📸

innocent and we will prevail. Sometimes good things come out of terrible events. If it wasn’t for the raid, we wouldn’t have Mega. The launch of Mega isn’t about mocking any government or Hollywood. This is about our right to innovate and start a new business. What we are offering is a smarter, faster and more secure way of cloud storage. We would also like to open a new conversation about the future of internet freedom. The internet belongs to no man, or industry or government.

The whole launch was a choreographed performance, including a group of actors conducting a fake FBI raid while a helicopter buzzed the crowd. Dotcom’s speech blended his initial rallying cry of copyright oppression with dire warnings of government surveillance. “Mega believes in your right to privacy,” he said. “By using Mega you say no to those who want to know everything about you.” There were dancers performing to Dotcom’s electronic dance music, comedians breaking up stages of the launch, and eventually a Q&A session with Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk.

“These are the indicted,” Dotcom said. Stunned, tired and wired, the coders climbed the stairs to the stage and took their seats. Van der Kolk: “And we’re sitting there like zombies. It was awesome.” Sociable Batato beamed to the crowd as he came on, with cheers ringing out from Auckland’s socialites. Three other chairs were brought up, one for Tony Lentino, another for his US-based lawyer, Ira Rothken, and Bob Amsterdam, international human rights lawyer. Dotcom sat at the centre, fielded questions and forecast plans for the future.

There would be a share offering, he said, although some way down the track. There were new products coming — MegaBox, which would make music available and MegaMovie, which would do likewise for film. Then there was MegaKey, which would make it all work for free. The “Key” was an application which would strip out ads from browsers and allow Mega’s own advertisers to take the space. “It allows users to get content for free in exchange for installing a small piece of software which allows advertisers to get a bit closer to you.”

And, of course, there were questions about the FBI charges. “They are trying to blame us for an internet phenomenon,” he told the global audience. Half the content passing through any internet service provider was pirated — “Every internet company has to deal with the same problems.” YouTube, he said, was filled with copyrighted material. People could find infringing material by searching for it on Google. “Why are these guys not in jail?”

The press conference ended and the party began.

📸