Last year, the Internet watched in shock and awe as the premiere file-hosting service, Megaupload, was taken down for alleged charges of copyright infringement and pirated content. Quickly thereafter, numerous sites started taking precautionary actions to avoid similar fates.
Never waivering in the face of US law, the entrepeneur behind Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, is launching a new service simply called Mega. Their website features a button which will “change the world on January 19th.”
The new service seems to be based on an outsourced, cloud-based platform. On their site, you can contact them if you are a developer and have access to multiple servers. The idea behind this is if the information is stored redundantly all over the world, it would literally be impossible to take down the entire site. Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay experimented with a globally distributed P2P system a few years ago, referred to as the hydra. The idea is that when you take down one website, several more appear online.
Under the “Limitations” section, they specify that any servers will have to be located outside of the US and will not be able to use the .com or .net domain type. This is undoubtedly to escape the wrath of US copyright laws.
It is only inevitable that users will use (or “abuse”) this new service by uploading and storing copyrighted content, and only time will tell how this issue is handled.