Kim Dotcom Loses Me.ga Domain Name, Blames US

The African country of Gabon has sabotaged Kim Dotcom’s plans for a comeback after his Megaupload file-sharing site was closed for piracy in January – by denying him access to the me.ga domain on which he planned to launch his new cloud storage service, Mega.

As the country responsible for the .ga country code top-level domain (ccTLD), Gabon has ordered the closure of www.me.ga, the address for Kim Dotcom’s latest cloud storage project which he plans to launch in January was aplans to launch in Jnanuary..

Mega, the successor to Megaupload, will allow users to upload, store and share photos, documents, music and video, but this time the platform will employ encryption, which Dotcom says will make the Mega operators immune to any copyright liability.

At the moment, the address has been taken over by ideologically motivated hackers, who claim they will sell the address to Dotcom’s enemies and donate 10 percent of profits to charity.

Despite this, Dotcom is confident the launch of Mega will remain on schedule.

Trouble in Gabon

Gabon Telecom, which operates the .ga ccTLD, is owned by Maroc Telecom, which is in turn part-owned by Vivendi, the French mass media and telecommunications giant. Considering the fact that Dotcom’s previous project was accused of creating huge losses for the entertainment industry, it is not surprising that the address was closed.

“I have instructed my departments to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga,”Blaise Louemb,Gabon’s communication minister said in a statement. “Gabon cannot serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people.”

According to Louemb, the address was initially registered in France and then transferred to Dotcom, so the ministry had no way of knowing what it would be used for.

Megaupload founder has been quick to blame the US for the loss of the domain name, but says the launch will go ahead, although at a different address. According to an earlier announcement, Mega will launch on 20 January 2013, exactly a year after Dotcom was first arrested on suspicion of online piracy, fraud and money laundering.

The domain will not remain empty – it has already been taken over by a group of hackers calling themselves ‘Omega’, who own the extremely valuable twitter handle ‘@O’. The group also controls the Ome.ga domain. For several hours on Tuesday, visitors to me.ga were redirected to the hackers’ Twitter feed.

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“Kim Dotcom is not better nor worse than Universal. He himself is an industry, only here to pollute,” Omega spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

“We’re pure in a diogenist way, we’re the true pirates, the true anarchists. Kim Dotcom is only taking advantage of us all, he is a megalomaniac with lawyers here to take advantage of us all, the nobodies, the artists he wants to profit from,” they added.

Omega has claimed it will sell the domain to the highest bidder, which could turn out to be Vivendi or Universal Music.

Some sources have suggested that Omega is the original owner of the me.ga address, but fell out with Dotcom – a possibility which would explain how the website was taken over so quickly.

Earlier this week, Dotcom suggested that Mega and his lawsuit against the US government could help pay for the Pacific Fibre project – an underwater cable that could connect New Zealand, Australia and US.

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