Post date: Jan 19, 2013 11:51:31 AM
Kim Dotcom, the flamboyant founder of outlawed file-sharing internet website Megaupload.com, said his latest start-up is not about embarrassing the US authorities that closed him down.
COATSVILLE, NEW ZEALAND (JANUARY 19, 2013) (REUTERS) - Kim Dotcom, founder of outlawed file-sharing website Megaupload, said on Saturday (January 19) his new "cyberlocker" is not a way to exact revenge on the U.S. authorities who planned a raid on his home, closed Megaupload, and charged him with online piracy for which he faces years in prison if found guilty.
Dotcom said his new offering, Mega.co.nz, which will launch on Sunday (January 20) even as he and three of his colleagues await extradition from New Zealand to the United States, complied with the law and warned that attempts to take it down would be futile."This is not some kind of finger to the U.S. government or to Hollywood. This is innovative people that have been wronged taking the time that they have to create something new and put seven years of experience of building awesome internet technologies into a new product that is going to make the internet a better place and that is going to be beneficial for our users," Dotcom told Reuters at his sprawling estate in the bucolic hills of Coatesville, just outside Auckland, New Zealand, a country known more for sheep, rugby and the Hobbit, than flamboyant tech tycoons.
"Legally, there's just nothing there that could be used to shut us down, this site is just as legitimate and has the right to exist as Dropbox, Boxnet and other the other competitors in this space," he said, referring to other popular cloud storage services.
U.S. prosecutors argue that Dotcom in a statement said he had no intention of starting a new internet business until his extradition was resolved.
Last January, New Zealand's elite special tactics forces landed by helicopter at dawn in the grounds of Dotcom's mansion, worth roughly 30 million New Zealand dollars and featuring a servants' wing, hedge maze and life-size statues of giraffes and a rhinoceros, to arrest him and his colleagues at the request of the FBI.