Megaupload
Encyclopedia
Megaupload is an online Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

-based company established in 2005 for the use of uploading and downloading files. It includes a video browsing section in the site Megavideo, MegaLive, MegaPix and Megabox as well as a sister company called Megaporn (formerly Megarotic) which hosts user uploaded pornographic content (Megaupload itself also allows such content).

Usage

The basic service is available for free and allows users to upload files of up to 2 GB
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...

. Free users cannot download files larger than 1 GB, however. Free registered users are offered 200 GB of total file storage. Premium users have unlimited file storage. After a successful file upload, the user is given a unique URL which allows others to download the file.

Any file uploaded anonymously will expire if there are no downloads for at least 21 days. For free registered accounts, the file expiration period is 90 days. Premium accounts have no expiration period as long as the user remains a premium member.

Non-registered users have to wait 45 seconds in the download queue and a certain amount of time between transfers after a certain number of megabytes had been downloaded. Registered users have to wait 25 seconds in the download queue.

Paying premium members are able to hotlink.

Localization

The website is maintained in 20 languages, including Arabic, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, and Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...

.

Mega Manager

Megaupload also released its upload/download manager, Mega Manager, a download manager
Download manager
A download manager is a computer program dedicated to the task of downloading possibly unrelated stand-alone files from the Internet for storage...

 which features a link-checker for Megaupload links as well as options to manage uploaded files, and to access the online control box that is also on the Megaupload site. Mega Manager bears striking resemblances to Conceiva DownloadStudio
DownloadStudio
DownloadStudio is a shareware download manager and download accelerator developed and published by Conceiva.DownloadStudio can download files, programs, images, documents PDF, Flash files, entire Websites, FTP sites, streaming audio and streaming video from the Internet.DownloadStudio has been...

 version 5, self-evident in its "Options..." dialog box and some other aspects of the program. Mega Manager allows users to automatically resume interrupted up- and downloads, which is especially important when transferring large files or transferring several files unattended.

Megakey

Megakey is an adware
Adware
Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer. These advertisements can be in the form of a pop-up. They may also be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during...

 application which removes premium limitations on Mega services during "happy hour" periods in return for the verification of personal identity/demographic, and the substitution of ads on third party websites.

FileBox

FileBox is a Flash applet which can be embedded onto any external webpage. It allows for users to upload content to MegaUpload without having to visit the website itself or download the Mega Manager.

MegaVideo

MegaVideo is an associated, ad-supported video hosting service
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...

. For non-members, it is time-limited; it blocks itself after 72 minutes, and then allows to resume watching after a 30 minute period.

MegaPix

Launched in late 2010, MegaPix allows for the uploading of images, competing with other image-hosting services such as Photobucket
Photobucket
Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007....

, ImageShack
ImageShack
ImageShack is a free image hosting website. ImageShack has a subscription service but the majority of its revenue is produced from advertising related to its free image hosting. The imageshack.us Alexa ranking in September 25, 2007 was one of the top 40, but now as of September 25, 2011 it's...

, TinyPic
TinyPic
TinyPic is a photo and video sharing service, owned and operated by Photobucket.com , that allows users to upload, link and share, images and videos on the Internet. The idea is similar to URL shortening in which each uploaded image is given a relatively short internet address...

 and others.

MegaLive

MegaLive is a live video-streaming service, competing with Ustream
Ustream
Ustream is a website which consists of a network of diverse channels providing a platform for lifecasting and live video streaming of events online. Established in March 2007, the site has over 2,000,000 registered users who generate 1,500,000+ hours of live streamed content per month with over ten...

, Justin.tv
Justin.tv
Justin.tv is a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt in 2007 that allows anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts are called "channels", and users are encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called...

 and Livestream
Livestream
Livestream, formerly known as Mogulus, is a live streaming video platform that allows users to view and broadcast video content using a camera and a computer through the internet...

.

MegaBox

MegaBox is a music/audio-hosting service for the uploading of whole music libraries and playlists.

Inaccessibility in some countries

Although its incorporation is located in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, the company does not operate in Hong Kong. Users with Hong Kong IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

es have been banned since 2009. Not even the homepage was accessible by them. Any purchased premium accounts will still be able to access the Megaupload site in Hong Kong until the last membership day. Some third party download managers can circumvent this, for example, JDownloader but only if a proxy is set up and enabled in the program. IPs from Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

 have also been blocked. The reason for the block remains unclear, although many speculates thats is due to the very high internet speed limit in Hong Kong which cause losses on bandwidth.

As of 23 May 2010, access to Megaupload has been intermittently blocked by the internet authorities in Saudi Arabia by their regulator Communications and Information Technology Commission. Megavideo has also been blocked in the United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

 due to pornographic content being accessible through the service.

In Malaysia, as of 9 June 2011, the Malaysian government through Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission
Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission or Suruhanjaya Komunikasi dan Multimedia Malaysia is the regulator for the converging communications and multimedia industry in Malaysia...

 has ordered all ISPs in Malaysia to block Megaupload and Megavideo. Some ISPs have reportedly blocked all the sites on the list while other ISPs have been throttling connection speeds.

Criticism

Megaupload Toolbar is claimed to redirect users to a custom error page when a 404
HTTP 404
The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested. A 404 error should not be confused with "server not found" or similar errors, in which a connection to the...

 error occurs in the user's browser. It is also claimed to contain spyware. However, FBM software
FBM Software
FBM Software is a computer security company founded in 2001 by Silicon Valley professionals and headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada but is actually based in Makati, Philippines. It markets ZeroSpyware, an anti-spyware software, and other security, privacy, and productivity solutions for consumers...

 asserts that the Megaupload toolbar is free of spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK