Next came Tony Lentino, the new CEO of Mega, who is also a major investor who has helped Dotcom through tough times—paying the rent on his house, for example, when he was in prison.
First question from the press: Will Mega be a “Dropbox killer?”
“I think there can be hundreds of competitors [in cloud storage], and they can all do well,” said Dotcom. “Some people won’t want encryption, and don’t care about it. I don’t want to see myself as a killer of anything. Ultimately we hope to list our company at the New Zealand stock exchange.”
What are the consequences for New Zealand?
“We are going to hire back all Megaupload employees who want to come back, and in addition will hire staff in New Zealand. We are a New Zealand company, New Zealand has been good to us. They saw there is something fishy about this whole case, and we want to give back. Over the coming years, we will hopefully create a few hundred jobs.”
What about copyright infringement?
Same answer as before. “We take things down!” said Dotcom. “We take things down. We did that with Megaupload, and went even further [by offering copyright owners direct access to the site].”
“There’s a very robust DMCA takedown process on Mega,” chimed in Ira Rothken, Dotcom’s main US-based lawyer. “There’s an automated form, as well as an e-mail process. It meets or exceeds the industry standard for takedowns.”
At the end of the questions, Mega’s relationship to New Zealand, the host country it looks like he may be bound to for some time, came up again. “This government was too easily convinced of this case [against Megaupload],” said Dotcom in answer to an early question. “I’m not a criminal and I’ve done nothing wrong. I would like to be an integral part of the New Zealand community. The Maori call New Zealand the ‘long white cloud.’ I’ve just made it a little bit longer.”
And with that, the questions were over—and the bar was open.