Your First Look At Kim Dotcom's Newest File-Sharing Site, Mega

Mega debuted exactly one year after New Zealand authorities arrested Dotcom on charges of racketeering, copyright infringement, and money laundering in connection to a similar service called Megaupload. Megaupload was shut down.

Mega is very similar to Dropbox, letting you upload files to an online locker and download them again later.

Mega users start off with 50 GB of free cloud storage and have the option to purchase more.

Click here to head straight to a screenshot walkthrough of Mega >

The goal of Mega is to be safer and more secure than Megaupload was before it shut down. However, Andy Greenberg of Forbes did some digging and found that might be the case:

But the security community knows that the boldest claims about new encryption technology demand the most scrutiny. And some crypto researchers are already punching holes in the secure lining of Mega’s cloud.

“It’s a nice website, but when it comes to cryptography they seem to have no experience,” says Nadim Kobeissi, a 22-year old cryptographer and creator of the secure chat software Cryptocat, who began poring over the public portions Mega’s code as soon as it debuted over the weekend. “Quite frankly it felt like I had coded this in 2011 while drunk."

Because of the huge demand and coverage surrounding Mega this weekend, it's pretty difficult to get access right now.

It took a few tries, but we were finally able to create an account. Our first impression of Mega is pretty lukewarm. We don't see it as something we can't live without, but we're still optimistic that more features are on the way that can make Mega a viable competitor to Dropbox and other file-storage services.

You can sign up for Mega here.