Do you have MEGA yet?

If you are following the hot Internet News you have probably heard a lot about Kim Dotcom. Who is this guy and what does he really want. So. Do you have MEGA yet? Kim Dotcom. Reading his story is like reading a book about someone smart and witty. In the back of your head you know there’s something not right, but it’s fun to read and in the end you have learned to like the sob. Know what I mean? It’s like reading about our former prince, married to our former queen Juliana. It turned out he had kids with two women other than his wife, but ‘the people’ liked him, because he did not comply to the rules and got away with it.

Kim Dotcom

Yup, that’s the guy. In the picture in more than one way. He was slash is the inventor that came up with the MegaUpload project. Hong-Kong based at that time and shut down by The United States Department of Justice. (sic…) Mind you. That’s what it really says there. Shut down from another country while the site was based in another sovereign state…

United States Department of Justice on 19 January 2012, following the indictment and arrests of the owners for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated to copyright infringment HK$330 million (approximately US$42 million) worth of assets were frozen by the Customs Department in Hong-Kong

Now he’s operating from New Zealand, you know? Where the Kiwi’s don’t fly

I already like the guy. I DO understand copyright, but I can not see how that can be enforced in todays Internet Sharing Orientated world. Sharing is caring, right?

MEGA

What we should do is the following: Add a 10% tax to every media, capable of storing data. Hard disks DVD’s, Blu Rays USB Sticks, Rented storage space ‘in the cloud’, even the smartphones storage. Pay all copyrights out of a fund, that is financed by us all putting ‘our 10 percent in’.

It like the tax we have to pay in Holland for household appliances for disposing of them in a environmentally safe way in the future. It’s all been paid for as we buy the stuff.

So for the ethics. Down to what it can do for you. What about storing your tax forms and banking stuff there? Ermm… Nope, not a good idea. MEGA promises tough encryption of your data, but I go by the simple and effective rule “If you don’t want something to appear on the internet, don’t put it there’… KISS. Other than that it’s pretty much OK to put anything on there. 50 Gigs is a lot of space to put your vacation pictures on.

Mega allows you to get a link from a file and mail that to a person. Clicking that link he/she can download the file from your ‘private’ space. Nothing holds you back from putting a link to a file on your blog, right? You fill in the blanks…

Cloud Storage

Just another one…

MEGA. Is MEGA unique? Nope, not really. There are alternatives, like DropBox and a few others. They offer the same kind of service. Storage ‘In The Cloud’.

But there is more.

It’s like reading that book. He’s a crook, but one of the good ones. Know what I mean? Maybe romantically described best as ‘A modern Robin Hood’.

It does NOT place him above the law. But I like him. Well, in a manly way.

Ok, so our prince Bernhard from Holland? He died on December 1st 2004. But his story lives on in the hearts of (mostly) Dutch men. I guess it’s best described as ‘The Billy the Kid syndrome’. What do you think?

6 comments on “Do you have MEGA yet?”

Jason "J-Ryze" Fonceca on February 2, 2013 at 7:32 PM said:

Jan! This is a fantastic post, and one that may have strong reprecussions in our culture.

Many things that “felt wrong” in the past are now becoming more accepted.

-It was once thought by many that MP3s/compressed audio would ruin music forever. iTunes said otherwise.
-Same-sex relations were once taboo, and thought to ruin the fiber of our society. — Not anymore.
-And free-sharing of intellectual property/ideas facilitated by grey area sites like Megaupload + ThePirateBay will likely be the same.

What often seems controversial and ‘wrong’ now, eventually becomes part of our standard of living.

In conclusion…

No one “owns” ideas

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Jan on February 2, 2013 at 10:05 PM said:

That’s right Jason…
And to take it one step further: No one ‘owns’ an idea, so if someone is making money putting an idea to good use that’s his/her right too. Sharing is caring and in the end we all benefit.
Your MP3 codec example for instance. Like you said everyone uses it now and it is widely accepted as ‘the norm’. It makes it possible for EVERYONE to make and record and distribute their musical idea’s independent of big companies now. They can charge money for it, if they want. If not, that’s cool too.
Following this way, new idea’s will develop faster and new boundaries are set, to be brought down, again, as usual… Sharing is Caring.
Jan recently posted: Do you have MEGA yet?

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Mayura on February 3, 2013 at 5:49 PM said:

Hey Jan,

Kim DotCom My Man, eh? I remember how US policies trying to sue him over and over again. MegaUploads was a trending topic that time, but he was a happy man if I’m correct. Facilitating made him the bad guy? lol…

I can see the same scenario with Apple too as they are always looking forward to meet competitors at the court Could be the best way to generate revenue for a reputed company?! Battle goes on.

Copyrights matters and we do care about what we tend to call we own too. But as Jason implied, I believe ideas can never be owned by anyone. Never did. I don’t think piracy is exactly about copyright infringement either and can never be wipe out Sharing has come to its best and now gets more attention of people.

Didn’t try MEGA yet and here’s the reminder Jan Thanks for it and going to check it out.

Cheers…
Mayura recently posted: Save Web Content or Pages to View Later with Pocket

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Jan on February 3, 2013 at 10:14 PM said:

I agree!
It’s not about who owns the idea, because no one owns an idea. Besides, if someone thought about an invention (like the paperclip) before anyone else did, the inventor as we now know it would be to late inventing it… Does that make sense at all?
Jan recently posted: Do you have MEGA yet?

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- Mayura on February 7, 2013 at 5:25 AM said:
  
  Yeah Jan The idea and action plan matters to become an inventor. Gotta prove it than talking about it, right?
  
  I’ve heard that Isaac Newton almost killed a man to take the credit of finding the method of calculating square root. Don’t know how true it is though. But can happen with the desire to praised as an inventor
  
  Cheers…
  Mayura recently posted: Save Web Content or Pages to View Later with Pocket
  
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  - JanBierens on February 7, 2013 at 6:47 AM said:
    
    Awesome! That’s what I call dedication!
    JanBierens recently posted: Controversial Links Can Bring Your Site Down?
    
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