The U.S. Anti-piracy law SOPA and PIPA may be off the table for now, however, it did deal a a major blow to the 13th most visited site on the internet – “Megaupload” in some way.
Yesterday, the Justice Department of US shutdown Megaupload; one of the most popular online file sharing website in the world. Along with the closure of the website, they also arrested 7 people in connection with piracy and other charges. The downside of this was that several users might have lost legitimate files hosted on their servers forever.
However, it looks like Megaupload is now making its way back on the internetz in another form. A forum post on a website (via Giga OM) says that Megaupload is now back online through a new domain name called megavideo.biz. However, the domain does not work fully, but they do have a working IP which does say that the site is back and they are working on it to get back to earlier levels soon.
The message reads:
WE DON’T HAVE ANY DOMAIN NAME FOR NOW
ONLY THIS IP ADDRESS (http://109.236.83.66) BEWARE TO THE PISHING SITES!
This is the NEW MEGAUPLOAD SITE! we are working to be back full again
Bookmark the site and share the new address in facebook and twitter!
A quick WhoIS of the IP address shows that the server is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands by the RIPE Network Coordination Center and not Sweden where File sharing is an official religion 
. Ironically, the Megaupload operation was a international co-operation between United States and several other countries which included Netherlands, so there is no guarantee that the above IP address may stay up for a long time.
It is not clear whether the site owners have access to the uploaded files when the Feds seized the Megaupload domains and servers. However, it could be that the site owners might have kept backups of the files in other locations as well.
It would be interesting to see, if the site really comes back into operation and how they would allow users to download files which they have already uploaded. If you have been a Megaupload user, don’t forget to check out several alternatives to Megaupload to store files in the cloud and other ways to share files online.
