Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Dotcom parties as new 'legal' site launched

Updated at 10:25 pm on 20 January 2013

The founder of the outlawed file-sharing website Megaupload has launched a new site while awaiting extradition to the United States to face charges of internet piracy.

Afterwards, hundreds of people gathered at the mansion of the internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom for the launch party.

Mr Dotcom says he will not sue the New Zealand government if the case against him is not proven.

If the charges levelled against him are not proven it is only the US government from which his lawyers will be seeking compensation, he says.

Party piece

Kim Dotcom's party included a re-enactment of the police raids against him last year and featured a helicopter and men dressed as armed police abseilling down from the roof of his house.

The new website, Mega.co.nz went live on Sunday morning, to replace Megaupload which was shut down by authorities for allegedly breaching copyright laws.

Mr Dotcom says his new online file-sharing project, Mega.co.nz, is fully compliant with the law and is not meant as a revenge on the US authorities, the BBC reports.

"This start-up has been under a lot of scrutiny by our legal team and they looked at every aspect of the new business and made sure that everything is fully compliant with all the laws and we are not concerned that we need to worry about anything, in that respect."

When Megaupload was closed down by US authorities a year ago, Mr Dotcom and other site operators were arrested and charged with internet copyright fraud.

Prosecutors in the US accused claimed that Mr Dotcom's outlawed website cost copyright holders more than $US500,000 in lost revenue.

But Mr Dotcom says he is not responsible for copyright infringements by the site's users.

New Zealand company Instra has been providing technical support to Mega and chief executive Brian Clarkson says a lot of time has been put into making sure copyright owners' rights are protected in the new site.

Mr Clarkson says there will always be people who misuse the internet, but if the team is notified of any stolen material uploaded they will remove it.

"We will also, in due course, be providing copyright owners with the ability to take down themselves any files which they know are infringing."

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