Kim.Com’s Mega Accepts Bitcoin

Kim Dotcom announced via Twitter today that his new website Mega would be accepting Bitcoin through the payment system bitvoucher.co, where one can see Mega services offered in Bitcoin with relatively (for BTC) high exchange rates. Here are three monthly options and three yearly options (no refund or exchange). Rumors abound that Kim Dotcom has been  buying quite a bit of Bitcoin, thus explaining in part the recent runout. Due to its pseudonymous nature, this is not confirmed, but Dotcom is talking large, saying he wants Mega to go public in 18 months.  Dotcom’s tweet of the change over at Mega came from his Twitter account, like so much…

• Mega Pro I: 500GB of data storage and 1TB of bandwidth for 0.5184 Bitcoin per month or 5.1888 Bitcoin per year.

• Mega Pro II: 2TB of data storage and 4TB bandwidth for 1.0373 Bitcoin per month or 10.3781 Bitcoin per year.

• Mega Pro III: 4TB of data storage and 8TB bandwidth per month for 1.5563 Bitcoin per month or 15.5674 Bitcoin per year.

Dotcom also implied that he wishes for Mega to offer a variety of encrypted services and other features such as email. Here is a Silver Vigilante review of Mega:

In symbolic fashion, one year after file-storage site MegaUpload was brought to its knees and executed by US law enforcement officials targeting piracy, founder Kim DotCom introduced his followers on Twitter to his new venture, Mega. ”As of this minute one year ago #Megaupload was destroyed by the US Government. Welcome to http://Mega.co.nz,” DotCom tweeted today. He  tweeted shortly thereafter: ”Site is extremely busy. Currently thousands of user registrations PER MINUTE.” And indeed, as of this writing the site was difficult to access at times, perhaps because of heavy traffic, something another novel digital service, PayPal, has also been suffering.
DotCom also promised that users would would get 50GB of storage for free and that his lawyers are working on giving former MegaUpload premium users their premium statuses on the new site.

Mega offers encryption and is said to be an “awesome cloud storage service that will help protect your privacy” – it offers three plans with added storage space and bandwidth.

On top of the free storage, Mega — which offers encryption and is being touted as “an awesome cloud storage service that will help protect your privacy” — offers three pricing plans with added storage space and bandwidth.

MegaUpload, his prior storage locker, went up in 2005.  It was shutdown by US federal agencies as his mansion in New Zealand was raided, which argued on behalf of Hollywood that he had facilitated copyright infringement, although the law states (from ’96) that what users upload to a site is not a site maintainers legal responsibility, unless they abet it or do not take swift action against illegal file-sharing complaints, etc.  So, DotCom was taken to court by US officials who charged that DotCom had been running a  ”criminal enterprise.”

Mega.co.nz is a cloud-based storage locker, and MegaUpload’s defenseteam says “DotCom is ”entitled to innovate and work in technology like any other innocent New Zealander” until he’s found to be guilty…

Ira Rothken, a DotCom lawyer, recently told  Ars Technica during a recent interview that anyone who tries to take down Mega will have no legal ground to do so. ”You have companies like Dropbox and Google with Drive with materially similar technologies,” Rothken said. “and they are in business and they’re thriving — and Mega adds encryption.”

DotCom’s extradition hearing is scheduled for March as US authorities will try to move the entreprenuer from New Zealand to a cage in the US. Some reports suggest the hearing might be pushed back until July.

From Mega.co.nz:

We are a dedicated group of technologists who were given the time, opportunity and Internet access to build an awesome cloud storage service that will help protect your privacy. We have programmed this Internet service from scratch in Auckland, New Zealand. Unlike most of our competitors, we use a state of the art browser based encryption technology where you, not us, control the keys. Our design group includes Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk, and Finn Batato. Our CEO, industry veteran Tony Lentino, has experience running a renowned global domain registry. We hope you like it.

And so, Kim DotCom has matured, stepping onto the platform of big data heavyweights such as Dropbox and Google.  Using cloud based storage solutions when storing private information online means finding a storage provider that offers zero knowledge privacy. In summation, zero knowledge privacy encrypts your information to the point not even employees of your cloud storage provider can access your information. A Backblaze review shows they offer a zero knowledge backup services policy. Dropbox does not have such a policy, but with that you can use TrueCrypt. SpiderOak resembles Dropbox, but it will encrypt your data before your transfer it and implements a zero-knowledge privacy policy. You all receive 2 GB of space for free.

As Trace Mayer of How To Vanish writes:

One overly cautious rule of computer security is to assume that anything that takes place online is open to compromise. You should treat anything you do on the Internet as susceptible to interception.

But this does not mean you should avoid the Internet entirely or not employ protective privacy hygeine like using Bitcoin to pay for your VPN. After all, for now we have bills to pay, gifts or movie tickets to buy and bank accounts to monitor online and we can do all of this while being cognizant of our digital privacy.

More SV Content: Listen To This Interview Of Trace By SV:

Mega markets themselves as “The Privacy Company,”

MEGA is Cloud Storage with Powerful Always-On Privacy

MEGA provides robust cloud storage with convenient and powerful always-on privacy. MEGA believes in your right to privacy and provides you with the technology tools to protect it. We call it User Controlled Encryption, or UCE, and it happens automatically.

 What is MEGA User Controlled Encryption?

All files stored on MEGA are encrypted. All data transfers from and to MEGA are encrypted. And while most cloud storage providers can and do claim the same, MEGA is different – unlike the industry norm where the cloud storage provider holds the decryption key, with MEGA, you control the encryption, you hold the keys, and you decide who you grant or deny access to your files, without requiring any risky software installs. It’s all happening in your web browser!

MEGA Future

The MEGA cloud is just the beginning. In the future, MEGA will provide UCE in your browser for a wide range of applications without the need to install anything. Our technology will protect your emails, calls, chats and video streams.

THIS is the key:  ”unlike the industry norm where the cloud storage provider holds the decryption key, with MEGA, you control the encryption, you hold the keys, and you decide who you grant or deny access to your files, without requiring any risky software installs. It’s all happening in your web browser!”

So, while Mega does not directly mention zero knowledge privacy policy, and should, they do describe a technology that is reminiscent of Bitcoin, and thus enables the user to keep their data secure.

At the top of its privacy advertisement, the website includes this quote:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference.
-Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12

The company’s privacy policy reads as such:

Your data is encrypted by you before upload to our system and therefore we do not and cannot access that content unless we are provided with the decryption key. You may give access to others by providing them with a link and decryption key and you shall be responsible for their compliance with this Policy.

If it isn’t clear by now, Kim DotCom has been true to his positioning for the Internet and freedom with Mega. Silver Vigilante CAN recommend Mega for individuals and businesses looking to use these novel cloud based storage systems, and will be using them indeed himself in the near future.

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