A
German-born New Zealand-based Internet entrepreneur who is fighting extradition
to the US has launched a new file-sharing site. The move came exactly a year
after his Megaupload site was shut down by the authorities.
Kim Dotcom
announced the launch of his new website via his account on the microblogging
site Twitter, claiming that there had been "100,000 registered users in
less than 1 hour. Fastest growing start-up in Internet history?"
He later
tweeted that the site had received "250,000 user registrations. Server
capacity on maximum load. Should get better when initial frenzy is over.
Wow!!!"
One year
ago, Dotcom's previous file-sharing service had been shut down in a raid on his
home outside of Auckland after US authorities filed a series of charges against
him, including money laundering, racketeering and copyright theft. Since then,
he has since been fighting possible extradition to the United States. His next
hearing is due in March.
US
authorities allege that Megaupload took in more than $175 million (131 million
euros) in illegal funds and cost the copyright holders more than $500 million
in lost royalties by offering pirated copies of movies, music and other content
for free.
Dotcom, who
was born Kim Schmitz in the northern German city of Kiel, said the new site was
designed to avoid the legal trouble that Megaupload had run into.
"The
nature of this service is people uploading something, storing it in the cloud
and making it available to others to download, is protected by the law,"
Dotcom said.
His partner
in the new operation and co-defendant against charges related to Megaupload,
Finn Batato, said state-of-the-art encryption would ensure that only users, not
the site's adminstrators, would know what was being uploaded.
"The
new encryption means full privacy," Batato said. "Piracy will not be
tolerated. We will have strong terms and conditions in place and we will comply
with all relevant laws."
He said the
encryption feature would also prevent governments from snooping on the site's
users.
The
38-year-old Dotcom also holds Finnish citizenship and is a permanent resident
of New Zealand.
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