Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hello everyone, and welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Chris Polette and I am an editor
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, stating incrust from me
Speaker 1: as usual as senior writer Jonathan st Hey. There, So, um, today,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about a controversial subject, a couple
Speaker 1: of different controversial subjects. Right, there's a mega controversy, yes,
Speaker 1: mega upload, and uh, many of you have probably heard
Speaker 1: about mega upload. Some of you may have even used
Speaker 1: the service. Some of you may be going to mega
Speaker 1: upload dot com right now and wondering if you're in
Speaker 1: trouble because you see that there's a big takedown notice
Speaker 1: where the site used to be. But we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about what it is, what the controversy is around it,
Speaker 1: what the various legal issues are surrounding it, and a
Speaker 1: lot about the Uh. I guess flamboyant is an appropriate word,
Speaker 1: uh head of mega upload Kim dot com. Yes, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess we can start off why not at
Speaker 1: the beginning, back in two thousand five Kim dot com.
Speaker 1: And when I say at the beginning, I'll go back
Speaker 1: further than this later on and we talk about the
Speaker 1: legal issues, but he founded a site. UH turned out
Speaker 1: to be a family of sites, but we tend to
Speaker 1: just call it mega upload. And the idea behind this
Speaker 1: was kind of like a very specific implementation of cloud storage.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that users could upload files to
Speaker 1: this service, mega upload, and then allow other people to
Speaker 1: download those files and on its own. If that's all
Speaker 1: we say, that's not there's nothing controversial about that. That's
Speaker 1: just a method of distributing data. The problem comes in
Speaker 1: as to the nature of that data and whether or
Speaker 1: not that data had any intellectual property rights associated with it.
Speaker 1: That perhaps the user who uploaded the file did not
Speaker 1: have access to our authorization to uh to distribute that file,
Speaker 1: and that's the crux of the problem. So mega upload
Speaker 1: is what we call locker site, and you you create
Speaker 1: a locker where you upload the files other people can
Speaker 1: download them and UH. And there are some interesting things
Speaker 1: about mega upload. For example, UH, uploading a file didn't
Speaker 1: guarantee that file was going to be stored there forever. UH.
Speaker 1: The the service would actually delete files out of its
Speaker 1: storage if they were not being downloaded enough. At least
Speaker 1: that was sort of the that was the allegation that
Speaker 1: the United States government made against mega upload. When building
Speaker 1: its case, they said that in order for a file
Speaker 1: to be hosted, it had to be popular, It had
Speaker 1: to reach a certain threshold of popularity, and if people
Speaker 1: stopp downloading it, the file would no longer be hosted
Speaker 1: on mega upload UM. So that's kind of a way
Speaker 1: of to conserve space. You know, the files that are
Speaker 1: really popular stay available. Files no one seems to want
Speaker 1: go away, and you don't have to worry about hosting
Speaker 1: a file forever. Because of course, the more popular the
Speaker 1: site got, the larger it's UM requirements were to for
Speaker 1: for hosting space because I mean, these digital files are
Speaker 1: taking up hard drive space somewhere on servers, so you
Speaker 1: have to be able to, uh to meet that demand.
Speaker 1: And one way of doing that is to phase out
Speaker 1: any files that are not particularly sought after. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: you might be saying, you know, well, how is this
Speaker 1: different from something like dropbox or perhaps YouTube um? And
Speaker 1: there are big differences, UM, because some of the charges
Speaker 1: that have been filed basically accused the people behind mega
Speaker 1: upload UM. Kim dot com is sort of the face
Speaker 1: of mega upload, but the he had a handful of
Speaker 1: partners who were closely were you know, working on it
Speaker 1: with him very closely. Um. So the people behind mega
Speaker 1: upload have been charged with basically, um, not only providing
Speaker 1: storage space, but knowing what was in that storage space
Speaker 1: and encouraging people to upload popular content which may or
Speaker 1: may not have been um, you know, stuff that violated copyright.
Speaker 1: And 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? Allegations. The allegations actually go so far
Speaker 1: as to claim that the uh, the owners of mega
Speaker 1: upload paid out money to people in order to encourage
Speaker 1: them to upload popular files. And by popular, we're talking
Speaker 1: about stuff that violates intellectual property. Uh. When you when
Speaker 1: you just say popular, that could be anything, but in
Speaker 1: the case that was brought against mega upload and its founders,
Speaker 1: 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, um and the other
Speaker 1: people who were rounded up we'll talk about the roundup
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. Yeah, 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. Um why was that down on purpose? Well?
Speaker 1: Remember when I mentioned YouTube a few minutes ago. Um, well, YouTube,
Speaker 1: from time to time people upload content to the site
Speaker 1: that infringes on someone's copyright. You know, they take and
Speaker 1: rip a movie and stick it on YouTube, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much blatantly illegal. The thing is, what the idea
Speaker 1: is that under current uh United States law, the copyright
Speaker 1: owner can contact YouTube and say, hey, take that down.
Speaker 1: And YouTube is supposed to take it down, and and
Speaker 1: Kim Kim dot com has said that Mega Upload did that. Um.
Speaker 1: Now see there there's there's what is called safe Haven,
Speaker 1: which was part of the d m C a Digital
Speaker 1: millennium right, and basically it says, hey, look, you know
Speaker 1: you're providing the storage space online that doesn't make you
Speaker 1: necessarily liable for what people do with that space. If
Speaker 1: they put uh material up there that infringes upon someone's copyright,
Speaker 1: as long as you take it down when you're asked
Speaker 1: to by the copyright holder, that's not it's not your
Speaker 1: fault that that people do that. What they're saying that
Speaker 1: Mega upload did, however, was um basically not only uh
Speaker 1: host that they didn't necessarily take it down immediately upon
Speaker 1: being asked. They might have been selective in what they
Speaker 1: took down, and they were encouraging people to post popular content.
Speaker 1: So they're saying, no, you guys don't qualify for safe haven.
Speaker 1: This is completely different. And they're being brought up on
Speaker 1: criminal charges um, which is different than a simple lawsuit. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're suing you because you did not take this down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the d m c A is very uh it
Speaker 1: lays this out in a very specific way that the
Speaker 1: ideas that it will protect these service providers so that
Speaker 1: they are not um shouldered with all the responsibility for
Speaker 1: providing what is a valuable service to people who might
Speaker 1: use it in ways for which it was not intended
Speaker 1: or in illegal ways. Uh. So you can argue whether
Speaker 1: or not Mega upload was intended for illegal use or not.
Speaker 1: That's in fact the federal h federal officials are very
Speaker 1: much making that argument. But UH for the d m
Speaker 1: c A to apply for that safe haven to apply,
Speaker 1: the the owners of the service cannot knowingly host illegal material.
Speaker 1: That they are told about the illegal material, they have
Speaker 1: to remove it. One of the allegations against Kim dot
Speaker 1: Com and mega upload is that when they were told
Speaker 1: about illegal material, what they would do is remove a
Speaker 1: link to that illegal material, but they would not remove
Speaker 1: the file itself. So in other words, the file still
Speaker 1: exists on mega upload. They just removed whatever link was reported. Well,
Speaker 1: the way mega upload worked was that if you were
Speaker 1: to try and upload a file, Let's say that let's
Speaker 1: say Chris and I have decided to UH to throw
Speaker 1: caution to the wind and embrace our darker natures and
Speaker 1: to UH to dive headfirst into the world of illicit
Speaker 1: film trading online. And so Chris and I both have
Speaker 1: the same idea. At the same time, we have both
Speaker 1: decided that now is the time for us to upload
Speaker 1: a 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, uh,
Speaker 1: would you prefer it if we just um linked to
Speaker 1: it and added another link to the already existing file
Speaker 1: because it's the same information. This way, you don't have
Speaker 1: to upload the whole thing. You just add the link.
Speaker 1: And you say, because you don't want to have to,
Speaker 1: you know, come up your internet connection all that time,
Speaker 1: or I say, in this case, because it's using my example,
Speaker 1: I said, sure, just put the link in. Well. The complaint,
Speaker 1: one of the complaints that the FEDS made against mega
Speaker 1: upload is that if you were the content owner, if
Speaker 1: you're the intellectual property rights owner of Howard the Duck
Speaker 1: of the film Howard the Duck, and you wanted to
Speaker 1: protect it, and you saw that there was a link
Speaker 1: to a mega upload locker that contained that movie. You
Speaker 1: would send that complaint to Mega upload and then they
Speaker 1: would apparently remove the link, the specific link you mentioned. However,
Speaker 1: I also have a link to that content. It's a
Speaker 1: different link. It's the same file, which means that because
Speaker 1: they did not delete the file itself, there's still a
Speaker 1: pathway to get to that file. All they did was
Speaker 1: close off one path, but they left another path open.
Speaker 1: That's the allegation. That's what the federal federal officers are saying.
Speaker 1: They're saying, well, yeah, you would remove this link, but
Speaker 1: the file still existed and there were still other links
Speaker 1: to that file, so you didn't solve the problem. All
Speaker 1: you did was close one door, but there were you know, however,
Speaker 1: other many doors open, so people could still get to
Speaker 1: it and the problem was not fixed. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one of the main arguments here. Now. The way
Speaker 1: this all went down was way back on January nine,
Speaker 1: two twelve. Do you remember January two thousand twelve, back
Speaker 1: when we were wondering if Apple was going to have
Speaker 1: an iPad three and no idea that they would also
Speaker 1: have an iPod pot iPad four that same year. Um,
Speaker 1: that's just a light dig so on January nineteenth, the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice seized the UH mega upload dot com
Speaker 1: site and all of its family of sites like mega
Speaker 1: video and things like that, and they shut it down
Speaker 1: and they began to pursue a criminal case against the
Speaker 1: owners and operators of that site. On January two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong Customs ended up freezing assets belonging to the
Speaker 1: company and UH on that. On January twenty, in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: UH New Zealand police, acting under the the direction of
Speaker 1: United States federal officers, led a raid against a mansion
Speaker 1: that was being leased by Kim dot com UM and
Speaker 1: had happened to have several other Mega upload people there
Speaker 1: at the time because they were celebrating his birthday, so
Speaker 1: they timed it out to raid on his birthday. UH
Speaker 1: they went in, they seized around seventeen million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of assets, including vehicles and art, so stuff that was
Speaker 1: not related directly to the website. But the federal officers
Speaker 1: claimed that these are things that Kim dot com bought
Speaker 1: through money laundering and other means. UM specifically that that
Speaker 1: allegation s and that Mega upload paid people to upload
Speaker 1: illegal material to their site. Um and if you're wondering
Speaker 1: how does mega upload make money, because we didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about that. There's two ways you could be a subscriber,
Speaker 1: but that's really the it's kind of a minor way
Speaker 1: that they generate revenue. They mostly generate rate revenue through ads. Well,
Speaker 1: they serve up ads over when when you're downloading, that's
Speaker 1: when the ads get served to you. So if you
Speaker 1: download a file, that's when you start seeing these ads.
Speaker 1: So there's an incentive to provide as many downloads as
Speaker 1: possible because the more downloads there are, the more ads
Speaker 1: Mega upload serves, the more money it gets. So that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of this cash came from. So uh
Speaker 1: that that all went down on January and went pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: but dot com And was not resting. He hired on
Speaker 1: some lawyers and began to fight back against the actions
Speaker 1: taken against him and against Mega Upload. So March five,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, the United States files for an extradition
Speaker 1: request for in New Zealand courts, saying we want to
Speaker 1: extradite him to the US and try him there for crimes.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind again Hong Kong Company New Zealand resident
Speaker 1: actually New Zealand citizen. He or he I guess resident
Speaker 1: is the right word. He did apply for residency and
Speaker 1: was granted it. He's actually German, German born. Yeah, see
Speaker 1: what you could tell by the dot com last name.
Speaker 1: Actually he changed that name. He changed that name partially
Speaker 1: because of his his childhood. Yeah, he was. He was.
Speaker 1: His original name is Kim Schmitz. And actually his his
Speaker 1: past is definitely one of the reasons why there's so
Speaker 1: much interest in him and why I think, uh, the
Speaker 1: United States government felt fairly confident going after him because
Speaker 1: he he is not He doesn't have a squeaky clean past.
Speaker 1: He was he was tried for embezzlement. He was a
Speaker 1: teenage internet sensation in a sense and like an investment sensation,
Speaker 1: and was was accused of with charges of insider trading.
Speaker 1: And sorry, keep trying to interrupt, I shouldn't I apologize. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a great article in Wired magazine and on Wired
Speaker 1: dot com about him that Charles Graber wrote, UM actually
Speaker 1: brought the dead Tree version with me. Subscribe to 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 hacked into some pretty uh pretty notable systems like NASA.
Speaker 1: So he's definitely got He's definitely got a history of
Speaker 1: being somewhat of a mischief maker. But he got a
Speaker 1: good scare when he was a kid too. He got
Speaker 1: in trouble with the law, and uh, basically I get
Speaker 1: the sense or at least the article paints him and
Speaker 1: somebody who uh say, you know, once he got done
Speaker 1: with that, said hey, I I really don't want to
Speaker 1: mess with this again. But the thing is too he
Speaker 1: also and this also does not paint or did not
Speaker 1: did not help him with this um recent arrest. And uh,
Speaker 1: he kind of paints himself as a high roller gangster type. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's that seventeen million dollars with the art some of
Speaker 1: those cars that they see, He's like some of the
Speaker 1: cars were hundreds of thousands of dollars in value for
Speaker 1: an individual car. One of us 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. It's but the government
Speaker 1: doing it on purpose. They're thinking of it as like
Speaker 1: giant toys. He also had a helicopter. I mean, he
Speaker 1: had lots of stuff. 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 then 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 bail. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that that did change well April three, when he
Speaker 1: got about seven or fifty thou dollars worth of the
Speaker 1: assets returned, including several of the cars. So it's not
Speaker 1: like it was just a big suitcase full of cash. Uh.
Speaker 1: June two thousand twelve, a New Zealand judge ruled that
Speaker 1: the search warrants were dot COM's property were not valid
Speaker 1: because they were too general. Yeah. Yeah. And in addition
Speaker 1: to that, there has been a question over whether um
Speaker 1: or not the use of force that not not that
Speaker 1: you know, they shot their way in, but they came
Speaker 1: in with weapons and things that we're not supposedly allowed
Speaker 1: against um citizens of New Zealand. So there is some
Speaker 1: question as to that that not only were the warrants
Speaker 1: not specific enough, but whether or not that the use
Speaker 1: of the techniques that they used during the raid on
Speaker 1: his house, whether that was appropriate and and they kicked
Speaker 1: the door down basically yeah, well, and dot Com for
Speaker 1: his part, retreated to a safe room inside his house
Speaker 1: and apparently had a couple of firearms in there with him,
Speaker 1: which made it made it look not good. He didn't
Speaker 1: he apparently was not holding the weapons, but he would
Speaker 1: have had access to them. And his response was that
Speaker 1: he thought that you know, he 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. They claimed that
Speaker 1: he had a basically a panic button that would have
Speaker 1: erased all of mega uploads files and he hold out
Speaker 1: will he hold off 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 lawyer, really,
Speaker 1: who say that the United States case against dot Com
Speaker 1: is attempting to use civil complaints as a criminal charge,
Speaker 1: which that that's not how that works. Civil courts and
Speaker 1: criminal courts in the United States. That's those are two
Speaker 1: different things. But that at least some of the case
Speaker 1: against dot Com is uh is based in would be
Speaker 1: based in a civil court, not a criminal court, and
Speaker 1: yet they're using it as a criminal charge against him,
Speaker 1: and other parts of the criminal charges would depend wholly
Speaker 1: upon how that civil case played out, so they can't
Speaker 1: If that's in fact true, they would not be able
Speaker 1: to uh to to lay these charges against dot Com
Speaker 1: until after the civil case was tried and there was
Speaker 1: an outcome. UM. I think it's more complex from there.
Speaker 1: So it's it's uh. It's as 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 percent
Speaker 1: was behind it, But by the very nature of the group,
Speaker 1: which is a decentralized activist group, you can't be sure,
Speaker 1: which is part of what protects them. Well. Anyway, some
Speaker 1: people apparently belonging to Anonymous, at least according to those
Speaker 1: who are looking into this, and it could be that
Speaker 1: that's all not true as well, UM started to launch
Speaker 1: attacks against websites UM, particularly websites belonging to the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice, the United States Department of Justice, in retaliation
Speaker 1: for the raids that were and and the shutdown of
Speaker 1: mega Upload. So you had distributed denial of service attacks
Speaker 1: going out across the Internet, fired from the canon of
Speaker 1: h of activists who may or may not belong to
Speaker 1: anonymous um as another another salvo in this battle between
Speaker 1: well multiple parties at this point. Yeah, yeah, and UM
Speaker 1: to complicate matters. Now that you know Kim dot com
Speaker 1: is out on his own, he's also and again this
Speaker 1: is fairly recent um as at the time we're recording this,
Speaker 1: that he's created a new service, just Mega. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's m dot g A, which is using the gabon
Speaker 1: H Is that how you pronounce it? Um anyway, Yes,
Speaker 1: they're using their country code. So it's my dot g
Speaker 1: A and that's on launching one on one year to
Speaker 1: the day of his arrest January. The new service is
Speaker 1: supposed to go online. And uh, from what I've read
Speaker 1: about the new service, it's supposed to circumvent the quote
Speaker 1: unquote problems. You'll see why I said that, Uh put
Speaker 1: in the fake scare quotes um for uh for this
Speaker 1: because they won't be able to see what's inside these lockers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Everything gets encrypted when you upload a file. Uh, it
Speaker 1: gets encrypted within your browser. Yeah, and it so, in
Speaker 1: other words, the owners of Mega would never be able
Speaker 1: to see what content was stored on their service at all.
Speaker 1: It would all just be meaningless encrypted, uh information, Right,
Speaker 1: So they So even if you were an intellectual property
Speaker 1: rights holder and you went to Mega and said, um,
Speaker 1: this file is violating our intellectual property, they'd say, well,
Speaker 1: we can't tell that because for us, it's just meaningless
Speaker 1: jumble of symbols. It doesn't there's no file here as
Speaker 1: far as we can see. Yeah. Also, there will be
Speaker 1: no servers in the United States jurisdiction according to what
Speaker 1: I've read, So that would but that would protect them
Speaker 1: on those counts, or at least would come closer to
Speaker 1: protecting them, right. Yeah. The way you would access one
Speaker 1: of these files, of course, that you would get if
Speaker 1: you were to upload a file like let's say I
Speaker 1: upload a file of Howard the Duck and it's encrypted
Speaker 1: into Mega, I would want. Part of that transaction would
Speaker 1: be I would get a key that I could share
Speaker 1: with other people that would allow them to decrypt whatever
Speaker 1: the file was. Yes, so I could send the key
Speaker 1: to Chris and say, saved you the trouble, big guy,
Speaker 1: here's the movie, and he could go and download it
Speaker 1: because he has the key. Anyone who does not have
Speaker 1: the key would not be able to see what the
Speaker 1: heck that file was. Yes, and that would prevent the
Speaker 1: problem of needing D duplication. UM. You know, the same
Speaker 1: file taking up filespace now it basically know that the
Speaker 1: same UH information was up there, but it wouldn't say
Speaker 1: what that information was specifically, so so they would have
Speaker 1: a better chance of pleading UH safe harbor in that case.
Speaker 1: It's mostly to obviously protect the owner and caretakers of
Speaker 1: mega But all this being said, you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the piracy, and we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the the allegations against mega upload UM and I
Speaker 1: probably should have said this much earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: but there are very legitimate ways to use these services
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with violating intellectual property, property
Speaker 1: or piracy or anything like that. Like if I have
Speaker 1: content that belongs to me and I want to be
Speaker 1: able to distribute it to all wide network and I
Speaker 1: cannot host it myself, something like one of these sites
Speaker 1: could be very useful. You know, I may not have
Speaker 1: any other distribution platform that I can use to get
Speaker 1: my content out there. So there are plenty of use
Speaker 1: cases where there's nothing wrong with using a site like
Speaker 1: mega upload to either distribute or to get access to material.
Speaker 1: It's only in the case where that is unauthorized use
Speaker 1: of intellectual property. That is the problem. Now that raises
Speaker 1: a question of well, what percentage of activity on mega
Speaker 1: upload uh revolved around intellectual property theft? And whether and
Speaker 1: if it was a lot, were the founders aware of
Speaker 1: it or even complicit in it. Those are the points
Speaker 1: that need to be hashed out in court. I've also
Speaker 1: seen at least one judge in the United States say
Speaker 1: that he doubts this will ever go to court in
Speaker 1: the US. He thinks that there are enough problematic factors
Speaker 1: involved in the whole raid and seizing of the property
Speaker 1: that will prevent it from ever having its stay in
Speaker 1: court in in the US. So we'll see, it's very possible.
Speaker 1: It does look like it was not the um not
Speaker 1: the smoothest raid I've ever seen, at least from a
Speaker 1: paperwork standpoint. So yeah, we'll have to wait and see
Speaker 1: if that if that's how it plays out. But it's
Speaker 1: an interesting case, and it is somewhat worrisome because even
Speaker 1: if you were to say that the founder and owners
Speaker 1: of mega upload, we're all actively encouraging piracy, that reflects
Speaker 1: poorly on other file sharing services that may be very
Speaker 1: much dedicated to fighting piracy on their own service, but
Speaker 1: now they are brought into question because they just happen
Speaker 1: to have the same distribution model more or less as
Speaker 1: Mega mega upload, and UH, that hurts everybody. So it's
Speaker 1: not you know, even if you think, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: never pirate stuff and I would never upload those kind
Speaker 1: of files to a service, it can still affect you
Speaker 1: it because it might mean that some other service that
Speaker 1: you use and you trust ends up getting caught in
Speaker 1: this blast and uh ends up not being able to
Speaker 1: continue its services. It also raises another question. I know
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of people who had stuff
Speaker 1: up on mega upload and now they don't have access
Speaker 1: to it. So there are people who saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I owned the content that I put up on mega
Speaker 1: upload that belongs to me, and now I can't get
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah. And and it's funny because the article
Speaker 1: in Wired ends with um, the judge wanting to release
Speaker 1: information about the case to the media but wants all
Speaker 1: the media outlets to have that access and exactly the
Speaker 1: same time and saying, wow, if we just had a
Speaker 1: way to do that, and that would be something obviously
Speaker 1: that that's sort of an allusion to, yes, you could
Speaker 1: do that with 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 it's
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 proper 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: a lot of people would stop making content because there
Speaker 1: would 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. So,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's definitely a complex issue here, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things. Why the reason why
Speaker 1: I'm paying attention to the mega upload case is because
Speaker 1: I know this is the sort of thing that inspires
Speaker 1: various lobbies to UH petition UH legislators to create laws
Speaker 1: that often go well beyond what the original intention of
Speaker 1: that law was meant to do. You know, it might
Speaker 1: the intention might be we need to protect these people
Speaker 1: or these companies because their property is getting stolen, but
Speaker 1: the actual implications go so far beyond it as to
Speaker 1: well potentially cripple the internet it yea, So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's an interesting story. Um. We'll definitely keep
Speaker 1: our eyes on it and see how it develops and maybe,
Speaker 1: uh maybe Mega will become an even bigger story than
Speaker 1: Mega upload ever was. Yeah, that's true. It's possible, especially
Speaker 1: with the encryption. So he's also gonna he's planning on
Speaker 1: a music streaming service as well. Yeah, 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. It seems like he would
Speaker 1: 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 a rule breaker, maybe
Speaker 1: a rule bender. But yeah, I would encourage people to
Speaker 1: check out that article because, uh, it's interesting. It's really
Speaker 1: it paints a very good picture I think of good
Speaker 1: and bad that that that he's associated with, and whether
Speaker 1: or not it kind of gives you an idea of
Speaker 1: the charges, the depth of the charges, um that are
Speaker 1: being leveled against him. Um. And we also if you're
Speaker 1: interested in in having a better understanding of different file
Speaker 1: sharing techniques and cloud storage, we have articles about those
Speaker 1: on the site as well on on how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. So check those out, and if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes, I recommend you write us.
Speaker 1: Our email address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com
Speaker 1: or let us know on Facebook or Twitter or handle
Speaker 1: at both of those is tech Stuff, hs W and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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