SoundCtrl – Kim Dotcom’s file-hosting service Mega launches

By Keith Nelson Jr.

On January 20, 2012 the New Zealand home of eccentric Megaupload CEO Kim Dotcom was raided and he was arrested over suspicions of facilitating over $500 million of music, videos, and movies through the file-sharing site. On June 20, 2012 the U.S Department of Justice’s Internet Enemy #1 announced the new music service Megabox would “unchain” artists from the grips of traditional record label deals. The music service is rumored to be providing musicians a marketplace to attain 90% of ad revenue from their downloads whether free or paid. On January 20, 2013, a full year after Dotcom got the Pablo Escobar treatment, the successor to the Megaupload brand debuted.

Just not as Megabox.

Unveiled this weekend was the beta of the file-locker service, Mega which offers encrypted cloud storage along with 500 GBs of free space. Located at mega.co.nz (the site is based in New Zealand) the service also offers paid tiers ranging from a montly fee of $9.99 to $29.99 that offer 2TB storage/4TB bandwith or 4 TB storage/8TB bandwidth respectively. Dotcom says that he and his team of lawyers are working to restore the premium accounts from Megaupload removed due to the ongoing legal battle and appropriate them for Mega.

Operating in its beta stage, Mega’s interface is relatively intuitive with Users are allowed to upload single files or batch files in a folder with custom settings options offering the ability to adjust the number of (simultaneous uploads) at a time. Mega users can share folders between each other and with non-users (they will be prompted to join). Accessing the site was arduous in itself at times, an inconvenience Dotcom attributed to the high demand reportedly reaching 100,000 registered users within the first hour. The self-proclaimed “privacy company” employs User Controlled Encryption (UCE), a somewhat self-explanatory security measure where Mega users set the keys to access their files. Mega is optimized for all browsers; however, representatives at Mega LTD name Google Chrome the best browser for Mega utilization.

As of right now, Mega’s primary advantages over other popular cloud-based storage are the 50 GB’s of storage for free users and the UES encryption. There are promises of mobile optimization, and even the API is released to allow developers to create apps to be featured for and on Mega(after a thorough security check). Dotcom says the highly anticipated music service Megabox will be released in six months but recently sent this picture out to the official Twitter page of the Motion Picture Association of America: