
Kim Dotcom's new Mega project - dutchbrit
http://kim.com/mega
======
pud
I can vouch for Kim's positive traits. He also has negative traits, as do we
all - but I don't know much about them.

However he was a customer of AdBrite (a large ad network I founded around
2000) and I spoke with him via Skype many times around 2002. AdBrite is kinda
like AdSense in that you can run our ads on your site and make money. And he
was running AdBrite on one of his sites.

I don't remember which site of Kim's it was, and I don't remember why we had
to kick them out for T&C infraction.

Regardless, he didn't like the AdBrite logo (which I paid a lot for) and told
me his designers could make a better one. They did, and Kim let me use it for
free. AdBrite raised around $40M using the logo Kim & his team designed for
us. And I'm grateful.

AdBrite recently changed logos again so it's not there now. But here's the
original (my designer)
[http://www.storesonline.com/members/963920/uploaded/adbrite_...](http://www.storesonline.com/members/963920/uploaded/adbrite_logo.gif)

And here's Kim's, that we ended up using for years:
[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MsUpdWwPgms/UFOcvPMS74I/AAAAAAAAAW...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MsUpdWwPgms/UFOcvPMS74I/AAAAAAAAAW4/1q8BUYOvuIs/s400/adbrite-
logo.jpg)

The differences are subtle but I believe it made a significant improvement to
our brand.

And regardless if you think Kim is a brilliant entrepreneur or a criminal --
you can't deny that he makes very high quality products that people love to
use. There's something we can all learn from that.

Thanks for the logo, Kim.

~~~
jyap
The logos are practically the same. Cool story though.

~~~
mojowo11
The logos were so similar that when I opened them in tabs, I began to question
whether the original post was a joke. I'm still not really sure what's going
on.

~~~
pud
Here's an image of both logos next to each other.

<http://tinyurl.com/c32hw83>

Kim got rid of the 3D, made the colors more bold, and removed some of the
outlines. The changes also had the effect of making the word "AdBrite" appear
larger, even though (in this comparison) the images are the same size.

Subtle, but was meaningful to me. Because (a) I liked his version better, and
(b) In all my years entrepreneuring, it's the first time someone --
unsolicited -- offered to improve my logo for free.

Who does that?

~~~
haberman
FYI, your link returns "Oops, we encountered an error.

Access denied. You have accessed a location on this server that is not
available. You may need to Sign in to your account to access this page."

~~~
pud
Aargh. It's some bug with the new Skitch. Is everyone getting the same error?

~~~
nedwin
I'm getting the same error

------
trotsky
What sane organization would sign up to be a "hosting partner" in this
situation? Let's see, most of his last venture's major unpaid creditors are
hosting providers, previous hosters spent months after the indictments unable
to use their servers and without an ability to bill. Not to mention that he
apparently wants quotes with no capex component and requires full built and
managed systems including space, power, cooling, data, management and
operations on a fixed fee bid before the service launches for what will be
impossible to accurately predict growth.

Oh, and by the way, he's willing to let you take part of your payment in ad
inventory.

lol.

~~~
propercoil
many will in eastern europe/russia. U.S is out of the question

------
ryanpers
I was neutral on this guy until I read the wired story, and then I became a
fan.

He is a self made man (way more so than romney!), he suffers from persistent
discrimination (overweight) and he has cycled thru the hero's journey.

I have heard a lot of these "major success stories", but they are people who
have been put in ideal situations and then they made the best of it. That is
just emotionally dead for me. Kim's story is more interesting because it is
relevant to ME. I can imagine myself in the same spot, and it overlaps with my
own personal history (timewise) a bit too.

Ultimately, I believe there is minimal legal differences between youtube in
the early days (which was made successful via RAMPANT piracy), and megaupload.

Screw the government.

~~~
rscale
He's a career criminal.

He hacked for profit. He traded in stolen phone cards and turned in his
compatriots for reduced sentence. He ran a "premium" phone number scam. He ran
a pump and dump scheme to defraud investors. He evaded prosecution by jumping
jurisdiction. He tried (and failed) to run a fake hedge fund. He sold pirated
software. He committed insider trading.

He's not a self-made man. He's a career criminal and a con man.

I find it shocking that so many people are eager to lionize this sociopathic
asshole.

Screw Kim Dotcom.

~~~
ryanpers
That was years ago when he was a teenager. Many people went thru an "illegal
period", his was just... more successful than most.

As for sociopathic, so what? Didn't you know that most CEOs are sociopaths? I
find that argument... not compelling.

Like it or not, sociopathy appears to be an integral/essential part of human
organizations.

~~~
alexhawdon
"Many people went thru an 'illegal period'..." What?

I think there's a pretty massive difference between the speeding, soft-drugs,
petty vandalism and theft that characterise common illegal teenage behaviours
and large scale fraud. Even sat behind a keyboard far-removed from your
victims I'm sure the difference becomes readily apparent when the number at
the bottom of your bank statement is a few digits longer than those of your
peers.

~~~
zurn
That's the problem with the "criminal" term. Don't confuse moral and
legalities.

Much better to comment on whether you think he's done something inexcusably
wrong or not.

------
eupharis
Kim's personal vices/virtues aside, this seems like yet another iteration of a
while loop that has been running for awhile:

    
    
      1) A form of piracy exists.
      2) Prosecute!
      3) A faster, more secure form of piracy has been created!

------
thomasvendetta
I especially like the DMCA callout on the Hosting Partner's page:

 _Unfortunately we can't work with hosting companies based in the United
States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millenium 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
That's hilarious. The Safe Harbor works fine for Dropbox, YouTube, and
numerous others. That's because they don't have people on staff specifically
looking for infringing material in order to reward the up loaders and
encourage more infringement, and their responses when they are properly
notified of infringing material is to actually deal with it instead of just
trying to hide it from the notifier so he'll think it was taken down.

~~~
vidarh
So far it has not been proven that Megaupload has violated the DMCA, and it
looks uncertain whether the cased against them will even survive long enough
for the claims to even get prosecuted, so how is that hilarious?

Whether or not Megaupload violated the DMCA, the US government have
effectively demonstrated that if they _think_ you've violated the right laws,
it doesn't matter whether or not the courts agree, as your business will be
dead before then.

~~~
tptacek
Obviously it hasn't been proven, because the case hasn't been taken to trial.
But the indictment is damning; the DOJ has MegaUpload's emails and lays the
case out in Kim & Co's own words. For instance:

 _On or about April 23, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail message to VANDER KOLK,
ORTMANN, and BENCKO in which he complained about the deletion of URL links in
response to infringement notices from the copyright holders. In the message,
DOTCOMstated that “I told you many times not to delete links that are reported
in batches of thousands from insignificant sources. I would say that those
infringement reports from MEXICO of “14,000” links would fall into that
category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it
justifies my reaction.”_

And:

* When an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.

* Mega employees themselves uploaded copies of major motion pictures to the service, such as Luc Besson's _Taken_.

* There are Mega emails, on which Kim is apparently CC'd, in which employees enumerate the specific files uploaded to certain high-performing affiliate members, noting (approvingly) that they include copyrighted movies and TV shows. For instance, one line item in an accounting mail: 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)

There's a widespread misunderstanding of the DMCA on Hacker News and Reddit,
and that misunderstanding goes like this: "to follow the letter of the law,
you must somehow be responsive to individual takedown requests from
rightsholders". That is in fact not correct; it only captures part of the
responsibility of service providers under the DMCA. Another responsibility,
clearly spelled out in the DMCA, is that you can't operate a service with
knowledge of specific infringing content. You cannot know that Luc Besson's
_Taken_ resides on your service at a specific URL and then simply wait for a
rightsholder to request its takedown. If you operate your service knowing that
there are specific pieces of copyrighted content on your site that you're
"getting away with" having because nobody's sent you a takedown, and a
prosecutor can show that (for instance, with an email obtained during
discovery in which your staff does a line-by-line accounting of a promotional
program you ran in which you _paid contributors to your site to upload
copyrighted material_ , and in that email you specifically make a case for
paying one such prolific uploader _more_ because _more of their material is
copyrighted_ ), you forfeit safe harbor protections.

Finally, and orthogonally, let me just add that while we can't convict Kim
Schmitz on the presumption that he is a scumbag fraudster, and the checks and
balances in our system of government do require us to dot every 'i' and cross
every 't' with regards to chain of custody of evidence, evidentiary standards,
and cause for search --- so that if Schmitz escapes his inevitable
imprisonment this time, I'll at least be comforted that our legal system takes
those issues seriously --- Kim Schmitz gets no such pass in the court of
public opinion. The evidence against him in that court is overwhelming. Unless
you think the DoJ fabricated his emails, we _know_ he's a crook. You can
pretend there's a controversy here, but if you do, my take is you're not
allowed to criticize Zynga or evil hedge fund managers and HFTs anymore.

------
citricsquid
Am I missing something? It's just a... landing page?

For anyone that can't get through here is the site:

<http://i.imgur.com/dGSRk.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/OQjt9.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/JZvWD.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/K5Xst.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/69pfL.png>

------
damiankennedy
Kiwi here and the rumour is that this new venture breaks his parole so back to
the little jail cell with a mouldy mattress for him. We're not fans of people
that try and bribe/blackmail our politicians here.

~~~
mattdw
Also a Kiwi here and I think actually most of us are more concerned with the
Police and Govt's apparent disregard for the rule and application of law.

Kim Dotcom is pretty funny and makes a good case for himself when he's given
TV time, but the big story is how much damage the government will take over
their buddy-buddy with the MPAA and all the insider dealings they've been up
to. Dotcom has exposed a kind of corruption we didn't realise we had.

------
tlrobinson
Heh, I misread "Easy Privacy" as "Easy Piracy".

~~~
salmanapk
Haha same here. Cracked me up :P

------
dutchbrit
An the new URL: <http://me.ga>

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Also redirects to <http://kim.com/mega/>

------
adir1
So why would any sane person try his luck with this sketchy company versus
Dropbox, which provides same functionality for free already?

~~~
CrankyPants
Dropbox has already demonstrated that they play it fast and loose with user
privacy issues. While I use Dropbox for many things, and admire what they've
built, we'd do well to be more realistic about it around here.

~~~
olefoo
I appreciate your skepticism towards DropBox, but what makes you think that
Mega is going to be the host-proof sharing nirvana?

I'm willing to bet that their initial client will be susceptible to MITB and
various key leakages for the first year or two.

~~~
CrankyPants
Nothing makes me think "Mega is going to be the host-proof sharing nirvana,"
because I don't.

Please, try to respond what people actually say.

------
Jonovono
I am interested to see how this goes. I am also rooting for the new myspace
project. If you have not seen that check it out: ( <https://new.myspace.com/>
).

What looks interesting is the ability for the artists to interact with the
fans like they would on FB/Twitter on the same medium they could sell their
music (I don't think there will be selling of music on the Mega project
though).

Right now we have FB/Twitter where it is very easy to keep in touch with the
artists and build a relationship and maybe find new ones but no real way to
sell things that well. Then their is iTunes where you can buy music but no
real community aspect.

I think bringing them together will be interesting. I could see something like
a Kickstarter aspect working as well. Fans doing something like we want to see
Kanye and Bieber do a song together. People could then show support etc and
help chose what gets made.

Ultimately though it has to really help new/unknown artists get started. It's
great that Louis CK can sell his stuff online by passing the record companies
but that is unrealistic for most people. I system that provides a great
community with a great "discovery" aspect could really help this. Fans could
be like "I want a song made about blah blah" and some random artist could
deliver. Maybe if you are doing a show somewhere you also film it and throw it
up on the site for people to watch. Random thoughts. But I hope these provide
some exciting opportunities for artists!

~~~
larrybolt
I did not knew about the new myspace project, thanks! I like how they bring "a
new dimension" to the whole newsfeed/timeline idea by allowing both vertical
(not really, tho switching from one page to another could be seen as vertical
scrolling) as horizontal scrolling.

Also lovely how nowadays sites and software seem to be getting more simple,
clean.. less icons, buttons, modal boxes; and maybe more important, fullscreen
use!

------
sgt
"Multi-centric data warehousing"? I don't think Kim knows what the term Data
Warehousing usually means.

~~~
lmm
It's a stupid term, kudos to him for using it in a way that makes more sense.

------
xSwag
Just guessed the domain name, since they won't be using .com or .net anymore:
<http://me.ga/> redirects to that page, I hope that is the domain that they
use since its pretty short.

------
javis
I think maybe he shouldn't have stuck to the Mega brand.

I'm confused to who would subscribe to 'Mega' after the last product called
that was raided and everyone lost their data.

~~~
citricsquid

        I think maybe he shouldn't have stuck to the Mega brand.
    

I think the idea they're using is that the US government took them down before
and now they're building their product to be immune to that and so because
they've been victims before they know what they're doing and that is why
people should trust them.

I think.

------
justindocanto
Seeing a lot of css/javascript screw ups on Chrome. Popups and hover effects
look pretty 'janky'. Anybody else seeing that?

~~~
majorlazer
Yeah, it really irks me when developers replace an image with another on
hover. Just combine the two images on top of one another and use:

background-position: top; and on hover use: background-position: bottom;

This makes the initial hover smooth with no flash.

------
spdy
Thats a fast-paced comeback. And he will succeed again this time with a lot
more knowledge how to game the gang in hollywood.

Will be hard for them to even win the case they have put on and at the same
time fight him again.

And for all who dont believe it TBP is still around too.

~~~
illuminate
"And he will succeed again this time with a lot more knowledge how to game the
gang in hollywood."

Succeed for himself, though I doubt the venture will last.

He reminds me of a lower-classed Donald Trump, in that he's much better at
selling his personal brand than he is in operating a business for very long.

------
temphn
It would be very interesting if he decides to use bitcoin or something similar
for this.

~~~
pyre
How volatile is the bitcoin right now? For example, what happens when the
bitcoin raises 200% vs. the US dollar? Do you change your pricing? What
happens if it then drops the next day?

~~~
chmod775
History tells us that the US dollar is much more volatile than bitcoin can be.

Plus I do not think that Kim will want to have anything to do with that
currency.

~~~
pyre

      > History tells us that the US dollar is much
      > more volatile than bitcoin can be.
    

There have been at least a couple of recent periods where there was a bitcoin
'bubble.' I'm questioning how he as a merchant, would deal with that (if
bitcoin was his main transactional currency)? His customers likely are all
using a different currency locally, and would have to exchange that currency
for bitcoins.

For example:

Let's say a month of service costs 3 bitcoins, and currently a bitcoins cost 8
rupees (24 rupees/month for service). What happens when the price of the
bitcoin rises to 20 rupees / bitcoin? Does the price (in bitcoins) drop? What
happens if this significant rise only happens in one market, but not another?
What if one 50% of his customer-base experience significant exchange
increases, but the other 50% doesn't?

It's a curious thing, because almost no one is being paid (salary/wages) in
bitcoins, so they _all_ need to exchange the local currency to pay for
service.

    
    
      > Plus I do not think that Kim will want to
      > have anything to do with that currency.
    

I was using the USD as an example. The same comments could apply to whatever
the local currency is of his potential customers.

[ Also chances are that if the bitcoin is volatile against one currency it's
not not necessary stable against all others. ]

------
Trufa
Discussion apart, seriously slick landing page IMHO.

------
nej
Anyone else having trouble entering their email? I keep getting 404 on the
POST:

{"status":1,"response":{"error":"Unexpected error"}}

------
wickedbass
There is an extra <head> tag in their site, I hope that isn't indicative of
their programming talent! :x

------
tommaxwelll
Kim just misses his money and fame.

~~~
bentlegen
I'd miss my money too, were I in his shoes. Wouldn't you?

~~~
petitmiam
but he created trendax - the money making machine. I just assumed he had a
never ending money supply after that.

------
ForFreedom
I like the design of the website.

~~~
shabble
Single-page app for something that really doesn't need to be?

Not even a <noscript> so you're not actually sure if the page loaded or
not[1].

Gratuitous animations between slides?

Barest hint of content scattered across slides?

If I was there for informational purposes, I'd say it was a terrible site.

[1] Although I don't really expect people to cater to the miniscule audience
that is NoScript/equivalent users[2], it's nice to see at least the tiniest
thought towards those who can't/don't have JS.

[2] In fact, there are even some tech-focused sites now that actually ask you
to whitelist them for js instead of 'please upgrade to Netscape 3+ or IE5'!

------
logn
He's soliciting for investors. Isn't that illegal? (Not that he would care)

~~~
arbuge
In the USA it probably would be... he's in New Zealand.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Didn't stop the USA last time ...

~~~
tzs
The things he was accused of were illegal in New Zealand also.

~~~
lmm
Really? I was under the impression NZ didn't have the criminal conspiracy law
the US was using.

(Copyright infringement is of course illegal in NZ, but that's a civil matter
and not what he was supposedly arrested for).

~~~
tptacek
Really.

    
    
        131    Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing objects
            (1)    Every person commits an offence against this section who, other than 
            pursuant to a copyright licence,—
                (a)makes for sale or hire; or
                (b)imports into New Zealand otherwise than for that person's private 
                and domestic use; or
                (c)possesses in the course of a business with a view to committing any 
                act infringing the copyright; or
                (d)in the course of a business,—
                   (i)offers or exposes for sale or hire; or
                   (ii)exhibits in public; or
                   (iii)distributes; or
                (e)in the course of a business or otherwise, sells or lets for hire; or
                (f)distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent 
                as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner—an object that is, and that the 
                person knows is, an infringing copy of a copyright work.
    

NZ copyright law isn't structured like US copyright law; it recognizes
"primary" and "secondary" infringement like our law does, but its criminal law
is is broader; for instance, creation and sale of circumvention devices is an
offense directly under Section 131 of NZ Copyright Law, not some wacky add-on
law like the DMCA.

Obviously, most countries don't have _exactly_ the same laws as the US.

------
arrowgunz
The email field seems to be broken

~~~
Torgo
It did not work for me in Firefox, but I switched over to Chrome and it then
worked.

~~~
arrowgunz
It doesn't seem to be working on Chrome either for me.

------
chandika
accidentally read that as 'easy piracy' vs 'easy privacy' :)

------
drivebyacct2
Jesus people. It is possible to acknowledge that Kim is a criminal, think he
is interesting, be interested in Mega, find his criminal history abhorrent AND
think that raid of Megaupload was wrong and probably illegal, all at the same
time. They're not mutually exclusive and there's no reason for this to be an
argument.

Why do Kim discussions always turn into arguments instead of discussions?

~~~
gadders
Cognitive dissonance [1]. It seems to happen a lot with discussions of Julian
Assange as well. i.e. he could be both a "freedom fighter" and a sex offender,
and the one person could have both very admirable traits, and abhorrent ones.
See also Mike Tyson, Roman Polanski etc etc.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance>

------
drivebyacct2
I guess it's typical but I've had this idea before. tptacek should stop by
with his rant against javascript, client-side encryption.

The other trick to making this idea cool? Once you have the wiring hooked up
to make Mega look like local storage (even though it's in the browser), you
can wire that up to the PeerConnection Data Channel (once it's available) and
literally implement peer-to-peer networks in your browser. There are
limitations as you can't use aggressive discovery protocols like with a native
socket, but it's still tantalizing.

------
zinssmeister
lame.

~~~
guylhem
That's an interesting 5 letters reply.

Does that means you have something to show which might stand the comparison?

The guy did it, has a strong brand recognition and people who publicly
expressed their sadness that megaupload was gone and their eagerness to give
him their business again.

Now he is out there to get some.

I say good luck to him.

~~~
zinssmeister
Yeah that's one way of looking at it and I once did so myself. I've seen
various projects of Kim Schmitz (aka Dotcom, aka Kimble) since the late 90s
and all of them ended up failing because they weren't sustainable in one way
or another. But he always came back with something fresh... This time he is
trying the same things twice. So my personal opinion: lame.

~~~
jlgreco
Do you think that mega ran into trouble the first time because it was lacking
substance in some way?

~~~
zinssmeister
I think mega ran into trouble because it was parked in a grey zone. Also
didn't help mega that it was run by someone that in his previous venture ended
up getting arrested, deported back to Germany and charged for embezzlement.

