Comment by pud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pud | Hacker News Reader

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_...

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.

Don't know much about his negative traits?

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.

In your mind how do you distinguish Megaupload and Youtube?

Because youtubes primary purpose for existing doesn't depend on copyright infringement. MU was raided because of their alleged blatant infringement and non DMCA good faith compliance.

I suggest you read the evidence in Viacom vs YouTube, their founders admitted as much in internal emails that most of the early traffic was copyright material.

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).

Yeah. The scuttlebutt at Google when YouTube was purchased was, "great, but what about when we have to take most of its content down for violating copyright?"

Kim is not a hacker. At least he wasn't when the media declared him one, as he had never written a single line of code. Maybe he learned something since then, but I doubt that. His talents lie elsewhere. He was very good at deception - he somehow convinced a journalist that he was able to hack a GSM phone for example. Or convincing mobsters to invest in his pump and dump schemes. If you understand German, you can follow some of his interactions with the German hacking crowd at http://arnold.babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt. It's not pretty.

Youtube isn't under indictment because they are complying with DMCA takedown requests in good faith. MU was not.

>>Because youtubes primary purpose for existing doesn't depend on copyright infringement.

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.

Google is like US government. There are only two rules that apply to them.

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.

So, you're saying that you don't distinguish between MegaUpload and YouTube. I commend your consistency.

The logos are practically the same. Cool story though.

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.

It really must be a mistake or a joke.

They are clearly different; one is 3d. I'm not a designer so can't comment on which one is better, but even I can see that they're different. :)

Are you sure you clicked both of them? The first had a really harsh and strong border and looked almost 3D, but in a cheap and bad way. The second is much more subdued and 2D.

Both of them would look very dated today but this was in the early 2000's.

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?

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."

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

works for me

I am. Not an evernote user.

I'm getting the same error

I don't like either of them, but if I had to choose one I'd pick the 3D one, it looks smoother and the red in non-3D version is really emotionally negative, like it's the kind of red that makes you angry or scared.

Kim's version is definitely better. It's much simpler and doesn't rely on superfluous visual effects. The shape of the logo comes through, and it uses fewer colors -- both of which make it much more recognizable.

Remind of certain detergent(s)

That's a pretty cool story :)

ahh AdBrite. I remember trading ad impressions with your nextwork. around the right media exchange days.. ad tech was hot during those times!

It still is. Ad:tech NY is next week.

ahh AdBrite. I remember trading ad impressions with your nextwork. ad tech was hot during those times!

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