Kim Dotcom Reveals Mega Will Offer 50GB of Free Storage 203
An anonymous reader writes "Kim Dotcom on Thursday used Twitter to reveal some interesting new tidbits in regards to his upcoming Mega service, which will be hosted at the New Zealand-based domain Mega.co.nz. Two days before the service is to go live, Doctom says he plans to offer 50GB of free storage to all members and is also working on bringing over users' Megaupload files and data, but has so far run into legal issues." To say that Kim Dotcom has "run into legal issues" is like saying that Julian Assange is having a sleepover at the Ecuadorian embassy.
Re:Woohoo piracy returns! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would make the argument that he screwed over the big monopolies, but not the individual small creators, who couldn't get published by the likes of EA, or Time Warner, or MGM. Plus he facilitated fair use, such as taping NFL and redistributing it, because fuck all people use to be able to do that. The internet made it easier yeah. The NFL also didn't go out of business. I think they've made a profit each and every year. There's no actually creativity in that, just the buying of good equipment and talent to tape already planned events. So maybe the only thing setting apart major networks from people with their home camera's is quality.
But you know, things change. Maybe we should support peoples individual rights to profit from the same thing major companies are syndicating. Might help the economy too.
Interesting tidbits from the site: (Score:5, Interesting)
The page under "Server requirements" has this interesting tidbit:
"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."
Get out the popcorn, this should be fun to watch!
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
the domain name, mega.co.nz (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds a lot like mega cons. You'd think he could have done better.
Re:The TRUTH about injustice (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum and his illegal theft operation is that he is clearly attempting to facilitate the theft of assets legally owned by folks other than himself, depriving these legal owners of income from their legally owned assets.
That's not a problem for me.
It's reached the point where I just don't care about the feelings or rights of the "legal owners of income" any more.
For lots of issues there are mitigating circumstances, ways to "consider the other person's point of view", ways to frame the discussion as shades of grey.
Not for these people.
I don't care about the arguments any more. No mitigating circumstances, no heartfelt appeals to starving artists, no reframing of the situation from their point of view.
There comes a point when considering their view is too much of a reach, and you admit to yourself that these people are just plain evil.
Buddah fought against evil, and so do I.
Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum is a despicable low-life (really) whose illegal operation will do more good for the world than all the media conglomerates put together. I applaud him for his sense of hurt, his outrage, and most importantly - his sense of doing something about it!
It's a problem for you, not a problem for me. I wonder how many people think it's not a problem for them, either?
Re:Woohoo piracy returns! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of like putting sock puppets on your hands, then mugging some people, and when you get caught, blame it on the sock puppet, and claim innocence for yourself. In an act a attrition you remove the sock puppet and throw it on the ground and turn you back on it. Meanwhile the now defunct sock puppet had already transferred the money from the muggings to another sock puppet, and it is now sitting safely in your wallet, and since you are 'innocent', so it the money and your acquisition of it. After you've successfully flummoxed your accusers, you don yet another sock puppet and continue the charade.
It's apparently related to the stunts involved in Hollywood Accounting where they do such things as rent their own equipment to themselves, charge for the renting, and the depreciation and usage of the equipment, among many other dirty tricks, and claim the movie as a massive loss despite making a large amount of money way beyond their total costs of production and promotion, etc.
A friend who's got some kind of degree in business told me it's kind of like a reverse shell corporation, but honestly, I don't really understand how shell corporations really work.
So, you readers can take it however you like, but don't for a second believe Sony is anything like innocent. (I'm pretty sure that applies to all big corporations, but still...)
Similar System - ScatterBytes (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer 1 - This is my system
Disclaimer 2 - The System (ScatterBytes.net) is under heavy development and not currently online. I maybe shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, but I would like to get some feedback and if you are interested in adding a storage node or using a client, please respond here or through the website,
https://www.scatterbytes.net/ [scatterbytes.net]
I currently only want people comfortable with a Linux and a CLI and with the stomach to host data on a system in beta.
You get paid to be a storage node and other than being generally always on, it doesn't matter what type of equipment you use because the system is highly redundant and node outages are expected. Payments are handled through Paypal - both sending and receiving. I'm working on a guide to use a Raspberry Pi as a storage node so that initial costs and power usage will be minimal. The Pi would also double as media/file storage for a local network.
As a client you choose how much redundancy you want. Anywhere from 2 to 20 (or more) mirrors for your data. You can also add parity. After encrypting and splitting a file, the client uploads the pieces to different storage nodes (assigned by a control node), which transfer those pieces to other storage nodes for replication. ALL communication is encrypted and nodes are verified using X.509 certificates signed by a scatterbytes.net CA. Files are encrypted by the client and only the client has the key so ONLY the client can read the data.