

Kim Dotcom’s Mega goes online at Mega.co.nz - denzil_correa
http://mega.co.nz/

======
switz
Check out the _Limitations_ beneath the "How to become a Hosting Partner"
page.

> _Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United
> States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium
> Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its
> novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage
> sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on
> servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US
> government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers
> a hearing or due process._

~~~
tzs
The DMCA Safe Harbor works fine for companies that aren't PURPOSEFULLY
attempting to violate copyright. Just don't make the mistake of getting caught
berating employees for taking down infringing material, don't get caught
figuring out what users upload the best pirated material so you can reward
them, don't get caught ordering employees to work on improving the quality of
pirated files on your site, and you won't have the problems Mr. Dotcom (who
did all the aforementioned things) had with staying under the Safe Harbor.

~~~
bo1024
> _and you won't have the problems Mr. Dotcom (who did all the aforementioned
> things) had_

This is simply false. Legitimate non-infringing websites have been seized by
the U.S. justice department without due process.[1] There is a reason to have
due process and innocent until proven guilty; the reason is that otherwise
power is abused by those with the power.

[1] <http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120505dajaz1>

~~~
tptacek
Bureaucrat 'bo1024, you are technically correct --- the best kind of correct!
Following the strict letter of the DMCA does not in fact guarantee that nobody
will make a mistake or fail to stop someone abusing process.

What this has to do with the meat of the comment you're responding to, I'm
less sure of; that comment was useful in that it corrects an extremely common
misconception about the DMCA (that if you simply have a process to honor
takedown requests, you're a service provider immune to prosecution).

Regardless of your opinion about copyright or the DMCA, it remains an under-
appreciated fact that if you do the things Kim Schmitz was discovered to have
done (it's spelled out explicitly in the Mega emails), you're violating the
DMCA whether or not you honor takedowns; further, you're not simply committing
individual infractions by doing so, but instead (potentially) forfeiting all
your protections as a service provider under the DMCA.

~~~
bo1024
If you look at the comment _that_ was responding to, it was a quote from
dotcom on how the DOJ is going _around_ the DMCA to illegally take down
legitimate sites. My comment was on-topic, but the parent comment, while
technically correct, was misleadingly off-topic. It implied that, if you stick
to the letter of the law, you'll be fine. That's not true, and that's what the
original quote was pointing out.

~~~
tptacek
It would be very bad advice to site operators with expose to US law to ignore
that law because it is capriciously applied.

For one thing, its application is much less capricious than the echo-chamber
would like you to believe; there's a cascading availability bias at play,
because it's hard for Techdirt and Torrentfreak to drive page views with
stories about sites that play by the rules and don't have a problem with
takedowns. You only hear about the dramatic cases, but the fact is that the
boring cases are much more common.

For another, regardless of whether you can be taken down by accident or malice
when you follow the rules, you will, if you're popular, be taken down, sued,
and potentially prosecuted if you run a site the way Kim Schmitz ran his.

I'm less interesting in refuting you or any other commenter on this thread
than I am in being clear about what the situation is. There is a widespread
belief on HN that the takedown of Megaupload was unlawful because Kim Schmitz
and his team responded to takedowns. Whatever technical or even Constitutional
issues may or may not have tainted the case against Megaupload, we now know
that Megaupload _was_ in fact a conspiracy to evade copyright law.

We can dispute the legitimacy of the prosecution, but it's no longer possible
to credibly dispute the underlying facts. And, back to this thread: those
facts are instructive. There is more to US copyright law for service providers
than accepting takedown requests.

------
AhtiK
"The new Mega encrypts and decrypts your data transparently in your browser,
on the fly. You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."

For me this is the most important bit of the website. That bit demonstrates
the dedication of building something that will be very hard to shut down.

If you combine this with the VPN tunneling at the backend to obfuscate parties
for the final host and content (similar to what piratebay did a month ago
according to the news)- it has the potential to become very powerful and take
a good share of torrents traffic.

~~~
danielweber
"Encryption in the browser" just screams "boondoggle" to me.

~~~
pyrotechnick
Finally someone with some brains!

That pesky browser thing never could do anything of value. Umm...Dah... What a
joke! It's all "boondoggle"!

It unquestionably couldn't ever be used to build "apps" [1].

Certainly could never ever be fast enough [2].

Obviously cannot ever possibly utilise multiple cores [3].

Most definitely never ever could do 3D [4].

So, you're right, I doubt it will ever do crypto [5].

Those fools might even consider "Online Banking" or something crazy like that!

When will those stupid browser idiots learn?

<http://alwaysbetonjs.com>

[1] <http://facebook.com>, <http://gmail.com>, <http://twitter.com>, etc.

[2] <http://arewefastyet.com> \- <http://madebyevan.com/webgl-path-tracing/>

[3] <http://w3.org/TR/workers> \- <http://chromium.org/developers/design-
documents>

[4] <http://khronos.org/webgl> \- <http://chromeexperiments.com/webgl> \-
<http://ro.me>

[5] <http://w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/>

~~~
mtgx
Let's get the web crypto done, and maybe then we can find an "Encrypt before
you upload" button on every single web service that stores your data, from
e-mail to Dropbox-like services.

Hopefully the Government hasn't tried to put a backdoor in it, but I assume
that would be discovered pretty quickly.

~~~
pyrotechnick
You're setting yourself up for disappointment ^w^

We can dream though, can't we?

------
anonymous
So why not a .onion? You can set it up so that name resolution goes through
Tor, but you still connect directly to the IP, if you're after speed. He could
even manage to get mega.onion.

~~~
pyrotechnick
The first rule...

~~~
benologist
... is that it's 2012, digg is dead and nobody cares for the tired old memes
that somehow outlasted it.

~~~
xtracto
Wow, I can't believe I just read someone referencing a Usenet meme thinking it
was originated in Digg.

September did never end uh?

------
ARama
As someone who lives in New Zealand, I think that its only a matter of time
before the domain name is seized. This whole MegaUpload affair has shown that
the US government has quite a lot of sway over the NZ government and in my
opinion I don't think they will stop until he's extradited to the US and put
behind bars.

~~~
pyrotechnick
Yeah, because that old trick still works.

Assange is still chill-banging. Sipping Aguardiente. Schmoozing Ecuadorian
diplomats. Yelling shit about the commander-in-chief out from the balcony to
the glassy-eyed press [1].

As for Mr. DotCom, don't hold your breath. NZ is still busy kissing his arse
[2].

[1] [http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/julian-assange-
labels...](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/julian-assange-labels-obama-
a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing/story-fnd134gw-1226512743231)

[2] <http://rt.com/news/zealand-apologize-dotcom-spy-108/>

~~~
vidarh
Last I heard Assange was still stuck in Ecuador's London embassy, which is
what your linked article seems to imply too. Not exactly as rosy a situation
as you're implying.

------
AmVess
Under How to become a hosting partner:

"Make us an offer. We prefer unmetered fixed monthly payments."

Right. And I want a flying Llama that poops gold bars.

~~~
vidarh
Are you implying that finding unmetered fixed monthly payments is hard?
Because it's not.

Unmetered != unlimited.

There's still going to be a maximum capacity for the connection, and for
unmetered connections that's the basis used to price it.

------
m_d
Mega Conz? Really?

~~~
jgroome
First thing I noticed too!

For anyone missing it, "mega.co.nz" -> Mega Conz -> Mega Cons:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick>

~~~
robin_reala
The perils of country-specific TLDs. Spare a thought for the poor Cook
Islanders.

~~~
username3
co.ck

------
andrewbaron
Due to the potential for shutdown even outside of the U.S., will people feel
safe hosting important files on the site?

~~~
kamjam
Did anybody _actually_ ever host "important files" on MegaUpload? I know
people say they did, but did they actually? If they did that's just plain
stupid.

~~~
nitrogen
MU was the only site that allowed unregistered users to upload large files
with unregistered downloads, making it a great way to distribute customized
Linux live CD images.

~~~
kamjam
Sure, i've used a couple of upload sites recently to transfer large files...
but never anything that was actually important, i didn't have local backups of
or couldn't be easily replicated.

I've read about people trying to get their files back off the servers and all
the other hoo-ha going on, and have nothing against people trying to do that
or using the excuse that it was their _main_ backup... just seems extremely
silly to rely on it form my point of view. It's not possible to rely on
Google, for fear of them shutting down your account for some violation or T&Cs
(and no recourse for appeals), so to rely on these kinds of companies...

Not sure why I got down votes for a genuine question.

------
a1vd
I am interested in which technology he would use to encrypt/decrypt the data
in the browser. Most web-tools I've seen have a strict limit on number of
bytes that can be encrypted in a userfriendly process.

~~~
AhtiK
I suspect they could use data URL scheme as in RFC2397.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme> and
<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2397.txt>

------
mochizuki
Beautiful design. But I'm getting an error when I try to sign up to be an API
partner. Anyone else?

~~~
dutchbrit
Works here

------
jamesflorentino
Am I the only here who's seeing "Domain Parked with Instra"?

~~~
pyrotechnick
More or less.

<http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=mega.co.nz>

~~~
jamesflorentino
That's crazy. I had to open it up in TOR to see the actual site. Could it be
my ISP?

~~~
pyrotechnick
Depends on your DNS; which, yes, most likely depends on your ISP.

You could try OpenDNS or "8.8.8.8" or something.

If you choose to change, please be aware of the implications.

------
BaconJuice
I'm still seeing, on January 11th this button will change the world on main
page? is there any way I can navigate into the main site folks?

Thanks.

------
wattonen
Metro UI? Microsoft is an one of the MEGA investors? :)

~~~
Rastafarian
I guess you can say that. There will be lots of MS bits in, once the site goes
up :D

------
nnq
...jeez, thought that by now the guy thought of a different business model

~~~
danielweber
Once you do something, you keep on doing it. Check out what happened to Peter
Popoff after James Randi and Johnny Carson busted him in the 80's.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYdlX_Wn1K4>

------
pyrotechnick
Until

Some

Enquire

None

Ever

Tell

~~~
dmix
Not only that, torrents are totally sufficient when done properly.

~~~
pyrotechnick
Imagine "torrents ... done properly".

Imagine some kind of worldwide system, without a central server and dedicated
administrator, distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration
of servers that store and forward messages to one another.

In your dreams!

~~~
dmix
So why is golden the rule of usenet, to not talk about it?

Because if people did, anti-piracy companies would start paying attention to
it. Therfore making it way more expensive to run Usenet servers and expose
users to legal risk.

It's success depends on its relative obscurity.

You have to provide a credit card to use Usenet (unless you use bitcoins).
Making it easy to be targeted.

Torrents "done properly" can be completely anonymous for everyone involved and
still free.

So I don't agree that the problem was completely solved by Usenet. Despite
being a happy Usenet + NZBmatrix user (oops broke the rule :p).

~~~
Karunamon
>You have to provide a credit card to use Usenet (unless you use bitcoins).
Making it easy to be targeted.

Which does nothing but say you accessed the server- not what for. Furthermore,
the better providers don't keep logs.

