January 18th, 2013Top Story Hands On With Kim Dotcom's New Mega: This Service Could Dismantle Copyright Forever By 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. 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. 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. Additional reporting by Melissa Ulto who is a writer for MIPJournal.

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STOCKS MAKE COMEBACK AFTER DEBT CEILING FEARS FADE: Here's What You Need To Know, January 18, 2013

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		Home Tech Finance Markets Politics Strategy Entertainment Advertising Retail Sports Life Friday, January 18, 2013 Advertisement Stocks climbed modestly to a new post-crisis high. First the scoreboard: Dow: 13,649, -53.6, +0.3 percent S&P 500: 1,485, +5.0, +0.3 percent NASDAQ: 3,134, -1.2, -0.0 percent And now the top stories: Last night, China reported that its GDP grew at a 7.9 percent rate in Q4, which was a tad higher than the 7.8 percent increase expected by economists.  "We expect year-of-year GDP growth to peak around 8.3% in 1H13 and slow to 8.0% in 2H13," wrote Bank of America economist Ting Lu about China. "Our suggestion to investors is to remain bullish in 1H13, but to exercise more caution in 2H13."  SocGen's Excellent Presentation Dives Into The Question: 'What If China Lands Hard?' > A surprisingly weak consumer sentiment report kept markets in check.  According, the latest University of Michigan survey, consumer confidence unexpectedly fell to 71.3 from last month's reading of 72.9.  Economists were looking for a reading of 75.0. "The deterioration in sentiment is a stark reminder of the debilitating impact that the ongoing uncertainty created by the political dysfunction in Washington is having on household's mood," wrote TD's Millan Mulraine.  "And while spending appears to be holding up reasonably well (in spite of the collapse in confidence in recent months) with sales activity remaining relatively brisk, if the uncertainty persists and confidence deteriorates further, it is likely to have a more lasting dampening effect on spending." Markets were down for most of the day. But they came back after we got some news from Washington, which caused the volatility index (VIX) to sink to multi-year lows. House Republicans announced that they would vote for a three-month debt ceiling hike next week. A longer-term extension in the debt ceiling would then be contingent on the Senate passing a budget. "The first step to fixing this problem is to pass a budget that reduces spending," wrote Eric Cantor in a statement.  "The House has done so, and will again. The Democratic Senate has not passed a budget in almost four years, which is unfair to hardworking taxpayers who expect more from their representatives. That ends this year." Don't Miss: The True Story Of When Everyone Thought Japan Was Going To Take Over America > BI Intelligence, a new subscription research service from Business Insider, provides in-depth insight, data, and analysis of the mobile industry. Access all reports, research updates, presentations, data and chart libraries plus much more with your free trial. Click here to start your subscription>> Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Share this: Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon LinkedIn The email address for your subscription is: dwyld.kwu.jobhuntportal11@blogger.com Change Your Email Address | Unsubscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe to the Money Game RSS Feed Business Insider. 257 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010 Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

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