Well, it looks like Kim Dotcom’s Mega, the cloud storage service and successor to now defunct Megaupload, is potentially facing its first big legal problem less than two weeks after launching to the public.

A new “collaborative” search engine, called Mega-Search.me, recently went online allowing Mega’s 1 million users to share the files they’ve uploaded to their own personal cloud lockers. It works by allowing people to add links to the files stored in their Mega account, which can then be searched publicly and used by anyone. The site allows you to search in multiple languages and for specific types of files. You can also vote on each submitted link, view the number of downloads for each file, and more.

The problem with Mega-Search.me is that most of the files seem to be illegally pirated music, movies, TV shows, software files, and lots of pornography. There is an “infringement” button linking to Mega’s policy that’s prominently featured on the top navigation, for whatever that’s worth (which is likely nothing).

Mega is supposed to be a cloud storage site that’s so unbelievably secure that Mega’s management team can’t even determine what’s hosted in each user’s account. That conveniently allows Mega to claim ignorance to facilitating piracy of digital media.

It’s likely that the creators of Mega-Search.me aren’t directly affiliated with Dotcom or Mega, but that doesn’t mean Mega isn’t on the hook here. First of all, the site is showing that Mega is being used for illegal purposes. And while Mega may not feel like it has a responsibility to police its users from ever uploading pirated files, being able to access them publicly on a site like Mega-Search.me definitely does obligate them to remove it.

And of course, if Mega can’t determine which of its million users uploaded the file, then how can it remove the file? This is much less of a genius logistical strategy for protection and more of a liability that could give authorities grounds to shut Mega down for infringing on copyrighted work.

It’ll be interesting to see how Mega response to the situation. If the service wants to legitimately be respected as a real business venture, obviously it’ll avoid supporting Mega-Search.me and figure out how to prevent this type of situation from happening in the future. If it doesn’t, then Mega will basically become a more of a hot bed for potentially illegal activity, and subsequently become the next nut for authorities to crack.

Via TechCrunch

Filed under: Cloud, Media, Security

Categorised as: Chief Digital Officer | Digital Media | Feedster

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