6 ms·

Kim Dotcom Answers Questions

95 points by MrBlue 11y ago

vmay 11y ago
Can anyone recommend an alternative?
- leke 11y ago
  I think I'm going to wait for his opensource, non-profit alternative.
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    Would it be a violation of a non-compete to drum up interest before the non-compete expires?
    - wsr 11y ago
      This is a very good question. I really hope someone with domain knowledge answers it.
    - pgeorgi 11y ago
      that depends on his actual non-compete agreement, not some generic legal theory.
- staticelf 11y ago
  I can recommend spideroak.com
  - Veratyr 11y ago
    And I can recommend against it. I attempted to use them for a while but found the upload speeds of their (proprietary and closed) clients to be utterly useless for anything more than a trivial amount of data. Everything I found pointed to it being a client issue (the client was simply not uploading 90% of the time and my PC was more than capable of performing the required encryption and hashing operations far faster than my network connection could accept the bits) so I opened a ticket and talked to their support for over 6 months (!!!) and in the end they decided to just refund my money. If you have a trivial amount of data, go ahead and use the $7, 30GB plan but don't fall for their 1TB plan, there's no way you can get close to using it.
- lcswi 11y ago
  5$ for a 500 gigabyte server, put seafile on it, done.
  - GordonS 11y ago
    Where can you get a 500GB server for $5?
    - ctz 11y ago
      OVH gives me an Atom-based thing with a 500GB disk for £2.98pm.
      - GordonS 11y ago
        I'm looking on the OVH website, but I don't see it?
        JosephRedfern 11y ago
        It's from Kimsufi, OVH's unmanaged, budget offering: https://www.kimsufi.com/en/ https://www.kimsufi.com/en/
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - mappu 11y ago
      The closest deals i know are - 4TB is 25 GBP/mo at SoYouStart - 250GB is 7 USD/mo at BuyVM
- bigiain 11y ago
  Assume "the cloud" is always untrustworthy, and act accordingly. Sync encrypted filesystems to the cloud. EncFS has some known issues, but for a lot of my stuff, where it's "write once read many times" it still seems to be OK from an encryption point of view - though it inevitably leaks file size information. On the other hand, it does play very nicely with Dropbox/GoogleDrive/BTSync - although for the sufficiently paranoid you need to consider the risk of the Dropbox/GoogleDive/BTSync binary running on your device having access to the unencrypted local partition... Using rsync or some open source sync tool might mitigate that somewhat (but I suspect if you've got data which you suspect an attacker might subvert Google or Dropbox to get access to, you _really_ shouldn't be trying to work out how to protect that data on someone else's storage - buy your own hard drives and deal with multiple copies and geographically separate duplicates yourself) (because remember, there is no "cloud" there is only "other people's computers")
- michaelmcmillan 11y ago
  tarsnap
typis7 11y ago
I'm not involved in Mega anymore. Neither in a managing nor in a shareholder capacity. The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud. He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control. In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children. As a result of this and a number of other confidential issues I don't trust Mega anymore. I don't think your data is safe on Mega anymore. But my non-compete clause is running out at the end of the year and I will create a Mega competitor that is completely open source and non-profit, similar to the Wikipedia model. I want to give everyone free, unlimited and encrypted cloud storage with the help of donations from the community to keep things going.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Damn player don't quit.
- DHowett 11y ago
  If Dotcom wanted an open-source community-supported file sharing platform that couldn't be taken over by external forces, why did he create the perfect antithesis to that? Why did he in fact sign an agreement barring him from competing in that sector? I can't understand how somebody who wants such a perfect world consistently painted himself into a corner from which he couldn't.
  - qopp 11y ago
    Maybe for money?
    - PopeOfNope 11y ago
      Court cases are expensive.
  - yAnonymous 11y ago
    Maybe he just wants to piss off Hollywood and the people who took over Mega?
ivank 11y ago
http://www.zdnet.com/article/mega-denies-claims-by-kim-dotcom-of-nz-government-control-of-company/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/mega-denies-claims-by-kim-dotco...
- sancha_ 11y ago
  I'd deny also everything, true or not, it's bad press.
- acqq 11y ago
  Even if the title is "Mega denies" they either confirm what Dotcom claims or simply don't comment. Dotcom: "In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children." Mega: "Mega said that it has 13 percent of its shareholdings subject to two freezing orders. A 6 percent holding controlled by Dotcom's estranged wife was frozen in November 2014 by the New Zealand High Court on application by five Hollywood film studios." How can this be called a "denial" I don't understand.
  - corin_ 11y ago
    Firstly, the line you quote said "all the" shares, the fact that 13% have been frozen doesn't prove or disprove that statement. Secondly, Dotcom's main claim was the hostile takeover, his family shares were just a part of that. It could be true that they were frozen but un-true about the rest of his claims. So yes, it's a denial of his full claims, but maybe (or maybe not) a confirmation of one part of his claims that you pulled out. That said it's obviously a bunch of PR speak that means nothing. For example this line: > "More than 75 percent of shareholders have supported recent equity issues, so there has not been any 'hostile takeover', You could plot a hostile takeover in which the end, winning, result is that you own 75% of the shares, that is the takeover. So having shareholder support when the claim against you is "they took over the company by sneakily getting shareholder control" is irrelevant. All in all, it's a denial, but not one with any evidence in either direction.
    - acqq 11y ago
      All the "shares in the family trust" seized by "Hollywood" (claimed by Dotcom) can be exactly the "6 percent holding controlled by Dotcom's estranged wife (which) was frozen (...) on application by five Hollywood film studios" (stated by Mega). On another side "The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud." (said by Dotcom) is not commented by Mega at all (unsurprisingly). So what did Mega actually deny? I claim, nothing. It's OK if you consider it enough that they call the statement "a denial" but from my subjective point of view, the press and we, the readers, should not even accept such a name if there's nothing in the statement that denies anything Dotcom claimed. I think you actually agree that nothing was effectively denied, as you also say: "it's obviously a bunch of PR speak that means nothing." So yes, Mega can call it a denial, but I don't understand how anybody else can call it so if he/she reads the content of the statement. Specifically, how can the news agency write the title "Mega denies" and be trusted? It's not the same as "Mega responds."
seqizz 11y ago
I'm exhausted. Downloading all my data from all "soon-to-be untrusted" services to my external hdd. That's madness.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 11y ago
  Never trust a single location, be it a service, device or person, unless you don't care about your data. There are tools which can help you keep multiple copies on multiple services and/or devices.
lcswi 11y ago
> The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud. He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control. In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children. Huh! I had no idea Mega was publically shared. Why would you do that if your philosophy was supposed to be privacy, not money?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  It doesn't have to be publicly shared for a hostile take-over to happen. All that has to happen is that your 'investor' shares constitute a majority and that those shares end up in the hands of someone that kicks out the C-suite and replaces them with others. One way in which this could happen is if the entities holding those shares are bought (so an indirect hostile takeover). As an example: one of my companies holds shares in another. If I sell the parent company the other shares - and their voting rights - will transfer as well to the new owner. This is because there is no 'change of control' trigger clause in the shareholder agreement of the daughter company, if there were then such a change of control could force the company in the middle to offer its shares to the sitting shareholders of the daughter company. But even that can still go wrong: the sitting shareholders would have to be able to meet-or-exceed the value placed on the shares and if they can't the shares end up in the hands of others.

95 points by MrBlue 11y ago

vmay 11y ago

Can anyone recommend an alternative?

leke 11y ago
I think I'm going to wait for his opensource, non-profit alternative.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Would it be a violation of a non-compete to drum up interest before the non-compete expires?
  - wsr 11y ago
    This is a very good question. I really hope someone with domain knowledge answers it.
  - pgeorgi 11y ago
    that depends on his actual non-compete agreement, not some generic legal theory.
staticelf 11y ago
I can recommend spideroak.com
- Veratyr 11y ago
  And I can recommend against it. I attempted to use them for a while but found the upload speeds of their (proprietary and closed) clients to be utterly useless for anything more than a trivial amount of data. Everything I found pointed to it being a client issue (the client was simply not uploading 90% of the time and my PC was more than capable of performing the required encryption and hashing operations far faster than my network connection could accept the bits) so I opened a ticket and talked to their support for over 6 months (!!!) and in the end they decided to just refund my money. If you have a trivial amount of data, go ahead and use the $7, 30GB plan but don't fall for their 1TB plan, there's no way you can get close to using it.
lcswi 11y ago
5$ for a 500 gigabyte server, put seafile on it, done.
- GordonS 11y ago
  Where can you get a 500GB server for $5?
  - ctz 11y ago
    OVH gives me an Atom-based thing with a 500GB disk for £2.98pm.
    - GordonS 11y ago
      I'm looking on the OVH website, but I don't see it?
      - JosephRedfern 11y ago
        It's from Kimsufi, OVH's unmanaged, budget offering: https://www.kimsufi.com/en/ https://www.kimsufi.com/en/
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - mappu 11y ago
    The closest deals i know are - 4TB is 25 GBP/mo at SoYouStart - 250GB is 7 USD/mo at BuyVM
bigiain 11y ago
Assume "the cloud" is always untrustworthy, and act accordingly. Sync encrypted filesystems to the cloud. EncFS has some known issues, but for a lot of my stuff, where it's "write once read many times" it still seems to be OK from an encryption point of view - though it inevitably leaks file size information. On the other hand, it does play very nicely with Dropbox/GoogleDrive/BTSync - although for the sufficiently paranoid you need to consider the risk of the Dropbox/GoogleDive/BTSync binary running on your device having access to the unencrypted local partition... Using rsync or some open source sync tool might mitigate that somewhat (but I suspect if you've got data which you suspect an attacker might subvert Google or Dropbox to get access to, you _really_ shouldn't be trying to work out how to protect that data on someone else's storage - buy your own hard drives and deal with multiple copies and geographically separate duplicates yourself) (because remember, there is no "cloud" there is only "other people's computers")
michaelmcmillan 11y ago
tarsnap

typis7 11y ago

I'm not involved in Mega anymore. Neither in a managing nor in a shareholder capacity. The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud. He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control. In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children. As a result of this and a number of other confidential issues I don't trust Mega anymore. I don't think your data is safe on Mega anymore. But my non-compete clause is running out at the end of the year and I will create a Mega competitor that is completely open source and non-profit, similar to the Wikipedia model. I want to give everyone free, unlimited and encrypted cloud storage with the help of donations from the community to keep things going.

x5n1 11y ago
Damn player don't quit.
DHowett 11y ago
If Dotcom wanted an open-source community-supported file sharing platform that couldn't be taken over by external forces, why did he create the perfect antithesis to that? Why did he in fact sign an agreement barring him from competing in that sector? I can't understand how somebody who wants such a perfect world consistently painted himself into a corner from which he couldn't.
- qopp 11y ago
  Maybe for money?
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    Court cases are expensive.
- yAnonymous 11y ago
  Maybe he just wants to piss off Hollywood and the people who took over Mega?

ivank 11y ago

http://www.zdnet.com/article/mega-denies-claims-by-kim-dotcom-of-nz-government-control-of-company/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/mega-denies-claims-by-kim-dotco...

sancha_ 11y ago
I'd deny also everything, true or not, it's bad press.
acqq 11y ago
Even if the title is "Mega denies" they either confirm what Dotcom claims or simply don't comment. Dotcom: "In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children." Mega: "Mega said that it has 13 percent of its shareholdings subject to two freezing orders. A 6 percent holding controlled by Dotcom's estranged wife was frozen in November 2014 by the New Zealand High Court on application by five Hollywood film studios." How can this be called a "denial" I don't understand.
- corin_ 11y ago
  Firstly, the line you quote said "all the" shares, the fact that 13% have been frozen doesn't prove or disprove that statement. Secondly, Dotcom's main claim was the hostile takeover, his family shares were just a part of that. It could be true that they were frozen but un-true about the rest of his claims. So yes, it's a denial of his full claims, but maybe (or maybe not) a confirmation of one part of his claims that you pulled out. That said it's obviously a bunch of PR speak that means nothing. For example this line: > "More than 75 percent of shareholders have supported recent equity issues, so there has not been any 'hostile takeover', You could plot a hostile takeover in which the end, winning, result is that you own 75% of the shares, that is the takeover. So having shareholder support when the claim against you is "they took over the company by sneakily getting shareholder control" is irrelevant. All in all, it's a denial, but not one with any evidence in either direction.
  - acqq 11y ago
    All the "shares in the family trust" seized by "Hollywood" (claimed by Dotcom) can be exactly the "6 percent holding controlled by Dotcom's estranged wife (which) was frozen (...) on application by five Hollywood film studios" (stated by Mega). On another side "The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud." (said by Dotcom) is not commented by Mega at all (unsurprisingly). So what did Mega actually deny? I claim, nothing. It's OK if you consider it enough that they call the statement "a denial" but from my subjective point of view, the press and we, the readers, should not even accept such a name if there's nothing in the statement that denies anything Dotcom claimed. I think you actually agree that nothing was effectively denied, as you also say: "it's obviously a bunch of PR speak that means nothing." So yes, Mega can call it a denial, but I don't understand how anybody else can call it so if he/she reads the content of the statement. Specifically, how can the news agency write the title "Mega denies" and be trusted? It's not the same as "Mega responds."

seqizz 11y ago

I'm exhausted. Downloading all my data from all "soon-to-be untrusted" services to my external hdd. That's madness.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 11y ago
Never trust a single location, be it a service, device or person, unless you don't care about your data. There are tools which can help you keep multiple copies on multiple services and/or devices.

lcswi 11y ago

> The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud. He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control. In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children. Huh! I had no idea Mega was publically shared. Why would you do that if your philosophy was supposed to be privacy, not money?

jacquesm 11y ago
It doesn't have to be publicly shared for a hostile take-over to happen. All that has to happen is that your 'investor' shares constitute a majority and that those shares end up in the hands of someone that kicks out the C-suite and replaces them with others. One way in which this could happen is if the entities holding those shares are bought (so an indirect hostile takeover). As an example: one of my companies holds shares in another. If I sell the parent company the other shares - and their voting rights - will transfer as well to the new owner. This is because there is no 'change of control' trigger clause in the shareholder agreement of the daughter company, if there were then such a change of control could force the company in the middle to offer its shares to the sitting shareholders of the daughter company. But even that can still go wrong: the sitting shareholders would have to be able to meet-or-exceed the value placed on the shares and if they can't the shares end up in the hands of others.