Relieved hollywood Kim Schmitz???

As we reported previously, has Megaupload-founder Kim Schmitz back all allegations against him. The head of the now closed file hosting service had been arrested some time ago due to copyright violations. According to his own statement Schmitz was not a "Pirate King", but a legitimate businessman.

Now Kim Schmitz aka Kim dotcom pour fuel to the fire. And the news is sensational - especially when you consider how violently shoots the Hollywood industry association MPAA against Megaupload. Because Schmitz demonstrated by means of e-mails that some major Hollywood studios wanted to cooperate with him and Megaupload. Among the companies contacted, the Megaupload include, among others, Walt Disney, Warner Bros. and Turner.

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.

The Megaupload Song ;-)

Who or what was Megaupload?

The Gate through the Office of Megaupload in Hongkong

Megaupload was a Sharehoster, in addition to the advertising through paid premium accounts funded. Megaupload was included with Rapidshare and Media Fire the world's most famous file hosting providers.

On 19 January 2012 the service was shut down in the wake of investigations by the FBI.

The company was known as "Megaupload Ltd." Registered, based in Hong Kong. The website was in the meantime, according to the data analysis company Alexa Internet ranked 73 of the most visited sites in the world.

In 2007, Focus magazine reported, Megaupload stand behind the capital due to investment fraud convicted New Economy actor Kim Schmitz. The company denied this.

Kim Schmitz, however, was in January,12, 2012 along with three other persons arrested and charged in New Zealand due to alleged copyright violations in connection with Megaupload.

Megaupload allowed to upload files of unlimited size, however, could only have a Premium account to download files that exceed a size of 1 GB (1024 MB). The free service could be used with various restrictions (waiting time until the start of the download limit of the allowed traffic and bandwidth).

As with RapidShare, these restrictions are disabled by purchasing a premium account for access. Among the services included Megaupload, Megavideo, which was used among others by Kino.to for streaming.

2011, Megaupload and Kim Schmitz were due to suspected copyright infringement of the adult provider "Perfect 10" sued for 5 million U.S. dollars in damages. The suit ended in a settlement of an unknown amount.

December 2011 Megaupload published the  "mega song". For the title of the comments of various celebrities (Will.i.am, Sean Combs, Kanye West, Chris Brown, Jamie Foxx, Kim Kardashian, Lil Jon, The Game, Floyd Mayweather, Serena Williams and Ciara) were edited together to Sharehoster. Through its presence in the accompanying video, the link between Kim Schmitz and Megaupload confirmed.

Also in December 2011 was known that Megaupload has worked on a project titled MegaBox, that artists should allow cloud-based publication of their music in an online store, with 90 percent of the revenue to these would be paid and free downloads are remunerated by Megaupload. A successful test phase for the project was already completed.

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