyright infringement, 4) Visa/Mastercard freeze out MEGA.nz. Given all the pressure that we know the content lobby brings to bear on legislators, and how eager democratic legislators like Leahy have historically been to do this lobby's bidding, I find nothing farfetched about this chain of events whatsoever. And there is certainly no evidence that Visa and MasterCard cut off MEGA.nz because it uses end-to-end encryption. As others in this thread have pointed out, there are many "legitimate" services that use end-to-end encryption, that have not been targeted in this way. As for the difference between Dropbox and MEGA.nz, I suspect it's that, allegedly MEGA.nz's content is overwhelmingly infringing. Dropbox's probably is not.