Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and a lot of all things tech.
Speaker 1: And it is time for a classic episode. That means
Speaker 1: it must be Friday. Let's celebrate, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: celebrate by getting mega uploaded. This episode originally aired on
Speaker 1: November two thousand twelve. Chris Pallette and I talked about
Speaker 1: the service mega upload, which right around that time was
Speaker 1: getting shut down. So what's the story behind it? Well,
Speaker 1: let's find out. Today. We wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: controversial subject, a couple of different controversial subjects. There's a
Speaker 1: mega controversy, yes, mega upload, and uh, any of you
Speaker 1: have probably heard about mega upload. Some of you may
Speaker 1: have even used the service. Some of you may be
Speaker 1: going to mega upload dot com right now and wondering
Speaker 1: if you're in trouble because you see that there's a
Speaker 1: big takedown notice where the site used to be. But
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about what it is, what the
Speaker 1: controversy is around it, what the various legal issues are
Speaker 1: surrounding it, and a lot about the Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: flamboyant is an appropriate word, uh, head of mega upload
Speaker 1: Kim dot com. Yes, um, yeah, So I guess we
Speaker 1: can start off why not at the beginning, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand five kim dot com. And when I say
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I'll go back further than this. Later
Speaker 1: on we talked about the legal issues. But he founded
Speaker 1: a site uh turned out to be a family of sites,
Speaker 1: but we tend to just call it mega upload. And
Speaker 1: the idea behind this was kind of like a very
Speaker 1: specific implementation of cloud storage. So the idea was that
Speaker 1: users could upload files to this service, mega upload, and
Speaker 1: then allow other people to download those files and on
Speaker 1: its own. If that's all we say, that's not there's
Speaker 1: nothing controversial about that. That's just a method of distributing data.
Speaker 1: The problem comes in as to the nature of that
Speaker 1: data and whether or not that data had any intellectual
Speaker 1: property rights associated with it. That perhaps the user who
Speaker 1: uploaded the file did not have access to our authorization
Speaker 1: to uh to distribute that file, and that's the crux
Speaker 1: of the problem. So mega upload is what we call
Speaker 1: locker site. Yes, and you you create a locker where
Speaker 1: you upload the files other people can download them and uh,
Speaker 1: and there are some interesting things about mega upload. For example, uh,
Speaker 1: uploading a file didn't guarantee that that file was going
Speaker 1: to be stored there forever. Uh. The the service would
Speaker 1: actually delete files out of its storage if they were
Speaker 1: not being downloaded enough. At least, that was sort of
Speaker 1: the That was the allegation that the United States government
Speaker 1: made against Mega upload when building its case. They said
Speaker 1: that in order for a file to be hosted, it
Speaker 1: had to be popular, it had to reach a certain
Speaker 1: threshold of popularity, and if people stopped downloading it, the
Speaker 1: file would no longer be hosted on mega upload. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a way of to conserve space.
Speaker 1: You know, the files that are really popular stay available.
Speaker 1: Files no one seems to want go away, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about hosting a file forever. Because
Speaker 1: of course, the more popular the site got, the larger
Speaker 1: its um requirements were to for for hosting space because
Speaker 1: I mean, these digital files are taking up hard drive
Speaker 1: space somewhere on servers, so you have to be able to,
Speaker 1: uh to meet that demand. And one way of doing
Speaker 1: that is to phase out any files that are not
Speaker 1: particularly sought after. Yeah, now, you might be saying, you know, well,
Speaker 1: how is this different from something like dropbox or perhaps YouTube? Um?
Speaker 1: And there are big differences, um, because some of the
Speaker 1: charges that have been filed basically accused the people behind
Speaker 1: mega upload. UM. Kim dot com is sort of the
Speaker 1: face of mega upload, but the he had a handful
Speaker 1: of partners who were closely were you know, working on
Speaker 1: it with him, very closely. UM. So the people behind
Speaker 1: mega upload have been charged with basically, um, not only
Speaker 1: providing storage space, but knowing what was in that storage
Speaker 1: space and encouraging people to upload popular content which may
Speaker 1: or may not have been UM, you know, stuff that
Speaker 1: violated copyright. And that's really that that's you know, the question.
Speaker 1: Those are the questions that you know, how how far
Speaker 1: did it go? Right? The allegations. The allegations actually go
Speaker 1: so far as to claim that the the owners of
Speaker 1: mega upload paid out money to people in order to
Speaker 1: encourage them to upload popular files. And by popular, we're
Speaker 1: talking about stuff that violates intellectual property. Uh. When you
Speaker 1: when you just say popular, that could be anything. But
Speaker 1: in the case that was brought against mega upload and
Speaker 1: its founders, they're specifically talking about things like movies or music. Really,
Speaker 1: movies is the big one. But it's not just movies,
Speaker 1: it's television and music as well. Saying all right, well
Speaker 1: there are people uploading entire libraries of files to your site. Uh,
Speaker 1: they don't have the authorization to do that. People are
Speaker 1: essentially using mega upload to perpetuate piracy. And so ultimately,
Speaker 1: and when you look at this, you can figure out
Speaker 1: there are certain industries that are very much pushing for
Speaker 1: action against mega upload. It's it's pretty safe to say
Speaker 1: that this was not just a government agency saying, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a bad guy, we need to go after him.
Speaker 1: This these are industries that are using political pressure to
Speaker 1: go after a company that they see as a threat
Speaker 1: to their business model. Then, in itself is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad thing. You want to protect your business, you know, otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you don't protect your business, you go out of business. However,
Speaker 1: there are some questions as to the execution of this
Speaker 1: and whether or not it oversteps bounds. For example, a
Speaker 1: mega upload we haven't mentioned this yet. It is a company.
Speaker 1: It's a company that's based the company itself is based
Speaker 1: out of Hong Kong. So that raises some questions because
Speaker 1: it's the United States that's primarily going after Kim dot
Speaker 1: com and the other people behind Mega upload, and the
Speaker 1: United States does not have jurisdiction in Hong Kong. On
Speaker 1: top of that, Kim dot com and the other people
Speaker 1: who were rounded up we'll talk about the round up
Speaker 1: in a second. They were all in New Zealand. Also,
Speaker 1: last I checked, not within the jurisdiction of the United States. Um.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure. I mean I could be wrong. It could
Speaker 1: be that in the Hobbit, I'll see that, you know,
Speaker 1: federal agents are knocking down the enemy's door and uh
Speaker 1: and in Mirkwood spoiler alert, but it would surprise me. Um. However,
Speaker 1: some of the company's servers were based here in the
Speaker 1: United States. That that was one thing. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: was done on purpose. Us. Um, why was that done
Speaker 1: on purpose? Well, remember when I mentioned YouTube a few
Speaker 1: minutes ago. Um will YouTube? From time to time people
Speaker 1: upload content to the site that infringes on someone's copyright.
Speaker 1: You know, they take and rip a movie and stick
Speaker 1: it on YouTube, which is pretty much blatantly illegal. The
Speaker 1: thing is, what the idea is that under current UH
Speaker 1: United States law, the copyright owner can contact YouTube and
Speaker 1: say hey, take that down, and YouTube is supposed to
Speaker 1: take it down and and Kim Kim dot com has
Speaker 1: said that Mega upload did that. Um. Now see there
Speaker 1: there's there's what is called safe Haven, which was part
Speaker 1: of the d m c A Digital Millennium right, and
Speaker 1: basically it says, hey, look, you know you're providing the
Speaker 1: storage space online. That doesn't make you necessarily wiable for
Speaker 1: what people do with that space. If they put uh
Speaker 1: material up there that infringes upon someone's copyright. As long
Speaker 1: as you take it down when you're asked to by
Speaker 1: the copyright holder, that's not it's not your fault that
Speaker 1: that people do that. What they're saying that Mega upload did, however,
Speaker 1: was um basically not only uh host that they didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily take it down immediately upon being asked. They might
Speaker 1: have been selective in what they took down, and they
Speaker 1: were encouraging people to post popular content. So they're saying, no,
Speaker 1: you guys don't qualify for safe Haven. This is completely different.
Speaker 1: And they're being brought up on criminal charges yeum, which
Speaker 1: is different than a simple lawsuit. Hey, we're suing you
Speaker 1: because you did not take this down. Yeah. The the
Speaker 1: d m c A is very uh it lays this
Speaker 1: out in a very specific way that the ideas that
Speaker 1: it will protect the service providers so that they are
Speaker 1: not um shouldered with all the responsibility for providing what
Speaker 1: is a valuable service to people who might use it
Speaker 1: in ways for which it was not intended or in
Speaker 1: illegal ways. Uh. So you can argue whether or not
Speaker 1: Mega upload was intended for illegal use or not. That's
Speaker 1: in fact the federal federal officials are very much making
Speaker 1: that argument. But UH, for the d m c A
Speaker 1: to apply for that safe haven to apply, the the
Speaker 1: owners of the service cannot knowingly host illegal material. They
Speaker 1: are told about the illegal material, they have to remove it.
Speaker 1: One of the allegations against Kim dot Com and Mega
Speaker 1: upload is that when they were told about illegal material,
Speaker 1: what they would do is remove a link to that
Speaker 1: illegal material, but they would not remove the file itself.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the file still exists on mega upload.
Speaker 1: They just removed whatever link was reported. Well, the way
Speaker 1: mega upload worked was that if you were to try
Speaker 1: and upload a file, let's say that let's say Chris
Speaker 1: and I have decide did to uh to throw caution
Speaker 1: to the wind and embrace our darker natures and to
Speaker 1: UH to dive headfirst into the world of illicit film
Speaker 1: trading online. And so Chris and I both have the
Speaker 1: same idea at the same time. We have both decided
Speaker 1: that now is the time for us to upload a
Speaker 1: copy of the Steven Spielberg Mega hit Howard the Duck.
Speaker 1: And so Chris uploads Howard the Duck before I do
Speaker 1: because he has a better internet connection. So that Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck file, that specific hash gets uploaded up to
Speaker 1: mega upload, and then I do the same thing. Now,
Speaker 1: the file that I'm using is based off the same
Speaker 1: one that Chris made, so it's got the same data,
Speaker 1: same everything. When I uploaded mega upload, looks and says, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I've already got this file. So instead
Speaker 1: of uploading this to your locker, why don't you would
Speaker 1: you prefer it if we just um linked to it
Speaker 1: and added another link to the already existing file because
Speaker 1: it's the same information. This way, you don't have to
Speaker 1: upload the whole thing. You just add the link. And
Speaker 1: you say, because you don't want to have to come
Speaker 1: up your internet connection all that time, or I say,
Speaker 1: in this case, because it's using my example, I said, sure,
Speaker 1: just put the link in. Well, the complaint. One of
Speaker 1: the complaints that the FEDS made against Mega upload is
Speaker 1: that if you were the content owner if you're the
Speaker 1: intellectual property rights owner of Howard the Duck of the
Speaker 1: film Howard the Duck, and you wanted to protect it,
Speaker 1: and you saw that there was a link to a
Speaker 1: mega upload locker that contained that movie, you would send
Speaker 1: that complaint to mega upload and then they would apparently
Speaker 1: remove the link, the specific link you mentioned. However, I
Speaker 1: also have a link to that content. It's a different link.
Speaker 1: It's the same file, which means that because they did
Speaker 1: not delete the file itself, there's still a pathway to
Speaker 1: get to that file. All they did was close off path,
Speaker 1: but they left another path open. That's the allegation. That's
Speaker 1: what the federals, federal officers are saying. They're saying, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would remove this link, but the file still existed
Speaker 1: and there were still other links to that file, so
Speaker 1: you didn't solve the problem. All you did was close
Speaker 1: one door, but there were you know, however, other many
Speaker 1: doors open, so people could still get to it and
Speaker 1: the problem was not fixed. Um, so that's that's one
Speaker 1: of the main arguments here. Now, the way this all
Speaker 1: went down was way back on January twelve. Uh. Do
Speaker 1: you remember January two thousand twelve, fact, when we were
Speaker 1: wondering if Apple was going to have an iPad three
Speaker 1: and no idea that they would also have an iPod
Speaker 1: pot iPad four that same year. Um, that's just a
Speaker 1: light dig. So on January nine, the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: seized the UH mega upload dot com site and all
Speaker 1: of its family of sites like mega video and things
Speaker 1: like that, and they shut it down and they began
Speaker 1: to pursue a criminal case against the owners and operators
Speaker 1: of that site. On January two thousand twelve, Hong Kong
Speaker 1: Customs ended up freezing assets belonging to the company and
Speaker 1: on that On January twenty, in New Zealand, UH New
Speaker 1: Zealand police, acting under the the direction of United States
Speaker 1: federal officers, led a raid against a mansion that was
Speaker 1: being leased by Kim dot com UM and had happened
Speaker 1: to have several other mega upload people there at the
Speaker 1: time because they were celebrating his birthday, so they timed
Speaker 1: it out to raid on his birthday. Uh. They went in.
Speaker 1: They seized around seventeen million dollars worth of assets, including vehicles,
Speaker 1: and art, so stuff that was not related directly to
Speaker 1: the website. But the federal officers claim that these are
Speaker 1: things that Kim dot Com bought through money laundering and
Speaker 1: other means. Um specifically that that allegation that Mega upload
Speaker 1: paid people to upload illegal material to their site. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you're wondering how does Mega upload make money,
Speaker 1: because we didn't really talk about that. There's two ways
Speaker 1: you could be a subscriber, but that's really the kind
Speaker 1: of a minor way that they generate revenue. They mostly
Speaker 1: generate rate revenue through ads. Well, they serve up ads
Speaker 1: over when when you're downloading, that's when the ads get
Speaker 1: served to you. So if you download a file, that's
Speaker 1: when you start seeing these ads. So there's an incentive
Speaker 1: to provide as many downloads as possible because the more
Speaker 1: downloads there are, the more ads Mega upload serves, the
Speaker 1: more money it gets. So that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: this cash came from. So uh that that all went
Speaker 1: down on January and went pretty quickly, but dot com
Speaker 1: and was not resting. He hired on some lawyers and
Speaker 1: began to fight back against the actions taken against him
Speaker 1: and against Mega Upload. So March five, two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: the United States files for an extradition request for in
Speaker 1: New Zealand courts, saying we want to extradite him to
Speaker 1: the US and try him there for crimes. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind again Hong Kong Company New Zealand resident actually New
Speaker 1: Zealand citizen. He he I guess resident is the right word.
Speaker 1: He did apply for residency and was granted it. He's
Speaker 1: actually German, German born. Yeah, what you could tell by
Speaker 1: the dot com last name. Actually he changed that name.
Speaker 1: He changed that name partially because of his his childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was. His original name is Kim Schmitz.
Speaker 1: And actually his his past is definitely one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why there's so much interest in him and why
Speaker 1: I think, uh, the United States government felt fairly confident
Speaker 1: going after him because he he is not He doesn't
Speaker 1: have a squeaky clean past. He was he was tried
Speaker 1: for embezzlement. He was a teenage internet sensation in the
Speaker 1: sense and like an investment sensation, and was was accused
Speaker 1: of with charges of insider trading and get up, sorry,
Speaker 1: keep trying to interrupt. Go ahead, I shouldn't I apologize?
Speaker 1: Please do um, there's a great article in Wired magazine
Speaker 1: and on Wired dot Com about him that Charles Graber wrote, Um,
Speaker 1: actually brought the dead Tree version with me to it. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's definitely it's a really did you read
Speaker 1: this in your research? Um? I thought it was a
Speaker 1: really good balanced article because it talks about some of
Speaker 1: his more positive, you know, attempts to be more positive
Speaker 1: and some of his past which has been you know,
Speaker 1: not always on the up and up. I mean he
Speaker 1: in school, he wasn't really a dedicated student. He preferred
Speaker 1: to uh apparently likes to sleep late, and he liked
Speaker 1: to skip class and sleep in basically, but he got
Speaker 1: an interested in computers when he was a teenager and
Speaker 1: and really embraced it. He took off with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he hacked into some pretty uh pretty notable systems
Speaker 1: like NASA. Yeah. Well, so he's he's definitely got h
Speaker 1: He's definitely got a history of being somewhat of a
Speaker 1: mischief maker. Um. But he got a good scare when
Speaker 1: he was a kid too. He got in trouble with
Speaker 1: the law and uh, basically I get the sense, or
Speaker 1: at least the article paints him as somebody who, uh say,
Speaker 1: you know, once he got done with that, said hey,
Speaker 1: I I really don't want to mess with this again,
Speaker 1: but the thing is too He also and this also
Speaker 1: does not paint or did not did not help him
Speaker 1: with this um recent arrest. And uh, he kind of
Speaker 1: paints himself as a high roller gangster type. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: that seventeen million dollars with the art some of those
Speaker 1: cars that they see, he's like some of the cars
Speaker 1: were hundreds of thousands of dollars in value for an
Speaker 1: individual car. One of his associates said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we have a big car with a license plate that
Speaker 1: says mafia on it. But we're we're fooling around. We're
Speaker 1: not serious about that stuff, right, But the government it's
Speaker 1: organized crime. They're doing it on purpose. They're thinking of
Speaker 1: it as like giant toys. He also had a helicopter.
Speaker 1: I mean, he had lots of stuff. We're gonna pause
Speaker 1: this mega upload for a moment in order to take
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor. On April thirty, two thousand twelve, UH,
Speaker 1: a New Zealand judge found that some of the assets
Speaker 1: in that raid were improperly seized and that paperwork was
Speaker 1: not correctly filed and as a result, they returned about
Speaker 1: seven fifty thousand dollars worth of assets to um to
Speaker 1: dot Com, who, by the way, was having some problems
Speaker 1: getting bail for a while, not not having not coming
Speaker 1: up with the money, but just getting the the option
Speaker 1: of being able to post bail. Judge initially denied him that,
Speaker 1: saying that because he had a helicopter and because he
Speaker 1: was a man of pretty uh substantial means that he
Speaker 1: was a flight risk, and also citing his past as well,
Speaker 1: uh where he had a little bit of a history
Speaker 1: of hopping around a bit uh apparently to dodge authorities
Speaker 1: and investigations. Uh. But and another judge found later they said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we seized all his assets. He's not going anywhere,
Speaker 1: so we're going to grant him the option to post Bailuh.
Speaker 1: So that that did change well April three, when he
Speaker 1: got about seven or fifty dollars worth of the assets returned,
Speaker 1: including several of the cars. So it's not like it
Speaker 1: was just a big suitcase full of cash. H June
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, New Zealand judge ruled that the search
Speaker 1: warrants were dot COM's property were not valid because they
Speaker 1: were too general. Yeah, yeah. And in addition to that,
Speaker 1: there has been a question over whether UM or not
Speaker 1: the use of force that not not that you know,
Speaker 1: they shot their way in, but they came in with
Speaker 1: weapons and things that we're not supposedly allowed against UM
Speaker 1: citizens of New Zealand. So there is some question as
Speaker 1: to that that that not only were the warrants not
Speaker 1: specific enough, but whether or not that the use of
Speaker 1: the techniques that they used during the raid on his house,
Speaker 1: whether that was appropriate and and they kicked the door
Speaker 1: down basically yeah. Well, and dot Com for his part,
Speaker 1: retreated to a safe room inside his house and apparently
Speaker 1: had a couple of firearms in there with him, which
Speaker 1: made it made it look not good. He didn't he
Speaker 1: apparently was not holding the weapons, but he would have
Speaker 1: had access to them. And his response was that he
Speaker 1: thought that, you know, he didn't know what to think
Speaker 1: because all these people were trying to break into his home,
Speaker 1: so he retreated to the safe room in his house. Uh.
Speaker 1: The UM the officers say that he was trying trying
Speaker 1: to escape and or delete incriminating evidence. Yea. They claimed
Speaker 1: that he had a basically a panic button that would
Speaker 1: have erased all of MEGA uploads files and he hold
Speaker 1: out will he hold out candy like button good times Well.
Speaker 1: In July tenth, two thousand twelve, the extradition hearings were
Speaker 1: deferred until March two thousand thirteen, and New Zealand judge
Speaker 1: said the United States must prove that he was aware
Speaker 1: of and supporting internet piracy to support an extradition claim,
Speaker 1: and then on September two twelve, the Prime Minister of
Speaker 1: New Zealand called for an investigation to determine if government
Speaker 1: officials had been spying on dot Com and his associates illegally.
Speaker 1: So it's a very thorny uh issue as far as
Speaker 1: the laws concerned. In fact, it gets even more complicated.
Speaker 1: There are some who say uh, some being dot COM's
Speaker 1: lawyer really, who say that the United States case against
Speaker 1: dot Com is attempting to use civil complaints as a
Speaker 1: criminal charge, which that that's not how that works. Civil
Speaker 1: courts and criminal courts in the United States. That's those
Speaker 1: are two different things. But that at least some of
Speaker 1: the case against dot Com is uh is based in
Speaker 1: would be based in a civil court, not a criminal court,
Speaker 1: and yet they're using it as a criminal charge against
Speaker 1: him and other parts of the criminal charges would depend
Speaker 1: wholly upon how that civil case played out, so they
Speaker 1: can't If that's in fact true, they would not be
Speaker 1: able to uh to to lay these charges against dot
Speaker 1: Com until after the civil case was tried and there
Speaker 1: was an outcome. UM. I think it's more complex from there.
Speaker 1: So it's it's uh, it says, a messy, messy situation,
Speaker 1: and as of the recording of this podcast, we can't
Speaker 1: be sure what the outcome is going to be. UH.
Speaker 1: There have been there's been more fallout from this beyond
Speaker 1: just the press. UM. Anonymous decided to get involved UM,
Speaker 1: which is kind of hard to say because Anonymous is
Speaker 1: such a vaguely defined group that it could be two
Speaker 1: people and Anonymous who want to do something and then
Speaker 1: the entire group gets uh UM pointed at as saying
Speaker 1: they're the ones responsible. Now, it could very well be
Speaker 1: that of Anonymous all was behind us, or even a
Speaker 1: percent was behind it, but by the very nature of
Speaker 1: the group, which is a decentralized activist group, you can't
Speaker 1: be sure, which is part of what protects them. Well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: some people apparently belonging to Anonymous, at least according to
Speaker 1: those who are looking into this, and it could be
Speaker 1: that that's all not true as well. UM started to
Speaker 1: launch attacks against websites UM, particularly websites belonging to the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, the United States Department of Justice, in
Speaker 1: retaliation for the raids that were and and the shutdown
Speaker 1: of Mega upload. So you had a distributed denial of
Speaker 1: service attacks going out across the Internet, fired from the
Speaker 1: canon of h of activists who may or may not
Speaker 1: belong to anonymous UM as another another salvo in this
Speaker 1: battle between well multiple parties at this point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and UM. To complicate matters. Now that you know Kim
Speaker 1: dot com is out on his own, he's also and
Speaker 1: again this is fairly recent um as at the time
Speaker 1: we're recording this, that he's created a new service just
Speaker 1: Mega In fact, it's m E dot g A, which
Speaker 1: is using the gabon H. Is that how you pronounce
Speaker 1: it UM anyway, Yes, they're using their country code, so
Speaker 1: it's emmy dot g A and that's on launching one
Speaker 1: on one year to the day of his arrest January.
Speaker 1: The new service is supposed to go online. And uh,
Speaker 1: from what I've read about the new service, it's supposed
Speaker 1: to you circumvent the quote unquote problems. You'll see why
Speaker 1: I said that, Uh put in the fake scare quotes
Speaker 1: um for uh for this because they won't be able
Speaker 1: to see what's inside these lockers. Yeah. Everything gets encrypted
Speaker 1: when you upload a file. Uh, it gets encrypted within
Speaker 1: your browser. Yeah, and it so in other words, the
Speaker 1: owners of Mega would never be able to see what
Speaker 1: content was stored on their service at all. It would
Speaker 1: all just be meaningless encrypted uh information. Right. So they
Speaker 1: so even if you were an intellectual property rights holder
Speaker 1: and you went to Mega and said, um, this file
Speaker 1: is violating our intellectual property, they'd say, well, we can't
Speaker 1: tell that because for us, it's just meaningless jumble of symbols.
Speaker 1: It doesn't there's no file here as far as we
Speaker 1: can see. Yeah. Also, there will be no servers in
Speaker 1: the United States jurisdiction. Go into what I've read that
Speaker 1: would would that would protect them on those counts, or
Speaker 1: at least would come closer to protecting them, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The way you would access one of these files, of course,
Speaker 1: that you would get if you were to upload a
Speaker 1: file like let's say I upload a file of Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck and it's encrypted into Mega. I would want
Speaker 1: part of that transaction would be I would get a
Speaker 1: key that I could share with other people that would
Speaker 1: allow them to decrypt whatever the file was. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I could send the key to Chris and say, saved
Speaker 1: you the trouble, big guy, here's the movie, and he
Speaker 1: could go and download it because he has the key.
Speaker 1: Anyone who does not have the key would not be
Speaker 1: able to see what the heck that file was. Yes,
Speaker 1: when that would prevent the problem of needing D duplication, UM,
Speaker 1: you know the same file taking a filespace now would
Speaker 1: basically know that the same UH information was up there,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't say what that information was specifically, So
Speaker 1: so they would have a better chance of pleading UH
Speaker 1: safe harbor in it's mostly too obviously protect the owner
Speaker 1: and UH caretakers of mega Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Mega uploaded just a second,
Speaker 1: but I want to interrupt for these important messages. All
Speaker 1: this being said, you know, we've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the piracy, and we've talked a lot about the allegations
Speaker 1: against mega upload UM and I probably should have said
Speaker 1: this much earlier in the podcast, but there are very
Speaker 1: legitimate ways to use these services that have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with violating intellectual property, property or piracy or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Like if I have content that belongs to
Speaker 1: me and I want to be able to distribute it
Speaker 1: to all wide network and I cannot host it myself,
Speaker 1: something like one of these sites could be very useful.
Speaker 1: You know, I may not have any other distribution platform
Speaker 1: that I can use to get my content out there.
Speaker 1: So there are plenty of use cases where there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with using a site like mega upload to either
Speaker 1: distribute or to get access to material. It's only in
Speaker 1: the case where that is unauthorized use of intellectual property
Speaker 1: that is the problem. Now that raises a question of well,
Speaker 1: what percentage of activity on mega upload uh revolved around
Speaker 1: intellectual property theft and whether and if it was a lot,
Speaker 1: were the founders aware of it or even complicit in it.
Speaker 1: Those are the points that need to be hashed out
Speaker 1: in court. I've also seen at least one judge in
Speaker 1: the United States say that he doubts this will ever
Speaker 1: go to court in the US. He thinks that there
Speaker 1: are enough problematic factors involved in the whole raid and
Speaker 1: seizing of the property that will prevent it from ever
Speaker 1: having its stay in court. In the US, So we'll see.
Speaker 1: It's very possible. It does look like it was not
Speaker 1: the um not the smoothest raid I've ever seen, at
Speaker 1: least from a paperwork standpoint. So yeah, we'll have to
Speaker 1: wait and see if that if that's how it plays out.
Speaker 1: But it's an interesting case, and it is somewhat worrisome
Speaker 1: because even if you were to say that the founder
Speaker 1: and owners of mega upload, we're all actively encouraging piracy,
Speaker 1: that reflects poorly on other file sharing services that may
Speaker 1: be very much dedicated to fighting piracy on their own service,
Speaker 1: but now they are brought into question because they just
Speaker 1: happen to have the same distribution model more or less
Speaker 1: as Mecca Mega upload, and uh, that hurts everybody. So
Speaker 1: it's not you know, even if you think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I never pirate stuff and I would never upload those
Speaker 1: kind of files to a service, it can still affect
Speaker 1: you it because it might mean that some other service
Speaker 1: that you use and you trust ends up getting caught
Speaker 1: in this blast and uh ends up not being able
Speaker 1: to continue its services. It also raises another question. I
Speaker 1: know that there are a lot of people who had
Speaker 1: stuff up on Mega upload and now they don't have
Speaker 1: access to it, So there are people are saying, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I owned the content that I put up
Speaker 1: on mega upload that belongs to me, and now I
Speaker 1: can't get to it. Yeah. And and it's funny because
Speaker 1: the article in Wired ends with, um, the judge wanting
Speaker 1: to release information about the case to the media but
Speaker 1: wants all the media outlets to have that access at
Speaker 1: exactly the same time, and saying, Wow, if we just
Speaker 1: had a way to do that, and that would be
Speaker 1: something obviously that that's sort of an allusion to, Yes,
Speaker 1: you could do at was something like mega upload and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the it seems like the the apparently the
Speaker 1: service had been used by a great many people to
Speaker 1: distribute content that they owned that it was perfectly legal
Speaker 1: to use the way they were using it. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, it's interesting to see. I think the
Speaker 1: article sort of makes it sound like or or at
Speaker 1: least gives me the impression that this situation is sort
Speaker 1: of something of their own making because they made themselves
Speaker 1: appear to be up to something because it was fun
Speaker 1: to play that way that there may not there may
Speaker 1: not have been any attempt at anything impro improper, but
Speaker 1: people were using it improperly, and there wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: as much to discourage improper use as there could have
Speaker 1: been perhaps, Um, So it's yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: they they contributed to their own problems. Um. And its
Speaker 1: cases like this that give rise to propose pieces of
Speaker 1: legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act that are both
Speaker 1: related to this. Yeah, so you've got, I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got these are other things that can affect all of
Speaker 1: us in a negative way. Uh, And we need to
Speaker 1: really think about it before, you know, allowing pro intellectual
Speaker 1: property owners to just run rampant over the legal system.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, I still think that they deserve
Speaker 1: some sort of support system to protect their intellectual property.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I don't think it should be
Speaker 1: uh open season and that you can grab anything you want,
Speaker 1: anytime you want, with no care about, you know, purchasing it.
Speaker 1: Because if we were to all live that way, a
Speaker 1: lot of people would stop making content because there would
Speaker 1: be no reason to do it, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: some people would make content because they love to create
Speaker 1: things and they love to share it. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the content that we love, the stuff that everyone
Speaker 1: wants to get their hands on, would not exist. Because
Speaker 1: no one would make it because there's no money in it.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's there's definitely a complex issue here,
Speaker 1: but uh, it's it's one of those things. Why the
Speaker 1: reason why I'm paying attention to the mega upload case
Speaker 1: is because I know this is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that inspires various lobbies to petition, uh legislators to create
Speaker 1: laws that often go well beyond what the original intention
Speaker 1: of that law was meant to do. You know, it
Speaker 1: might the intention might be we need to protect these
Speaker 1: people or these companies because their property is getting stolen,
Speaker 1: but the actual implications go so far beyond it as
Speaker 1: to well potentially cripple the Internet. So it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting story. Um, we'll definitely keep our eyes
Speaker 1: on it and see how it develops and maybe, uh
Speaker 1: maybe mega will become an even bigger story than Mega
Speaker 1: upload ever was. Yeah, that's true. It's possible, especially with
Speaker 1: the encryption. So he's also gonna he's planning on a
Speaker 1: music streaming service as well. Yeah, so, I mean they
Speaker 1: had a music storage service already, so that doesn't really
Speaker 1: surprise me. And they even had a video streaming service,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a considering the popularity of music
Speaker 1: streaming over the last two years. That doesn't really surprise me.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how that all comes out and whether
Speaker 1: or not dot Com gets out of this one um
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe he ends up courting even more
Speaker 1: trouble in the future. He seems like the kind of
Speaker 1: personality who sort of thrives on this sort of thing
Speaker 1: to a point. I mean, no one thrives in having
Speaker 1: seventeen million dollars worth of stuff taken from them. No,
Speaker 1: but he does like attention. Um. It seems like he
Speaker 1: would like attention for uh being a role model of sorts. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I don't know that he wants
Speaker 1: to be seen as a uh I ruled breaker, maybe
Speaker 1: a real bender. And that's the story on mega upload,
Speaker 1: A controversial story if there ever was one. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. If
Speaker 1: you would like to suggest future episodes, brand new ones,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me the email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or you can
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