TorrentFreak

A Gabon government minister has said that his country will not be used as a base for committing copyright infringement and has announced that his country will seize the new Me.Ga domain. But while Dotcom blames the United States and entertainment company Vivendi, a group of hackers say they have taken over the domain. Speaking with TorrentFreak the group say that they are the true pirates and that Dotcom is a megalomaniac. “He himself is an industry, only here to pollute,” they say.

Megaupload has responded to U.S. Government claims that the company tried to “extort” the Department of Justice by offering it a deal. A “perverse conception” according to Megaupload’s legal team, and to prove this point the attorneys published the agreement that was proposed to the authorities. In the email Megaupload offered to drop the service requirement dispute in exchange for access to the company’s assets.

Kim Dotcom has continued to supply more details on his new Megaupload project which is set launch early next year. Today he reveals that the new service will operate on the Gabon-based domain name ME.GA. In addition, Dotcom warns other cloud storage sites that it’s not safe to host their services in the United States, or use .com and .net domains.

By seizing the servers of Megaupload, the U.S. Government also confiscated the personal belongings of many innocent users. One entrepreneur has asked the court to return his data but this request is meeting resistance from the authorities. The U.S. Government points out that the Megaupload user in question may not technically be the owner of his uploaded files. In addition they accuse him of hosting pirated copies of popular music.

To reduce online piracy, Google has implemented several changes to its search engine in recent years. Among other things, Google has blacklisted dozens of piracy related terms from appearing in its autocomplete and instant services. Megaupload is one of these search terms, and nine months after the last infringement took place the name of Kim Dotcom’s file-hosting service is still being censored. This begs the question, what other terms are needlessly censored by Google’s blacklist?

January this year the U.S. Government destroyed Megaupload, but founder Kim Dotcom is a not done with the file-hosting business yet and is preparing a comeback with something bigger and better. Over the past months a group of coders have been working hard on the new “Mega” venture and Dotcom announced today that the raid-proof service will launch exactly one year after Megaupload was shut down.

The U.S. Government has just submitted its objections to Megaupload’s motion to temporarily dismiss the criminal indictment against the company. Megaupload’s lawyers had argued that a dismissal would allow the cyberlocker to rehabilitate itself, but the U.S. believes this can’t happen as Dotcom has sworn that the old Megaupload won’t return. According to Kim Dotcom the DoJ’s opposition is “full of frustration.” “Their bluff case is falling apart,” he says.