Kim Schmitz case turns to a political issue

Act leader John Banks asked for a $50,000 political donation to be split into two parts so it could be made anonymously, says Kim Dotcom and one other witness.Dotcom said the request was made on April 15, 2010, when Mr Banks was preparing to campaign for the Auckland mayoralty.

He said there were at times three other people in the room while the donation was discussed - and Mr Banks rang later to thank him for it.
The allegation comes after police were asked to investigate Mr Banks' listing of a $15,000 donation from SkyCity as "anonymous".

Political candidates are required by law to declare donations if they know who made them. Failure to do so is punishable by up to two years' imprisonment and up to a $10,000 fine.
A vacancy is automatically created if any MP is convicted of an offence punishable by two years or more, no matter what punishment they get.

In the case of Mr Banks, a conviction would place at risk his Epsom seat under the Electoral Act and force a byelection. The loss would leave the Government exposed, with its 59 votes in the 121-seat Parliament supplemented only by United Future's one and the Maori Party's three.

Last night, Dotcom spoke from his home in Coatesville, just north of urban Auckland, to which he is bailed until a hearing on his possible extradition to the US in August on charges of criminal copyright, money laundering and racketeering.
The charges followed a high-profile arrest in January, after which Mr Banks said he hardly knew the internet tycoon. He said his contact with Dotcom was limited to a total of 20 minutes conversation and he had been to Dotcom's mansion in Coatesville only once for dinner.

But film of the event - Dotcom's birthday party - showed Mr Banks making a toast to the tycoon.
Footage showed Mr Banks raising a glass and saying, "I'm going to propose a toast to Kim Dotcom. Please fill your glasses and stand. Happy birthday and best wishes to Kim Dotcom, Mona and his family."
Staff at the mansion said it was one of three visits. The pair also met at Princes Wharf on New Year's Eve 2010 when Dotcom put on a $600,000 fireworks display.
The pair first met in April 2010 when Dotcom sent his helicopter to collect Mr Banks from Mechanics Bay in downtown Auckland.

Dotcom said the pair met in the mansion, sitting at a large square table, and chatted.
Bodyguard Wayne Tempero was present, as was one of Dotcom's butlers. His company chief financial officer also attended briefly.

"He mentioned the elections were coming up [and] he was raising money for his campaign," Dotcom said. "He said it was hard to raise money in New Zealand, the mayoral campaign was coming up and he's trying to raise funds for that.
"I kind of liked the guy. I said, 'I'm happy to help.' I told Wayne to write a cheque for $50,000.
"His [Mr Banks'] eyes got a little bit bigger at that moment."
Mr Tempero asked the chief financial officer to come into the room to write the cheque.
"John said, 'Wait a minute'," Dotcom recalled last night. "'It would be good if you could split it up into two payments of 25 [thousand dollars], then I don't declare publicly who made it'."

Dotcom said one cheque was made out in his own name, or the name of his company Megastuff Ltd, and the other in Mr Tempero's name.
"He [Mr Banks] called me a few days after the cheques entered his bank account and he thanked me personally."
Last night, Mr Banks said there would be nothing wrong with his telling people how to give anonymously.
"If someone says to me, 'How can I put money into your campaign?' what would be wrong with telling them that - if that was that case?
"I could say, 'Firstly, you should talk to people who are raising money for me. But if you want to put money into my campaign, you can put it in two ways. You can put it in anonymously or you can put it in and have it declared.' It's quite legitimate.

"If Kim Dotcom wants to put money into my campaign anonymously he is quite entitled to do it. Whether it is 1000, 5000, 50,000 or 500,000 [dollars], he is quite entitled to do it under the act.
"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. If Mr Kim Dotcom put money into my mayoral campaign, you should tell him I'm grateful and thank you very much."
The most recent contact was through Mr Tempero, whom Mr Banks phoned for a hotel recommendation in Hong Kong last December.
Dotcom, who rented the top floor of the Hyatt there for six years, told Mr Banks it was the best place to stay. He arranged for his limo to collect Mr Banks from the airport and later to drive him to a helicopter pad for a trip to Macau.

Mr Banks said there was no issue in his stay in Hong Kong. He paid for every aspect of the trip himself.
Act Party president Chris Simmons said he had full confidence in Mr Banks. "There's a bit of a beat-up going on. It was all to do with the mayoral campaign. It doesn't have anything to do with Act."
Prime Minister John Key did not respond to calls for comment.

Forex specialists and other funny critters

I just write what comes in my mind. First: Forex (trading) is not entirely unknown to me. I know how it works, what needs to be done, how, when and with what. Many "expatriates" who live abroad and especially in Asia, forex make supplementary income so they are be able to finance their stay there.

This goes well until a certain point. Of mental stress, problems with technology and other "several accidents," such as "placed in front of the notebook" sit for hours, except in countries where it normally lives on the beach, lounges or nightclubs to spend time in nice company. For me, FOREX is just junk!

Sorry that I write so openly. Surely now is the evil one or the other of me. Because the "his" life, is "his" income. But there are a lot of opportunities to make money much better and easier. Automatically, so to speak! With a lot of time for the beautiful things in life!

Kim Schmitz has led the way! One Click Hosting is still the future. File sharing like Peer2Peer nearly anyone use it now . Far too dangerous (especially in Europe and USA, where ISPs and Government monitors what you doing.)

Just last week, I had throw my rare time with a forex "specialist". He has been interested for a OCH investment. First looks everything good. He lives in Thailand. But because the residency requirements have indeed tightened and he is not yet 50, he has to put money in the bank. He may not work - it's forbidden. It threatens to jail. He sits, but most of the time at his notebook and runs "to be" forex trading. (If anyone check this and where it money come from, he will be ended in jail) After he like to get much infomation as possible as to the work that was going to get to the OCH, and afterwards has been found that it was a room for $ 15US too expensive for him - it shows this is actually even more to keep what FOREX is for ;-))))))

Some skills - not just the most and run through that! A recognized expert in forex once explained as follows.

Probably you "Forex" already well known. If not, I enlighten you on short: This is the foreign exchange trading, where to buy currency for currency, precious metals like gold or silver or sold. This requires an account with a broker required to be there. Of course, this alone is still a long way: Who in Forex - Trading to make money, desperately needed a good education, talent, good experience, a lot of discipline, good nerves, a lot of patience and time, high stamina and to a flair for instinctive decisions, which one can not learn ...

So if it works sometimes it does not mean at the money ALWAYS flows. Forex traders are kind of like poker players. They NEVER lose to talk but only about what they have "won".

In contrast, an investment in a crisis-proof  and serious business! Simple and straightforward with a clear result. 15 000 - U.S. $ generate 7% after 6 months of 1050 U.S. $ PER MONTH profit! How this can work? Just the advertising revenue to achieve a multi-hundred times;-) there are 7% more peanuts. And for a bank loan we would have to pay interest also!

Megaupload and SOPA in Asia

There's a saying that when elephants dance, the ants get trampled. In the wake of events this January, the Internet has been a hot bed of activity with US legislation pushing for an anti-online piracy bill with SOPA (and its Senate counterpart PIPA). This drew the anger of the Web community worldwide because of how the possible law would affect the World Wide Web and shape the face of the Internet of the future.

Fortunately, through the concerted efforts of a number of big Internet sites such Wikipedia, Facebook and Google and coupled with the rage of the Internet community, the US lawmakers backed down. Unfortunately, a few days later there was the recent arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and the shutdown of the massive Megaupload file-sharing site. Ironically, Kim's arrest seemed to be a chilling counterpoint to the Internet's victory over the shelved SOPA/PIPA bills, as if the US government was saying, "We may not have SOPA but we can still take you out."

It's not a coincidence that Megaupload was the first to be targeted by the US government. Kim (aka Kim Dotcom) had a flamboyant lifestyle and was not one to hide his massive wealth. However, because of Kim's arrest, other file-sharing sitesare now wary of the coming days such that they've enacted policies to protect themselves. Will that stop the US government? No one is sure. After all, Megaupload had already taken down its premium service--one of the reasons cited for its shut-down--a few months before the site's subsequent closure.

In the Philippines, there were some groups in the movie and music industries (akin to those in the US lobbying for the bills) that wanted local legislation similar to SOPA and PIPA. However, nothing came out of this. I guess after seeing the reaction of the world, none of them wanted to risk the ire of the local Internet community.

Still, I thought the damage had been done in the wake of the two recent events. Trying to figure out the Internet in relation to problems like online piracy will probably take forever to solve and hammer-headed proposals like SOPA and PIPA will always crop up. In the meantime, people who uploaded their files in Megaupload legitimately--their family pictures of their summer vacation, large work files that can't be sent via email, college theses sent to professors--all that data is now being threatened with deletion and it remains to be seen if the users can retrieve them.

It's this that sticks to my craw. Yes, I know how much data is temporary in today's Digital Age. But there's something so galling about the cavalier treatment of other people's property (even if it's just information) that turns it into collateral damage between an immovable object and an irresistible force.

How to make money in asia

The idea to open a  own One Click Hoster came to me really quite spontaneous. Although I had previous experience of dealing mentally with it. But more along the lines of what you could improve or do differently.

Then, when Megaupload get busted and Kim Schmitz and his people were arrested, it was not only a great shock to the internet scene, but also the total loss of a very good idea in principle and millions of data. Now we have a gap that must be filled.

The server of MEGAUPLOAD in Hong Kong. As you can see not just the latest technology :-)

Whether we can do that, time will tell. It is quite clear: the times are changing and the legal situation as well. Must go to rank with new ideas and concepts.

I'm located in southeast asia. I always see a lot of people looking for a business that they can do, or just arrive and open a guesthouse ;-), take over a bar, buy a boat for make tours or some other silly things. What they forget is always, in southeast asia, mostly the term for tourism is short. Sometimes very short. The prices for rent, electricity, staff and especially for always you spend out more money every month eats up your smal income. Travellers today goes around 1-2 hour searching where they can stay 2$ cheaper or pay 50 cents less for a menue.

So, the best idea is, don't do ANYTHING with tourism. Do another thing...do it global...have your customers worldwide. We have have nearly 7 Billion People in the world and millions does filesharing in internet.

In short: its possible to setup a own One Click Hoster service. You just have to do it!

For more information contact me via Zdown (at) asia (dot) com