News & Analysis
Case Against Kim Dotcom Copyright Infringement Continues to Weaken
Kim Dotcom: Mega Will Turn Encryption into a Mass Product ... Next month Kim Dotcom will release a new and improved version of the now defunct Megaupload. Today, he unveiled the new look of the site by sharing several teaser screenshots, including one of the encryption interface. Mega, as the new service is called, will turn encryption into a mass product and Dotcom believes that with Mega's help half of all Internet traffic will be encrypted in 5 years. Over the past several months a group of coders have been working hard on the new "Mega" which is scheduled to launch January 20 2013, exactly one year after Megaupload was shut down. – TorrentFreak
Dominant Social Theme: The Fat Man is going down. Just a matter of time.
Free-Market Analysis: When Kim Dotcom was chased into the safe room of his mansion in New Zealand a year ago, the mainstream Western press went into full cry. It was universally assumed that this Falstaffian character would soon be starring in his very own Shakespearian tragedy behind bars in a US jail.
The idea was that Dotcom had made his money with Megaupload (now shut down) by encouraging people to steal copyrighted work and store it in the company's cyber-lockers.
This was the reason the US sent FBI agents halfway around the world to work with New Zealand to arrest Kim Dotcom. The estimate was that Dotcom had cost Hollywood millions if not billions by allowing viewers to pilfer contents.
But today, a year later, most if not all of the US copyright case is in ruins.
- New Zealand courts have found that surveillance of Kim Dotcom was illegal. So, apparently, was the way the raid was conducted.
- The Prime Minister of New Zealand has apologized personally to Kim Dotcom.
- Dotcom has been released from jail and some of his assets unfrozen.
- Various surveys have shown that users of film (if not music) have consumed LESS rather than more since the shutdown of Megaupload.
- New Zealand courts found the FBI acted illegally in confiscating Megaupload's servers.
- The baseline contention that Megaupload abetted information thievery is increasingly a controversial one, as there is no way that Megaupload could police each one of its users.
- The idea that people can lose the whole of their life's work based on civil/criminal charges that have not yet been proven has provided a timely "wakeup call" to those who did not notice how much the US in particular has eroded civil liberties in the 21st century.
We could go on. There is hardly one element of the US case that has emerged unscathed. And Dotcom continues to fight back. He is now re-launching Megaupload as a bigger and better platform with built-in encryption. Here's more from the TorrentFreak article:
Today, Dotcom revealed the look of the new Mega, showing off the new encryption feature, the registration screen and a new file manager. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Dotcom says the new site is the result of many years' expertise in the file-storage business.
"It's special because seven years of experience have been turned into the perfect cloud storage solution. It scales infinitely. It provides up- and download acceleration and resume in the browser thanks to the latest HTML5 technology," he says.
The encryption part pictured below is perhaps the most exciting feature unveiled thus far. Before users upload their files to Mega they will be encrypted using the AES algorithm. Advanced security, but based on code that will be open source.
"File transfers and storage are encrypted with military strength and you don't have to take our word for it, that part of the code is open," Dotcom told TorrentFreak. Encryption is the future according to Dotcom, who believes that with help from Mega encryption will be the file-sharing standard in five years, accounting for half of all Internet traffic.
"Our easy to use one-click privacy feature will turn encryption into a mass product. We believe within five years half of all Internet traffic will be encrypted with solutions born from our new API," Dotcom says.
"I believe in our rights to privacy and legal sharing. I intend to protect those rights when governments are acting in the interest of corporations rather than society and progress," he adds.
Dotcom's pushback has emboldened an industry. What might have been expected to be a wave of prosecutions of cyber-lockers such as the one that Kim Dotcom operated has not materialized. Additionally, various Megaupload-type vendors are reportedly hesitant to cooperate with wide-ranging government requests to investigate clients.
Most recently, according to TorrentFreak, Megaupload made a filing based on the accusation that the US deliberately misled the court with unlawful search warrants.
In a filing just submitted to court Megaupload is looking to declare the search warrants executed by the U.S. Government unlawful. Kim Dotcom's legal team argues that the Government. deliberately misled the court by withholding information that showed how the authorities had "planted" key evidence. Dotcom is furious about the alleged misconduct that led to the destruction of 220 jobs and the seizure of the personal files of millions of users.
When the U.S. Government applied for the search warrants against Megaupload last year, it told the court that they had warned Megaupload in 2010 that it was hosting infringing files.
Through its hosting company, Megaupload was informed about a criminal search warrant in an unrelated case where the Government requested information on 39 infringing files stored by the file-hosting service.
At the time Megaupload cooperated with this request and handed over details on the uploaders. The files were kept online as Megaupload was instructed not to touch any of the evidence. However, a year later this inaction is being used by the U.S. Government to claim that Megaupload was negligent, leaving out much of the context.
"As of November 18, 2011, thirty-six of the thirty-nine infringing copies of copyrighted motion pictures were still being stored on servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy," the Government claimed in the Megaupload search warrants.
This course of action is misleading according to Megaupload's legal team.
"Megaupload had every reason to retain those files in good faith because the Government had sought and obtained Megaupload's cooperation in retrieving the files and warned that alerting users to the existence of the warrant and the Government's interest in the files could compromise the investigation," Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken explains.
In a new filing submitted to the District Court, Megaupload informs the court about the Government's failure to disclose the full picture.
All of the above adds up to a series of defeats for the US and Hollywood. But the harsh reality is that the US government is surely a tool of Money Power that runs the world secretively and wants to create public global governance.
It is Money Power that is at war with what we call the Internet Reformation and the information derived therefrom.
Money Power's top people (titled royalty at the time) invented copyright, from what we can tell, after the Gutenberg press began to disseminate information about the Way the World Worked. Today, copyright is being wielded like a weapon to stop certain kinds of information from being disseminated via the Internet.
Frankly, we've been surprised by the brutality and clumsiness that has been used to fight the copyright battle. But this has been in keeping generally with the larger power elite response to the spread of the Internet – something those in charge apparently never expected.
Rather than "take a step back," the top elites (apparently controlling central banks) have become more controlling, using economic chaos, wars and authoritarian regulations to try to intimidate people and prevent them from using the information that has been revealed on the Internet.
That information is what we call "directed history." It seems to show that almost every aspect of Western life has been manipulated over the past century, at least, with the goal of justifying and then creating world government.
This revelation, almost impossible to comprehend, is at the heart of the power elite's desperation – in our view – to shut down the 'Net's free-flow of information. And Kim Dotcom has become a proverbial pawn in this larger game.
The elites – contemptuous as they are – could not have picked a worse target. Six foot six and weighing a gargantuan amount, Kim Dotcom's weight is not the only thing outsize about him: So is his IQ and his confidence in his own abilities.
Even as a teenager, he was prominent in his home country of Germany and everything he's done since then has taken advantage of the reality of the Internet.
Kim Dotcom, for all of his marketing savvy, is far more than just a hyped-up PR man. He is apparently a genuine technology visionary with a knack for practical applications, abiding self-confidence and an ability to project a mirthful PR persona that undercuts any sense of intimidation regarding his groundbreaking applications. This is the man US and Hollywood officials decided to make an example of. Interestingly, they were victims of the same persona that Dotcom has used successfully throughout his career.
A man who so thoroughly advertised his affection for fast cars, large yachts, beautiful women and military video games was someone who surely could not be taken seriously. Such a conclusion reveals not a specific misjudgment but a larger flaw in the perspectives of the hard men who are now in charge of the United States and who work for the larger Money Power that invisibly organizes and directs the West.
It was inconceivable to these intelligence agents and military men that someone as obviously undisciplined as Kim Dotcom would pose a "hard target." Surely he would fold immediately on feeling the boot upon his neck. And this misjudgment was only one of a series. As we total up various exposures of elite dominant social themes, it becomes clear that the "war on copyright infringement" is only of a number of founderings.
There is the "war against climate change," the "war against drugs," the "war against terror," etc. In each case, the Internet has provided information that has undermined the credibility of these memes – and short of shutting down the Internet we don't see how the power elite can stem the tide any time soon.
To learn more about elite promotional programs and how to counteract them, see this special report: "What You Can Do to Protect Your Children, Grandchildren and Others from Elite Mind Manipulation."
Of course, one ought to not underestimate what Kim Dotcom is up against. All the forces of history are in a sense leveled against him and the vast resources of Money Power itself. And yet, too, when these forces are misapplied they can turn the average man into a martyr and the above-average man into a kind of secular saint.
Conclusion: Kim Dotcom is no average man. The resolution to his tale is far from certain. Its telling may be to liberty's benefit.
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Posted by SeanWard on 02/26/13 08:17 PM
This was a great read and i hope the Internet stays as free and unfettered as possible
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Posted by amanfromMars on 01/06/13 07:44 AM
There are hints that Pirate Bay is not quite what it appears to be ... We will try to follow up. … Reply from The Daily Bell.
I'm sure you will be made most welcome, DB. IT is the Private Pirate Way of Leaderless Ship Delivering Candy and Cosmic Magic which is drivering this Virtual Intervention and Cyber Adventure. To Imagine Better is Insatiable Desire turned to Quenching Passions for Heavenly Existences
Now that is Real Heavy Duty MetaDataBase CodeXSSXXXX for Special Access Private Pirated Programs.
DB, Don't expect Pirate Bay worlds to be anything like anything ever before. Oh and they might talk a lot about things not generally known as the Search continues for Answers to Question.
IT is AI Jungle out there, in CyberSpace. DB. "Steady as she goes" doesn't appear to be available at the wheel or tiller of space craft :-)
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Posted by memewatcher on 01/06/13 05:03 AM
@DB
"not quite what it appears to be"
While working in Malmo Sweden from 2007-2009 for an internet startup dealing with providing music distributions for music labels, our company leased out extra office space to founder Peter Sunde - 'Brokep'. He had ran several startup businesses from the office. Anyway this was the time the big Piratebay trials were going on in Sweden. Peter himself was not really a tech guy he was more on the business and promotion side. He was also more political then the other 2 guys. Anakata and TiAMO are the tech gurus behind the piratebay and really had no politically leaning other then internet freedom, basically defining the political platform of the Pirate Party. However I only met them once when they had come to Sweden for a trial date.
At the end of the trials the four founders were fined and sentenced to jail time. I went to an after trial party at a underground club thrown by Brokep, I invited some friends who were starting members of the Pirate Party. The venue was a communists club of some sort filled with the young adult progressive/anarchist type that is common all over Europe (Never could understand their conflicting reasoning of using the State to create a new State to end the State???) Anyway it was not a very welcoming place and we left after an hour.
There is some connection with Brokep and wikileaks as it was briefly hosted here in sweden. Also you have the connection of the payment alternative to paypal, Flattr, funded by Peter Sunde as a response to companies like Visa, MasterCard, Paypal and Moneybookers blocking donations and money transfers to the site. Flattr, however, continued allowing donations to Wikileaks. I am acquainted with a few developers in Malmo who worked on the project.
I am undecided about some players in the piratebay, however the tech guys Anakata and TiAMO seem sincere living in exile and now one of them deported and indefinitely detained by the Swedish State.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Excellent. Thanks, Memewatcher.
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Posted by memewatcher on 01/05/13 11:11 AM
The DB should check out the fight in Sweden for the freedom to share information involving the largest and most resilient torrent file sharing site in the galaxy, The Pirate Bay.
A link to a post I submitted to the Daily Paul, There's a bounty out for Pirates.
Click to view link
New BBC funded documentary,
Click to view link
Founders mother pleading for her son's release from indefinite detention in Sweden, explaing the values of distributing culture/information
Click to view link
The fight for copyrights is turning political, with the Pirate Party hosting thepiratebay on their servers.
Click to view link
There is a huge story here and unusual that an Elite meme machine such as BBC is sponsoring a documentary.
Reply from The Daily Bell
There are hints that Pirate Bay is not quite what it appears to be ... We will try to follow up.
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Posted by timoore on 01/05/13 07:07 AM
Well done, DB.
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Posted by rossbcan on 01/05/13 06:23 AM
DB: "It was inconceivable to these intelligence agents and military men that someone as obviously undisciplined as Kim Dotcom would pose a "hard target."
that is because they are thoroughly blinded by systems, dicipline (pre-programmed, therefore bad choices) and their Pavlov conditioning, in general.
Free people such as Kim perceive (and adapt to) reality as it is, on an issue by issue basis, in realtime.
Why do you think that undiciplined "wogs in caves", insurgents brought first the USSR, then the US military might "to its knees"?
and, the "freedom war" is now "going domestic", as troglodytes attempt to impose servitude and systems on inherently free people. The internet has destroyed propaganda, destroyed "faith" in our rulers, destroyed a century+ of softening us up, Pavlov conditioning to servitude.
BE FREE (undiciplined by anything but truth) means to correctly choose, to adapt, to survive. It is unstoppable, when YOU KNOW THE STAKES:
Click to view link
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Posted by Craig on 01/05/13 01:18 AM
Well done that man. Ha It gladdens my heart to see a man, men who can resist, and out manoeuvre the collective experience of the corrupted institutions. Imagine the information we could share in 5 to 10 years time with this encryption. This must send shivers down TPTB's jelly spines.
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Posted by inibo on 01/04/13 07:38 PM
The fetish for the US Constitution is really getting old. I understand that for a newly awakening individual it can be breath of fresh air. That was my experience campaigning for Ron Paul in 2007/8. But if you stop there you are just going to rot on the vine. Ron Paul himself has said the US Constitution failed and he has been known to tip his hat to Lysander Spooner.
Click to view link
Fortunately, for me, I listened to what he said and started studying the people he studied. If you start with Ron Paul and don't end up with Murray Rothbard, you are not really listening.
As to the Constitution itself, no one has addressed it better than Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
"[The] Constitution provided for the substitution of a popularly elected parliament and president for an unelected king, but it changed nothing regarding their power to tax and legislate. To the contrary, while the English king's power to tax without consent had only been assumed rather than explicitly granted and was thus in dispute, the Constitution explicitly granted this very power to Congress. Furthermore, while kings - in theory, even absolute kings - had not been considered the makers but only the interpreters and executors of preexisting and immutable law, i.e., as judges rather than legislators, the Constitution explicitly vested Congress with the power of legislating, and the president and the Supreme Court with the powers of executing and interpreting such legislated law.
"In effect, what the American Constitution did was only this: Instead of a king who regarded colonial America as his private property and the colonists as his tenants, the Constitution put temporary and interchangeable caretakers in charge of the country's monopoly of justice and protection.
"These caretakers did not own the country, but as long as they were in office, they could make use of it and its residents to their own and their protégés' advantage. However, as elementary economic theory predicts, this institutional setup will not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency of a monopolist of law and order toward increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only tends to make his exploitation less calculating, more shortsighted, and wasteful."
Click to view link
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Posted by John Q. Parvenu on 01/04/13 03:55 PM
nithsdale writes:
" At the time the court was in deliberation, Prof. Tribe, from Harvard, announced that he was not worried since Roberts was his pupil and would not rule against Obamacare!"
Rumor has it that Mr. Roberts (like Chicagoland's Very Very Dirty Barry) is gay and, being subject to blackmail for such AND knowing that in Weaselworld (our nation's capital) discretion is to prosperity as butter is to bread, chose to appease the corporate beneficiaries of Obamacare.
-- Click to view link
Ultimately, it is not information that confers power, but rather access thereto! What this means, by extension, is that those granted access to the deepest and darkest secrets of the National Security State will exert the most influence upon the future actions (or inactions) of the NSS.
A government's penchant for secrecy is directly proportional to the scope of its concealed criminality.
Want accountable government? Then let us put an end to government secrecy -- not part of it or most of it -- but all of it!
Cheers,
JQP
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Posted by Frank on 01/04/13 03:31 PM
Thank goodness there are a few bright people still out there who our Founding Fathers would have been proud of in standing up for our God given rights & liberties, like the right to privacy & the right to be considered innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law.
We now live in an out-of-control welfare/warfare/police state with primarily the police state component now taking away all of our past Constitutional protections. The Constitution is just about dead, but you can never really kill good ideas or the truth.
As for the real concern that nithsdale has below:
"You are right in telling all that the internet has been used to inform but its ability to be used to disinform is also pertinent. How can we get the internet users to begin to delineate trutch with so much fiction now being presented as fact?"
My answer would be that I'm not really sure what would be the best way to get rid of (or warn others of) all the disinformation on the internet, but just as small government loving, Austrian School of Economics teaches us about "the Invisible Hand of the Free Market" will somehow work things out without centralized big government economic planning, so it is I believe that an unfettered & free internet will somehow self regulate itself, if only given the chance. Governments should stay out of trying to regulate both the economy & the internet. Level playing field capitalism & a free, open & unregulated Internet will somehow self regulate themselves by their own participants.
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Posted by nithsdale on 01/04/13 02:41 PM
Your article holds out hope for the free but there are forces at work even you have not plumbed.
Ever since the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, when Chief Justice Roberts ruled for its continuance on a strange interpretation, I have had a feeling of impending doom. At the time the court was in deliberation, Prof. Tribe, from Harvard, announced that he was not worried since Roberts was his pupil and would not rule against Obamacare!
The Constitution has been under attack publicly from that time! Watch it grow as youths are being enlisted to claim it is an ancient document with no application to the New World they so enjoy! Watch as their writings take over the Media and make this new belief as popular as they have made Madonna and Lady Gaga, and a host of other strange culture icons!
You are right in telling all that the internet has been used to inform but its ability to be used to disinform is also pertinent. How can we get the internet users to begin to delineate trutch with so much fiction now being presented as fact?
This is a Herculean task but where are the Hercules today!
Reply from The Daily Bell
Good points Nithsdale. We just ran an article on removing constitutional restraints. But as far Dotcom goes, we simply wanted to present an article focusing on the evolution of the case. We derive our conclusions in this matter from the "reality on the ground" - nothing more, nothing less.
