Who or what was Megaupload?

The Gate through the Office of Megaupload in Hongkong

Megaupload was a Sharehoster, in addition to the advertising through paid premium accounts funded. Megaupload was included with Rapidshare and Media Fire the world's most famous file hosting providers.

On 19 January 2012 the service was shut down in the wake of investigations by the FBI.

The company was known as "Megaupload Ltd." Registered, based in Hong Kong. The website was in the meantime, according to the data analysis company Alexa Internet ranked 73 of the most visited sites in the world.

In 2007, Focus magazine reported, Megaupload stand behind the capital due to investment fraud convicted New Economy actor Kim Schmitz. The company denied this.

Kim Schmitz, however, was in January,12, 2012 along with three other persons arrested and charged in New Zealand due to alleged copyright violations in connection with Megaupload.

Megaupload allowed to upload files of unlimited size, however, could only have a Premium account to download files that exceed a size of 1 GB (1024 MB). The free service could be used with various restrictions (waiting time until the start of the download limit of the allowed traffic and bandwidth).

As with RapidShare, these restrictions are disabled by purchasing a premium account for access. Among the services included Megaupload, Megavideo, which was used among others by Kino.to for streaming.

2011, Megaupload and Kim Schmitz were due to suspected copyright infringement of the adult provider "Perfect 10" sued for 5 million U.S. dollars in damages. The suit ended in a settlement of an unknown amount.

December 2011 Megaupload published the  "mega song". For the title of the comments of various celebrities (Will.i.am, Sean Combs, Kanye West, Chris Brown, Jamie Foxx, Kim Kardashian, Lil Jon, The Game, Floyd Mayweather, Serena Williams and Ciara) were edited together to Sharehoster. Through its presence in the accompanying video, the link between Kim Schmitz and Megaupload confirmed.

Also in December 2011 was known that Megaupload has worked on a project titled MegaBox, that artists should allow cloud-based publication of their music in an online store, with 90 percent of the revenue to these would be paid and free downloads are remunerated by Megaupload. A successful test phase for the project was already completed.