Kim Dotcom’s Mega, the cloud storage service launched two weeks ago, could be facing its first big hurdle in relation to a recent “collaborative” search engine Mega-Search.me by some intrepid developers that allowed Mega’s 1 million users to share files they’ve uploaded to their own personal cloud lockers.
Mega-Search.me is a crowdsourced service that allows anyone to add links to their own files on Mega. Although, the new search engine cannot index the files Mega’s users store on the service – for Mega’s architecture makes it impossible for Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) or other search engines to crawl Mega content- it heavily relies on users to voluntarily link the files hosted on Mega’s cloud storage. This way, other users can download the content into their own Mega stash or even to their hard drives.
Most of the files appearing on Mega-search.me are illegally pirated music, movies, TV shows, and software.
Although Kim Dotcom made it a point that the new site would be operated legally, it appears that mega-search.me in combination with Mega content creates a full blown piracy site.
While Mega may claim ignorance when authorities accuse it of facilitating piracy, it is obvious that they are aware of the fact that Mega is being used for illegal purposes. By allowing users to access those files publicly on Mega-Search.me, Mega is indirectly facilitating the distribution of pirated software, music and movies.
There’s an “infringement” button on the top navigation bar, but it only takes a user to Mega’s own copyright notice.
Two weeks ago, the global music industry planned to monitor the new cloud storage service closely from the day of its launch. Now it the new cloud service intends to stay legitimate in the long run, it has to accept the obligation to prevent users from linking content on Mega-Search.me before it comes in the notice of authorities.
