Megaupload
Megaupload Ltd was a Hong Kong–based online company established in 2005 that operated from 2005 to 2012 providing online services related to file storage and viewing.
On 19 January 2012, the United States Department of Justice through the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the domain names and closed down the sites associated with Megaupload after the owners were arrested and indicted for allegedly operating as an organisation dedicated to copyright infringement. Subsequently, HK$330 million worth of assets were frozen by the Customs and Excise Department of Hong Kong. The company's founder, New Zealand resident Kim Dotcom, has denied any wrongdoing, and the case against Dotcom has been the subject of controversy over its legality. In 2017, a New Zealand judge ruled that Dotcom should be extradited to the United States, but Dotcom remained at liberty in New Zealand pending the results of an appeal. On 5 July 2018, the New Zealand Court of Appeal found Dotcom and three of his former colleagues were eligible to be extradited to the U.S. authorities. His lawyer said they would appeal to the New Zealand Supreme Court. The shutdown of Megaupload led to denial-of-service attacks on a range of websites belonging to the U.S. government and copyright organisations by the hacktivist group Anonymous.
On, Megaupload was relaunched as Mega under the domain name mega.co.nz. The re-launch date was chosen to coincide with the first anniversary of Megaupload's takedown by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Company and services
The company's registered office was on the 12th floor of the Shanghai Industrial Investment Building in Room 1204 in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.The company web services included Megaupload.com, a one-click hosting service; Megapix.com, an image hosting service; Megavideo.com and Megalive.com, video hosting services; and Megabox.com, a music hosting service. Other services included Megaclick, Megafund, Megakey and Megapay, all of which were advertisement and financial services. Along with this, four blogs were created including Megabest and Megaking. Two additional services—Megabackup and Megamovie—were in development before their closure.
| Website | Description of Service |
| Megavideo.com | Megavideo.com was an associated, ad-supported video hosting service. For non-members, it was time-limited; it blocked itself after 72 minutes, and then allowed users to resume watching after a 30-minute period. |
| Megapix.com | Launched in late 2010, Megapix.com allowed for the uploading of images, competing with other image-hosting services such as Photobucket, ImageShack, TinyPic, Imgur and others. |
| Megalive.com | Megalive.com was a live video-streaming service; it competed with Ustream, Justin.tv and Livestream. |
| Megabox.com | Megabox.com was a music/audio-hosting service for the uploading of whole music libraries and playlists. |
| Megaporn.com | Megaporn.com was a video streaming host service for uploading pornography. |
| Megaclick.com | Megaclick.com was an advertising service allowing for users to publish advertisements and website owners to earn money from displaying ads. |
| Megafund.com | Megafund.com was a funding website for users to apply for funding for their websites through submitting ideas. |
| Megakey.com | Megakey.com was the website for the software Megakey, which replaced common internet advertisements with ones promoting Mega services. It most notably however, provided users who downloaded it with Premium services on all Mega websites free of charge. |
| Megapay.com | Megapay.com was the website for MegaPay, an online mobile payment service similar to PayPal. Websites could integrate a "Pay by Mobile" button to allow users to purchase products via the service. |
| Megabest.com | Megabest.com was a blog focused on honouring worldwide achievers including people, companies, animals and products. |
| Megaking.com | Megaking.com was a lifestyle blog centred on luxury and beauty products, travel, food and everything expensive. |
| Megahelp.com | Megahelp.com was a news and charity blog that brought attention to people that needed help and people that provided help to the less fortunate. |
| Megagogo.com | Megagogo.com was a news blog aimed at playboys. |
Statistics
- Unique visitors: 82,764,913
- Page views : over 1,000,000,000
- Visitors per day: 50,000,000
- Reach: 4%
- Registered Members: 180,000,000
- Storage: 25 petabytes
- Once the 13th most visited sites on the Internet
- According to Sandvine, MegaUpload accounted for 1% of total traffic on fixed access networks in North America.
- In a proceeding before the High Court of New Zealand on 2 February 2012, Kim Dotcom stated that Megaupload was "hosting 12 billion unique files for over 100 million users."
Software
Mega Manager
Megaupload also released its upload/download manager, Mega Manager, a download manager that featured a link-checker for Megaupload links as well as options to manage uploaded files, and to access the online control box that was on Megaupload.Megakey
Megakey was an adware application which removed bandwidth limitations on Mega services during "happy hour" periods. In return, the users running Megakey agreed to supply some personal identification and demographic data and to allow the substitution of ads on third party websites they visited with those of Megaupload.Megabox
Megabox, a new form of media downloading site, was the first of its kind. Kim "Dotcom" described Megabox as "very similar to iTunes" except that it operated in a web browser using HTML5 technology and loaded "much faster than iTunes or anything else out there."FileBox
FileBox was a Flash applet that could be embedded onto any external webpage. It allowed users to upload content to Megaupload without having to visit the website itself or download the Mega Manager.Reception
Unavailability
Although incorporated in Hong Kong, the company did not operate there. From 2009 onward, users with Hong Kong IP addresses were banned from accessing the site. The reason for the block was never disclosed by Megaupload, but Hong Kong customs officials have suggested that the block was an attempt to hinder law enforcement investigation.As of 23 May 2010, access to Megaupload was intermittently blocked by the Internet authorities in Saudi Arabia by their regulator Communications and Information Technology Commission. Megavideo was also intermittently blocked in the United Arab Emirates due to pornographic content being accessible through the service.
From 9 June 2011 onward, the Malaysian government through Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission ordered all ISPs in Malaysia to block Megaupload and Megavideo. Some ISPs reportedly blocked all the sites on the list while other ISPs throttled connection speeds.
In July 2011, access to Megaupload and Megavideo was blocked in India for Reliance Entertainment customers, after a court order was obtained, citing illegal copies of the 2011 film Singham on file hosting sites.
On 19 January 2012, U.S. federal prosecutors in the state of Virginia shut down Megaupload and laid charges against its founder Kim Dotcom and others for allegedly breaching copyright infringement laws.
For a short time after the closure of the site, users could access material via Google's web cache and the Internet Archive. One day after the indictment, Google and Archive.org voluntarily removed the site mirrors to avoid the responsibility of hosting a website taken down for copyright infringement.
Criticism
In January 2011, MarkMonitor published a report entitled "Traffic Report: Online Piracy and Counterfeiting," which said that Megaupload and Megavideo were, along with RapidShare, the top three websites classified as "digital piracy," with more than 21 billion visits per year. Megaupload responded by stating: "Activity that violates our terms of service or our acceptable use policy is not tolerated, and we go to great lengths to swiftly process legitimate DMCA takedown notices." Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Forrester Research, pointed out that the number of visits did not necessarily indicate the number of downloads of illegal material.Megaupload Toolbar redirected users to a custom error page when a 404 error occurred in the user's browser. It was also said to contain spyware. FBM Software said that the Megaupload toolbar is free of spyware.
When a file was uploaded to Megaupload and another file with the same hash was already found to exist, the uploader would be asked if they would like to link to the already existing file. Therefore, a single file may have contained multiple links to it. This caused some controversy, since when a DMCA takedown notice was issued, only the link that was provided was removed.