Megaupload
 |
|
| Limited | |
| Fate | Shut down by the United States Department of Justice |
| Successor | Mega, Ltd. |
| Founded | Hong Kong (21 March 2005) |
| Founder | Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) |
| Defunct | 19 January 2012 |
| Headquarters | Hong Kong |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Finn Batato (CMO) |
| Services | Online file hosting |
| $175 million+ | |
|
Number of employees
|
155 |
| Website | www |
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. It was announced in June 2016 that it would be relaunched in January 2017.Kim Dotcom claims the new Megaupload service will include a Bitcoin microtransaction linked to each file transfer using a system called Bitcache and the service will include the over 100 million users of the previous service.
On 19 January 2012, the United States Department of Justice seized the domain names and closed down the sites associated with Megaupload after the owners were arrested and indicted for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated to copyright infringement. Subsequently, HK$330 million (approximately US$42 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. As of 2015, Kim Dotcom was fighting extradition to the United States. The shutdown of Megaupload led to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on a range of websites belonging to the U.S. government and copyright organizations by the Hacktivist group Anonymous.
On 19 January 2013, Megaupload was re-launched as Mega under the domain name mega.co.nz (later moved to mega.nz). The re-launch date was chosen to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Megaupload's takedown by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Wikipedia