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KIM DOTCOM: New website 'isn't revenge' for Megaupload
Kim Dotcom, founder of outlawed file-sharing website Megaupload, says his new "cyberlocker" is not a way to exact revenge on the US authorities who planned a raid on his home, closed Megaupload, and charged him with online piracy for which he faces years in prison if found guilty.
The flamboyant Dotcom said his new offering, Mega.co.nz - which will launch tomorrow even as he and three of his colleagues await extradition from New Zealand to the United States - complied with the law and warned that attempts to take it down would be futile.
"One thing has to be clear: This is not some kind of finger to the US government or to Hollywood," Dotcom said at his sprawling estate in the bucolic hills of Coatesville, just outside Auckland.
"Legally, there's just nothing there that could be used to shut us down, this site is just as legitimate and has the right to exist as Dropbox, Boxnet and other the other competitors in this space," he said, referring to other popular cloud storage services.
His lawyer, Ira Rothken, added that launching the new site was compliant with the terms of Dotcom's bail conditions.
US prosecutors argue that, in a statement related to his bail proceedings last year, Dotcom said he had no intention of starting a new internet business until his extradition was resolved.
Dotcom will celebrate the launch will a party at his home, a mansion worth roughly $30 million, which features a servants' wing, hedge maze and life-size statues of giraffes and a rhinoceros in the grounds.
A year ago, New Zealand's elite special tactics forces choppered into Dotcom's home in a dawn raid to arrest him and his colleagues and confiscate evidence related to Megaupload, at the request of the FBI.
CODES AND KEYS
Dotcom says Mega is a different beast to Megaupload, as the new site enables users to control exactly which users can access uploaded files, in contrast with its predecessor, which allowed users to search files, some of which contained copyrighted content allegedly used without permission.
A sophisticated encryption system will allow users to encode their files before they upload them onto the site's servers, which Dotcom said were located in New Zealand and overseas. He declined to specify where.
Each file will then be issued a unique, sophisticated decryption key which only the file holder will control, allowing them to share the file as they choose.


As a result, the site's operators would have no access to the files, which they say would strip them from any possible liability for knowingly enabling users to distribute copyright-infringing content, which Washington says is illegal.
"Even if we wanted to, we can't go into your file and snoop and see what you have in there," the burly Dotcom said.
Dotcom - a German national who also goes by the name Kim Schmitz - and his colleagues face years in prison if they are convicted, although the case is expected to drag on for years.
Known as much for his previous cyber crime-related arrests as his penchant for fast cars and yacht parties, Dotcom promised an extravagant launch for Mega as builders put the finishing to a festival-sized concert stage in the mansion's grounds.
Two helicopters circled overhead as workers erected a massive white replica of Mega's capitalised, block-lettered logo on the hills flanking the approach to the mansion. Dotcom was coy about what guests could expect from the event.
Expecting huge interest in its first month of operation, he said Mega's launch will be a far cry from when Megaupload went live in 2005.
Then, he and his colleagues were glued to their computer screens in a tiny office, cheering each time the counter showing the number of hits on the site ticked up towards 10.
"I would be surprised if we had less than 1 million users," Dotcom said.

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bsnub

Good for him! Hope that fat fuck sticks it to the feds.

Butterfly

megaupload, despite being a great service, was mainly used for movie piracy, porn and all kind of illegal shit, so he is not the clean guy he is trying to portrait himself, he was very much complicit in that illegal business

but still a great service for us

baldrick

the internet is not here to serve US corporate interests

they can wither and die

and https://mega.co.nz is now accepting registrations

Necron99

Gat get to it, down already?

baldrick

worked for me 30 minutes ago - but it is up on slashdot , so it is likely getting hammered

but it has servers in many countries

trabant

Mega first impressions
Monday Jan 21, 2013
Pat Pilcher



Now that Kim Dotcom's new file storage venture, Mega has officially launched, I took the opportunity to check it out, and came away quietly impressed.

Mega is essentially a giant online file storage service that makes use of some heavy duty encryption that uses patterns in your typing keystrokes and mouse activity used to generate a random encryption key, making it very hard to break.

The upshot of all this jargon is that Mega's system administrators (and anyone else not in possession of the encryption key which only you should have) are pretty much unable to see what files are being stored.

This mightn't sound like a big deal, but trust me it makes all the difference. Whilst Mega's terms and conditions say that Mega may have to co-operate with law enforcement agencies should they demand access to data being stored on Mega, all the copyright cops will be able to access is a bunch of scrambled data, meaning they'll have no way of knowing if the data they have been given access to is an illicit copy of a Hollywood blockbuster or your kid's school project.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. Whilst other online services such as Google or DropBox can be forced to hand over data yet if the authorities want Kim Dotcom and Mega to hand over data all they'll get is an indecipherable mess of encrypted nonsense which from a legal perspective is likely to be pretty much useless to them.

Whilst it is almost too easy to label Mega as a haven for pirates wanting to store copyrighted materials, the very fact that Mega is operating in a massively redundant data centre with multiple backups for everything makes it ideal for backing up important and irreplaceable data such as all those digital photos you've got scattered around the house on CDs, memory cards, external hard drives and PCs.

If the unthinkable were to happen and your house was to burn down, be destroyed in a quake or by invaders from Mars, you can at least take a measure of comfort in knowing that your family photos, scanned copies of important documents etc. are all safely stored online via mega.

In use Mega will be immediately familiar to anyone who has transferred files using Windows Explorer or similar, thanks to the Mega file manager. With the file manager you can create folders, upload files, or, should you need to, you can also delete files you no longer want to store.

Uploading files is as easy as clicking the upload files button on the mega site and then choosing which file you want to upload . With a decent broadband connection, uploads proved to be pretty zippy and I transferred a pile of digital photos in under 30 minutes.

Mega offers 50GB of storage for free and then three separately priced storage options which are:

Pro 1
500Gb storage
1Tb Bandwidth
Euro 9.99 per month

Pro 2
2Tb Storage
4Tb Bandwidth
Euro 19.95 per month

Pro 3
4Tb Storage
8Tb Bandwidth
Euro 29.95 per month

Goodwill

Just a 2012 clip of Steve Wozniak. He talks a bit about Kim Dotcom. He describes the 'phony charges' against Kim in his previous legal battle. This is a 2012 clip but it has a lot about rights of people working online in areas where there is controversy over free speech and online rights and protections.