Kim Dotcom's new Mega project
kim.com
kim.com
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_...
And here's Kim's, that we ended up using for years: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MsUpdWwPgms/UFOcvPMS74I/AAAAAAAAAW...
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.
Both of them would look very dated today but this was in the early 2000's.
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?
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He was convicted (on separate occasions years apart) of computer fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, and data espionage (carding/etc). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigati...
I particularly don't like Kim because I find him a walking insult to honest entrepreneurs. Getting rich off of other peoples' work (Megaupload) is shameful, and while everyone else is out there working hard trying to make it legitimately (and often failing), this guy is out there getting rich off of theft, dishonesty, and outright criminal action, and being treated as some kind of hero for it.
I don't like the way the investigation has been handled, but that doesn't make Kim a good guy.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-intern...
The real answer to my hypothetical question is that there is no difference. One just happens to be run by a German hacker while the other by upstanding citizens of Silicon Valley.
One beat a civil lawsuit while the other has the full force of the US government trying to lock him up for life with a criminal conspiracy case (a bullshit law used to catch mafia figures).
If the copyright content is taken off YouTube, their business will fall like a pack of cards.
I go there for free entertainment. And guess how most of it and what kind is served there.
1) They don't have to do the right things, but instead what they do is termed as right.
2)If you argue against it, you are against innovation and those thousands of engineers are great because they have memorized a thousand algorithms from the book. And tend mix up only with the same kind.
Oh, and by the way, he's willing to let you take part of your payment in ad inventory.
lol.
And they have to keep the systems running because apparently the government can't even provide secure storage of what they claim as evidence.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think that's true. If I'm not mistaken, the percentage of sociopaths among CEOs is somewhat higher than among the rest of the population, but that doesn't mean that the majority of CEOs are sociopaths.
If you're going to attack his history or his mental state, than at least be willing to acknowledge the man isn't all bad. From what I've read, it seems like some think once a criminal always a criminal, AND that mega upload was a scam.
They don't now.
(Oh, and sociopaths aren't very great at manipulating their environment. The high-functioning ones, maybe, but most sociopaths are poor, stupid, and often in jail.)
In a society where money is power however, I don't think you can do much is what I'm saying. Regardless of psychological issues, if someone can function and amass money, then they're regarded as fine and maybe even successful.
My point was people vote with their money and time, and in this case is open. You can't really expect people to care about whether he was a delinquent in some's eyes, because to some, the other side is just as worse.
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.
Much better to comment on whether you think he's done something inexcusably wrong or not.
I would ask for a source here, but I already know that you don't have one, you're regurgitating some pop-psych nonsense you once heard that sounded interesting and you assumed was true.
...sociopathy appears to be an integral/essential part of human organizations.
Sources?
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296
It's likely that many people get away without having their "skeletons in the closet" brought into the light of day.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/national/news/video.cfm?c_id=15030...
I'm not quite sure of the point you're trying to make?
Let me tell you the problem why most people hate, troll and whine about rich people. Its not because others are rich, its because they aren't.
Television, Radio, the newspapers etc try to provide us with news a true as possible though I often question myself when watching the news, is this the entire truth? Is there not more behind it, or things they leave out to ease the mind of the crowd.
Still seems awful to wrongly impound an entire company with no due process.
So, where in the grey zone are you, today?
Change the government.
We should be better than that around here.
Most every con artist is.
"he has cycled thru the hero's journey"
Now, I think he's gotten a raw, horrid deal from how his most recent case has been approached, certainly. The most he has in common with "the hero's journey" is that his persona is based entirely on myth and self-propagated legend. His claims of personal genius are for the most part fluff and lies, pushed to credulous journalists. Heck, he couldn't even win Quake and Call of Duty bouts without being caught using aimbots and other chicanery.
I may be reading too far into this and his story is more interesting than the man himself, which I agree.
1) A form of piracy exists.
2) Prosecute!
3) A faster, more secure form of piracy has been created!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.
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.
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.
For anyone that can't get through here is the site:
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.
I'm willing to bet that their initial client will be susceptible to MITB and various key leakages for the first year or two.
Please, try to respond what people actually say.
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!
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!
I'm confused to who would subscribe to 'Mega' after the last product called that was raided and everyone lost their data.
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.
background-position: top; and on hover use: background-position: bottom;
This makes the initial hover smooth with no flash.
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.
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.
Bitcoin's value in relation to the dollar is a product of demand and supply, like any other currency. However, given that supply is "hard coded" in the algorithm, supply is more or less a constant variable. That leaves demand.
Demand is there as long as Bitcoin has transactional value (how many people accept it as a form of payment) and asset value (how attractive it is as a store of value). Bitcoin has price floors as long as it is useful in transactions (for example, as long as online black markets like Silk Road flourish) and as long as Bitcoin "enthusiasts" accept it as an asset.
Barring some way for the government to thwart the TOR + Bitcoin combo for making anonymous online transactions, I would think that any volatility in the BTC-USD exchange rate would come from volatility in the value of the dollar over that of BTC.
Plus I do not think that Kim will want to have anything to do with that currency.
> 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. ]
{"status":1,"response":{"error":"Unexpected error"}}
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'!
(Copyright infringement is of course illegal in NZ, but that's a civil matter and not what he was supposedly arrested for).
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.
At least until the SEC rules on the crowd-funding legislation.
Why do Kim discussions always turn into arguments instead of discussions?
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.
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.
The issue is that it adds nothing useful to the discussion.