Well – that didn't take long. It appears MegaUpload's resurrection as me.ga has already been thwarted by the Gabonese government. The republic's Minster of Communications Blaise Lourmbe insisted that Gabon will not "serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people". While this doesn't necessarily mean the end of MegaUpload's revival, the site will have to forgo its planned use of me.ga.
In response to the loss of its domain, MegaUpload necromancer Kim Dotcom took to Twitter. "The reach of the US & Vivendi: Gabon Minister announced Me.ga domain will be suspended. Calls cloud storage site cyber crime." It's unclear how Vivendi, known to gamers as Activision-Blizzard's parent company, may be involved.
Also on Twitter, Dotcom noted he's prepared for this setback, armed with alternate domains. However, surely no alternatives are so stylishly succinct as "me.ga".
Earlier, Dotcom explained that MegaUpload will be more robust, employing technology buzzwords like "cloud" and "encryption". For starters, the site will be hosted across many servers located throughout the world – countries where MegaUpload's new approach is expected to be in compliance with local laws. Dotcom essentially hopes that willful ignorance of illegally copied materials – using AES encryption to obfuscate uploads from MegaUpload operators – will be enough to keep authorities at bay. Only uploaders (and the people they choose to share those files with) will actually know what's being uploaded.
Me.ga, which once redirected to kim.com/mega, can still be reached using that address. Only the domain name pointing to it, me.ga, was impacted. MegaUpload still seems poised for its January 19 launch.
Interestingly though, me.ga seems to already have a new owner: the domain now redirects this twitter account run by @O (omega). Judging by his or her tweets, @O isn't exactly a Kim Dotcom fan either.