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| Kim Schmitz aka Kim DotCom |
Many of the readers of this story know of Kim Schmitz aka Kim DotCom. It's a mix of either great respect or contempt depending on what is understood about him.
There is an untold story about him that needs to be recorded as to what happened to his MegaUpload website.
MegaUpload was a popular file sharing website up to a few years ago when it was summarily ordered to be taken down by the U.S. Federal Government.
As Kim recently said the MegaUpload case is "a death sentence without a trial".
He has managed to remain out of jail in New Zealand up to now but his financial resources have dwindled. In the time spent since MegaUpload's take down, Mr. Schmitz formed Mega, the technological embodiment of change necessary to avoid MegaUpload ever happening again.
Mega is now in full production offering 50 gigabytes of free cloud storage space.
What sets it apart from other cloud ISPs?
MEGA employs Zero Knowledge end-to-end encryption (ZKE) and a MEGAsync graphical drag/drop files client to 100% guarantee privacy.
What the technology also affords is something which took down MegaUpload in the first place. Plausible Deniability. ZKE ensures Mega knows nothing about your data. It is just an encrypted block of data.
Mr. Schmitz was assumed guilty of being complicit with illicit file sharing activities, alleged to have occurred on MegaUpload. Today, he still maintains his innocence but a legal case is pending.
Despite his adversities, he has somehow managed to achieve what few others have. Cloud storage can and should be a safe choice. Your data and meta data on the Internet are presumed to be yours and only yours. They belong to no one else. Mega, the fruit of Mr. Schmitz' labors, is a resounding success.
In reality, few ISPs offer such guarantees.
Mr. Schmitz just put up on his personal website a Whitepaper which is a 'must read'. It tells the untold story of what happened to MegaUpload.
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| Kim DotCom Twitters a message to let the public know about his just published whitepaper |
Here is part of the whitepaper's opening Executive Summary:
The criminal prosecution of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom is purportedly the “largest copyright case in history,” involving tens of millions of users around the world, and yet it is founded on highly dubious legal principles and apparently propelled by the White House’s desire to mollify the motion picture industry in exchange for campaign contributions and political support.
The U.S. government’s attack on the popular cloud storage service Megaupload and the dramatized arrest of Kim Dotcom, the company’s principal founder – together with the seizure of all their worldwide assets – represents one of the clearest examples of prosecutorial overreach in recent history. One day after the U.S. Congress failed to enact the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the executive branch of the U.S. government commandeered Megaupload in a coordinated global take-down, and drew battle lines between digital rights advocates, technology innovators and ordinary information consumers on the one side, and Hollywood and the rest of the Copyright Lobby on the other.
Megaupload operated for seven years as a successful cloud storage business that enabled tens of millions of users around the world to upload and download content of the users’ own choosing and initiative. The spectrum of content ran from (to name just a few) family photos, artistic designs, business archives, academic ourse work, legitimately purchased files, videos and music, and – as with any other cloud storage service – some potentially infringing material. Despite Megaupload’s lawful uses, the U.S. government has charged the company and its executives under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and has branded the company, its personnel and its tens of millions of users a “criminal enterprise” dedicated solely to infringing U.S. copyright laws.
The U.S. government’s case against Megaupload is grounded in a theory of criminal secondarycopyright infringement. In other words, the prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users. The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States. The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so.
As such, the Megaupload prosecution is not only baseless, it is unprecedented. Although the U.S. government has previously shut down foreign websites engaged in direct infringement, such as the sale or distribution of infringing material, never before has it brought criminal charges against a cloud file storage service because of the conduct of its users. Thus, the Megaupload case is the first time the government has taken down a foreign website – destroying the company and seizing all of the assets of its owners (and the data of its users), without so much as a hearing – based on a crime that does not exist.
Clearly, there was a baseless rush to judgment without any legal due process of law. In fact, there was total disregard for protective mechanisms in our U.S. Constitution that should have resulted in Mr. Schmitz being presumed "innocent until proven guilty".
Dear Reader, we live in very troubled times and I would dare say at this time we don't have much in the way of Constitutional rights which are negated by special Supreme Court Judicial powers that ignore the Constitution, the continuing presence of the Patriot Act, and the NDAA.
Thus, I feel obligated to share this developing story with you in order to shine the light on a 'wrong' dealt to a Man who has shown himself to be of great integrity and willing to stand up for his and your rights and fight back.
Please help Kim Schmitz by reading and sharing his whitepaper with Friends and Family, your state Senator and Congressman. -- Dietrich
