The successor, mega.nz, is genuinely a great service. I know doctors who use it for (legally) sending patient scans, with the key sent OOB, for example. It has a nice linux CLI, mega-cmd, and is intelligently made, cheap, and widely available.
Unlike Megaupload, I have only used MEGA for personal use and not pirated content download.
I think MEGA being fully encrypted was their answer to them being targeted for hosting any illegal content (with MEGA, they were hosting encrypted files, which they don't have access to themselves because the encryption key remains with the client). Did it take off as the replacement for pirated content sharing because of it?
I never really understood how MEGA is any better. Sure, personal files are encrypted, and thus it's hard to detect pirated files that I upload for myself. But a lot of piracy happens with publicly downloadable files, which MEGA can definitely decrypt and search for copyright violations.
I'll be honest -- I've used both MEGA and Megaupload for piracy, and MEGA makes it easier.
> But a lot of piracy happens with publicly downloadable files, which MEGA can definitely decrypt and search for copyright violations.
This is straight up wrong. Mega cannot decrypt files and search for copyright files just like that. They need to have the key for that. I have shared a lot of copyrighted stuff on mega and the links are still available publicly but in closed forums( still active ). mega would've taken it down a long time back if they knew what was in it. They can only take down files when corpos notify them with the base links to the file. If they don't it stays up.
I once downloaded copyrighted material to my drive. I never gave the key out, yet a few days later it was no longer downloadable due to said copyright violation. Has Mega's encrypted design been audited?
Did you import the copyrighted material from someplace else ? The base link + key was given to you by somebody else ? If YES then copyright holder got hold of the base link and notified mega. This is common.
OR
You uploaded copyrighted material to your own computer to your own cloud, downloaded it and the file got taken down ? This is not possible. If yes then I am in trouble.
> But a lot of piracy happens with publicly downloadable files, which MEGA can definitely decrypt and search for copyright violations
How would MEGA do this, without crawling the web looking for links + keys? Which is certainly something they'd have no interest in doing.
Naturally, I'm sure that third party "rights enforcement" companies might trawl for these links and look for infringing content and issue a takedown notice to MEGA, but there must be an ongoing arms race between people sharing links+keys and the bots crawling for them.
Interestingly, a large percentage of my incoming spam has a mega.nz reply-to/return-path. Does mega.nz allow anonymous emails, or are these just spoofed?
I get that the fees are high, but if that is where you happen to have a lot of value stored, then maybe it is still worthwhile... especially if they want a degree of anonymity.
Perhaps ignoring for the sake of my question, whether the demand for Bitcoin will increase enough for the price to increase 10,000 times (or perhaps people misplacing their bitcoins, anything else?)...
I'm curious about your thoughts on something. If someone thought the price would go up by that much, wouldn't it make sense to put all available money into Bitcoin, except enough to make payments where only USD (or not Bitcoin) is accepted - plus some emergency fund, etc.
Because they would be keeping all possible money in Bitcoin, I think it would make more sense for someone who thought it was likely Bitcoin was going to increase 10,000 times in the next year to make every possible purchase in Bitcoin. Am I missing something? Transaction fees have been 'sorted' now with other layers, right?
Disclaimer: I have always been fairly skeptical of increases in cryptocurrency prices (which means I've been wrong so far), and don't see the use cases which will lead to it holding value long term. I also have some tiny amount (fraction) of Bitcoin as change from some experimentation earlier, so I suppose I would benefit greatly from a 10,000 increase. It has already increased to more than I put in to begin with I suppose, so even that small amount might earn more next year than I would from doing a day job.
Editing to note: the last sentence does look a bit sarcastic, but it is meant it in friendly jest. I think long term holders of cryptocurrencies have done very well so far, so hopefully they won't grudge me thinking the huge increases sound to good to be true.
Also, I see someone has noted the high fees in another comment, so perhaps this issue is not solved.
Unlike Megaupload, I have only used MEGA for personal use and not pirated content download.
I think MEGA being fully encrypted was their answer to them being targeted for hosting any illegal content (with MEGA, they were hosting encrypted files, which they don't have access to themselves because the encryption key remains with the client). Did it take off as the replacement for pirated content sharing because of it?