"MEGA" - ARRRRRRRR MATEY

[joal0503]

http://gizmodo.com/5977163/hands-on...his-service-could-dismantle-copyright-forever

Hands On With Kim Dotcom’s New Mega: This Service Could Dismantle Copyright Forever

Mario Aguilar

Kim Dotcom's Mega officially launches tomorrow, but we're already in. From the membership plans we showed you this morning, the service might look like it's just another online storage locker like Dropbox or Google Drive. But it's way more than that. Mega is a weapon aimed straight at copyright rights holders. It's maybe the most private, invincible file-sharing service of all time.

When you first sign in, you see (instead of a big red button coyly promising to change the world) a simple drag-and-drop upload tool. A Mega upload tool.

From there, you're immediately prompted to agree to terms and conditions. Our resident lawyer told us they're not very well written, but in essence, they absolve Mega for any liability whatsoever for and naughty things you might do with the service. Smart Move, Kim.

After agreeing, you arrive at your Cloud Drive—the file manager where all of your everything lives. When you select one of your files or folders to upload you realize how fast this thing is. I went ahead and uploaded Metallica's Kill Em All in just a few minutes.

From there, with a single right-click, I can generate a download link for the album. And then I can send it to whoever I want. It's Megaupload with a file manager.

So what's to stop Mega from going down just the way Megaupload did? Mega's privacy, which is a no-foolin' stroke of genius. See, all of your files are encrypted locally before they're uploaded, so Mega has no idea what anything is. It could be family photos or work documents, or an entire discography of your favorite band. Poof: online and easy to share. And importantly, Mega doesn't have the decryption key necessary to get in. See? It's a masterstroke of copyright subversion.

To explain further, Mega's terms say that nobody can access your stuff without your personal decryption key. And they don't have it. Only you do. The company does, however, stipulate in the privacy policy that they might cooperate with law enforcement. But big deal; what are they going to turn over? When Twitter and Facebook cooperate with the authorities, they have access to your data. All Mega has is an encrypted file, and that's its ultimate protection.

So why is this a copyright killer? Well, actually, it's way way more than a copyright killer; it enables the most private data exchanges of any online service available to the public. Prying eyes will have a hard time getting to them.

That's important because the private exchange of your data has always been a huge problem with online services. Take Google for example: Big G sometimes complies with requests to hand over your data—the data you thought was private. Google does it because it can be compelled to do so, and because it has access. Conversely, if authorities wanted to compel Kim Dotcom and company to hand over your data, they wouldn't be able to do it. And getting other information out of Mega—like the technical details about how its keys work—is legally problematic, to say the least. But what we do know is that it's a super clever way for Mega to protect itself from you.

So now two very big questions remain, and we can't answer them from simply demoing the site. The first, is how secure is Mega? Can hackers break in? Can the FBI?

The second question, is what are Kim Dotcom's future plans for this service? He's provided a vague roadmap for what lies ahead, but we can't be sure. We're looking forward to hearing what Kim Dotcom has to say at the launch press conference at 2:30AM EST Sunday morning. We'll be there, red-eyed and struggling to write coherently.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Has anyone seen use of the new mega links?

With mediafire around the new mega seems pointless, especially without its old streaming features. Although MF has been having issues with automated programs reporting false positives for copyright infringement.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Forgive me because I am going to be cynical. This does not prevent the Feds from doing anything. They will issue an essentially baseless warrant for Mega's assets and a judge will simply sign off on it. The assets will be seized and an injunction will be filed. They will be battling in court for 5 years to overturn it. Poof, Mega goes the way of Megaupload.

 

[Cognisant]

I can already encrypt files before I upload them and I hide that encryption behind spoof text so it isn't immediately obvious that it needs decryption in the first place, as much as I appreciate the gesture of them giving me their encryption software I hardly consider this a paradigm shift in data sharing security.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I can already encrypt files before I upload them and I hide that encryption behind spoof text so it isn't immediately obvious that it needs decryption in the first place, as much as I appreciate the gesture of them giving me their encryption software I hardly consider this a paradigm shift in data sharing security.

The new security measures are designed to protect themselves; the anonymity of your data is just a necessary step in that. With their new encryption method(and removal of streaming content), they seek to be even less liable for copyright infringement, since they really do not know what's being uploaded, and can't know without users' encryption keys.

 

[Cognisant]

Yes but the key is used by the software to create the encryption and with enough data the way in which that encryption is created can be used to reverse engineer the key, or at very least narrow down its possibilities to something feasible to break through brute force.

Of course they don't know what you have until they look, but they typically don't look until they think there's something worth looking for, the NSA has better things to do then read everyone's emails and peruse everyone's files, because if it's something someone didn't want them to see it they'd just encrypt and disguise it as I mentioned in my last post.

It's better for the NSA to focus their resources on specific people who are selected for specific reasons, and if such specific people are using Mega then the NSA will bust down Mega's doors, heck if anything they won't need to because Mega itself is probably a trap.

I mean it's obviously targeted at people who have stuff to hide...

DUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Yes but the key is used by the software to create the encryption and with enough data the way in which that encryption is created can be used to reverse engineer the key, or at very least narrow down its possibilities to something feasible to break through brute force.

I don't know much about decryption to know the limits of what's feasible to break into, but it would probably easier / more practical to just obtain account passwords, with their new system.

heck if anything they won't need to because Mega itself is probably a trap.

I mean it's obviously targeted at people who have stuff to hide...

DUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH

It has crossed my mind, like Kim making a deal between law enforcement for a lighter sentence or something.

The site's domain name is even mega.co.nz.

Mega Cons lol..

 

[Nick]

I've used the new mega for a couple things already, where it shines is easy up uploading and ease of downloading, zero hoops to jump though.

 

[just george]

The new security measures are designed to protect themselves; the anonymity of your data is just a necessary step in that. With their new encryption method(and removal of streaming content), they seek to be even less liable for copyright infringement, since they really do not know what's being uploaded, and can't know without users' encryption keys.

Yep.

The case brought against him is already out of this world - extradition charges without actually telling the judge what they have on him because they themselves aren't sure yet.

Even if they try the same stunt all over again, at the very least it exposes Hollywoods influence over the US government, as well as makes their attempts to control the internet that much more difficult

 

[duke of new york]

Yes but the key is used by the software to create the encryption and with enough data the way in which that encryption is created can be used to reverse engineer the key, or at very least narrow down its possibilities to something feasible to break through brute force.

I thought encryption has been at a point for a good while where it is a pretty simple matter to create an encryption key that is practically unbreakable. Practically unbreakable as in breakable, but it would take many generations of lifetimes to do so with modern computing power. I mean, millions of keys are created with the same PGP software, but nobody ever "reverse engineers" those.

 

[Cognisant]

PGP encryption is meant to be secure, who says the Mega software is?

It's certainly not impossible that Mega is what it's supposed to be, I just find the whole thing suspect, it's like a pawn shop that advertises that they'll buy stuff with no ID and no questions asked, what legitimate business owner would do that?

 

[duke of new york]

PGP encryption is meant to be secure, who says the Mega software is?

It's certainly not impossible that Mega is what it's supposed to be, I just find the whole thing suspect, it's like a pawn shop that advertises that they'll buy stuff with no ID and no questions asked, what legitimate business owner would do that?

It's just that PGP is open software; if you're going to make something new, it would probably be based on the same principles that make PGP unbreakable.

Kim Dotcom is an icon in the crypto-anarchy world. If it turns out to be a trap and he's been two-timing us with the US government this whole time, I think I'll lose what little faith in humanity I have left.