MegaUpload has been down for almost a year now, but mastermind Kim Dotcom has had no intentions of letting it stay that way. Previously, he’s teased some details about a relaunch and the servers are bought and paid for. Now, we’ve got a date: January 19th, 2013, the one-year anniversary of the takedown. More »
Your favorite rapper’s favorite file sharing website is going to relaunch as soon as 2013, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom announced today. The site, simply called Mega, is going to be a rebirth of a website that once recorded 50 million unique visitors in a day as recently as 2011. Earlier this year, US investigators in conjunction with New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom’s mansion and servers. The raid happened on January 19, 2011, so Dotcom figures January 19 2012 is a perfect time to relaunch the site. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Kim Dotcom Promises A New, Legally-Secure MegaUpload, Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom heads to U.S. to answer piracy charges,
Welcome to Thursday evening, everyone. This afternoon we had a bunch of quarterly reports hit, and some were better than others. Google posted its quarterly report a little prematurely, a blunder that had a hand in driving down the price of the company’s stock. Later on in the day, we heard from Microsoft, which managed to do pretty good in its first quarter. Sadly, AMD posted its results for quarter 3 just a little while ago, and things aren’t looking too good for the company – in fact, it says that it will have to layoff around 15% of its workforce in an attempt to save some money.
Moving away from that rather depressing news, we heard some more whispers about the different iPad Mini variants today, and Google announced a brand new Samsung-made Chromebook (that’s super cheap, too!). The controversial Copyright Alert System is said to be going live in the next few weeks, and today AT&T released a statement in which it objects to SoftBank’s planned buyout of Sprint. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has started a new file sharing site, and we learned that Apple may just be looking to buy the talent behind the soon-to-be-shutdown Color app, rather than the whole thing.
comScore says that the Amazon Kindle Fire has the highest readership rates for digital content, and today was the day the Motorola RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD launched at Verizon. Twitter is ruffling some feathers with the way it censors content, and TweetBot landed on the Mac App Store with a pretty high price tag. Chevrolet announced today that it will be unveiling the 2014 Corvette on January 13, while Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that his company is ready to compete if Microsoft launches a Surface-branded smartphone. Researchers are considering launching a probe to a recently-discovered exoplanet, and Caldexa said that it has plans to begin using 64-bit ARM chips in 2014.
New rumors are pegging AMD with an itch to drop prices on APU Llano chips, and beloved digital distribution site GOG added support for Mac today with the addition of 50 games. Battlefield 3: Aftermath will be available for PS3 Premium subscribers on November 27, so get ready to battle on a handful of new maps that have been decimated by an earthquake. Finally tonight, we have a number of original articles for you to take a look at, as Chris Burns compares the RAZR MAXX HD and RAZR HD side-by-side in a new hands-on article. Chris also gave us his review of the MAINGEAR Potenza, and we ask if picking up the new $249 Chromebook is a good idea for students. One last thing to note before we go – we’ve released version 2.0 of our iOS app, making it compatible with the iPhone 5′s larger screen. You can get it right this minute from the iTunes Store by clicking this [download link]! Enjoy the rest of your night folks!
SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 18, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
From the ashes of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom is launching a new file-sharing service: Mega. Mega is like Megaupload but will be safe from raids and government interference because it has “ironclad safe harbors” in place to protect Mega. How does it work? More »
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has faced a lot of grief lately from pretty much everyone with a badge. His house was raided, and he was thrown in jail for a bit. However, he’s back and isn’t even close to getting out of the business that got him in trouble in the first place. Along with his past colleagues, Dotcom is starting another file-sharing service called “Mega.”
Dotcom describes Mega as a unique service that will solve the liability problems faced by many cloud storage services, and it will enhance the privacy rights of users. Then again, many critics are saying that Mega will simply be just another version of Megaupload that will skirt the legal issues that faced the old service, and will eventually be shut down just like before.
Certain aspects will indeed stay the same. Mega will be the same one-click, subscriber-based cloud service that will allow customers to upload and share large files, but the difference now is that files will first be encrypted before they upload, and anyone who downloads the files will receive a unique key for decryption purposes.
This means that Mega would not be able to view any files that are uploaded to its servers, which the company says would not make them responsible for its users’ uploaded content. Dotcom says that the only way that this new service would be deemed illegal is if encryption itself was illegal, according to Dotcom’s legal experts. However, Dotcom says his new service isn’t “a giant middle finger to Hollywood and the DoJ,” and he and his colleague note that if users violate copyright, there are rules in place to take care of it.
[via Wired]
Megaupload founder creates new file-sharing service, calls it “Mega” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
“Headlines from Britain to Malaysia, France to China, Germany to Brazil, Australia to the US. An apology can go a long way,” said Kim Dotcom in a recent tweet. It’s true. This comes after the New Zealand Prime Minister John Key issued a rather frank apology to the internet mogul saying, “I apologize to Mr Dotcom. I apologize to New Zealanders because every New Zealander… is entitled to be protected from the law when it comes to the GCSB, and we failed to provide that appropriate protection for him.”
PM John Key is of course referring to the spying conducted by the New Zealand government which lead to the dramatic take-down of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. As it turns out, members of the New Zealand government conducted the invasive investigation under the pretense Dotcom was a foreign nationalist when in fact he had acquired residency status, thus affording him the rights of the country.
As TorrentFreak points out, a report issued by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Paul Neazor found that a NZ security service did indeed wrongfully spy on Kim Dotcom and associate Bram van der Kolk. Apparently there was confusion about Dotcom’s residency status.
“As this matter went along what was discovered in the case of Dotcom and associated people was that resident status had been obtained on their behalf under the Immigration Act 1987 and carried forward under the later 2009 Act. It was understood incorrectly by the GCSB that a further step in the immigration process would have to be taken before Dotcom and associates had protection against interception of communications,” Neazor wrote. “The illegality arose because of changes in the Immigration Act wording and some confusion about which category Dotcom was in thereafter.”
It’s unclear where this leaves the case against Dotcom and Megaupload. The US is still seeking extradition however as time passes, this seems even more unlikely. Dotcom took to twitter following the apology and called on President Obama to “be good, fix the Megaupload mess, be the Internet hero, win another term with Mega users & I help Hollywood.”
As the trial sits in the court, it’s been said that Megaupload is about to relaunch its service. Once the most popular online data lockers, Megaupload will no doubt attempt to regain its swagger and users; Megabox will no doubt be a big part of the new Megaupload.
We’ve sort of known that Kim Dotcom was launching Megabox from the remains of Megaupload but we didn’t know exactly what it was. Now that Dotcom has leaked a video about the service, we have an idea: a music service that wants to destroy labels and put the artist in charge. More »
Megaupload will not be stopped. After a dramatic take-down followed by an anticlimactic trial, Kim Dotcom is quickly rebuilding the Megaupload empire. TorrentFreak recently detailed the relaunch, stating the coding is nearly done, the servers are ordered and Kim Dotcom is prepared to come back with a vengeance.
Now Kim Dotcom released the video above teasing the launch of Megabox. This is Megaupload’s long-talked about music locker service and perhaps the reason Dotcom was targeted so harshly. “This is what they don’t want you to have. Unchaining artists and fans. Megabox is coming soon,” says the YouTube description. And if the little LEGO Android statue shown is any indication, Megabox is likely built heavily for mobile.
Dotcom previously revealed that Megabox will allow artists to sell music directly to fans, keeping 90% of the profits. It’s unclear if that’s still the case, but it’s probably a safe bet that Dotcom and the rest of the Megaupload world are prepping Megabox to be the anti-RIAA and as pro-artist/fans as possible. And that’s awesome.
The case of Megaupload’s founder Kim Dotcom gets odder by the day, with the latest official documents revealing that the police simply didn’t know, or didn’t bother checking, if Kim Dotcom was a New Zealand citizen or not. More »
As more details leak out about the investigation on Kim Dotcom, the more embarrassing it gets for government officials. After thinking Dotcom had a doomsday device, it’s now known that government spies illegally bugged Dotcom at the behest of the US government. More »
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