Megaupload to be reborn as Me.Ga on 20 January

We’ll confess to being cautious about reporting the promises of Kim Dotcom, who tends to talk a lot about ambitious plans and celebrity backers without always following through.

But it seems his reboot of the Megaupload online storage service is going to happen, with a new name – Mega, or rather Me.Ga if you use its domain name – and a launch date set for 20 January, a year after Megaupload was shut down.

The domain has been registered in Gabon (hence the .Ga), which in theory also keeps it out of the hands of the US authorities. Dotcom says he’ll also be avoiding using any US hosting companies.

“It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process,” he says. No dot-coms for DotCom, you could say.

There may be a different kind of trouble ahead though. US officials have told CNET that Dotcom may be in breach of his bail conditions in New Zealand if he relaunches a site similar to Megaupload, since he told the court there in his application for bail that he had “no ability, let alone financial incentive available to me, to try to continue to operate the business”.

Watch this row rumble on.

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