8 ms·

First mega.co.nz indexer and search engine

88 points by agopaul 14y ago

sergiotapia 14y ago
Can someone clear this up for me? How can I download someone's private uploads? Is the key to "unlock" the file embedded in the URL gibberish?
- dewey 14y ago
  Correct, that's the file key and you can choose between appending it to the URL or transfer it to a friend through a secure channel.
  - sergiotapia 14y ago
    Thank you for answering so quickly. So where is this scraper getting the URL's from? A forum or something?
    - agopaul 14y ago
      None of these are scapped i suppose. It's all user submitted stuff
SODaniel 14y ago
This being a publicly available index pointing to data stored, I can only assume that encrypted or not the owner of 'mega' is still liable for any copyrighted material hosted.
- wmf 14y ago
  Presumably they never look at such indicies so they'd only be liable after someone notified them of infringement.
  - rscale 14y ago
    Willful blindness isn't a particularly strong defense. Aimster tried it and failed.
    - NZ_Matt 14y ago
      Youtube used that defense and got away with it, isn't this what the DMCA is for?
    - watty 14y ago
      I'm not sure I follow - how are they legally being willfully blind? They can't offer private encrypted hosting AND know what they're hosting at the same time. Those two things are mutually exclusive.
      - wmf 14y ago
        We're talking about blindness of the search engines. Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it.
        watty 14y ago
        Mega only knows the file name given, they don't know what is included. Google for "filetype:torrent + windows".
        AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it. Are you serious? You expect them to scour the internet for third party websites and then scrape them for links? How are they even supposed to know whether a particular instance is infringing or licensed? What happens when the third party site prohibits scraping? It isn't their job to be the copyright police. You cannot fix the problem of copyright enforcement being too expensive by foisting the cost onto a third party -- that doesn't fix that it's too expensive, it's just a textbook case of copyright owners engaging in the economic pollution known as externalizing costs.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  It's the internet. You can't trust the labels on things, especially when it comes to piracy.
codemac 14y ago
Firefox 19.0 (a beta release) is too old to download a file? Can someone explain this to me? I wish they'd tell me exactly which API they're using..
- petitmiam 14y ago
  They explain a little more in their blog: https://mega.co.nz/#blog_1 https://mega.co.nz/#blog_1
  - codemac 14y ago
    Ah ok, they have to do the file handling in javascript for the decryption? I hadn't thought about that. Thank you for the link!
- doublec 14y ago
  Mega are using the file-system-api: http://www.w3.org/TR/file-system-api/ http://www.w3.org/TR/file-system-api/ It hasn't been widely implemented and may be due for change: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012OctDec/0491.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012OctDe...
- bbrizzi 14y ago
  Mozilla explains why they don't support the FileSystem API on their blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/why-no-filesystem-api-in-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/why-no-filesystem-api-in-f...
telecuda 14y ago
Here's the part I don't get: IP addresses, file ownership and payment info are stored unencrypted (http://bit.ly/VswkJi http://bit.ly/VswkJi). If someone or something is advertising they have a trove of copyrighted material, the standard procedure for law enforcement is to subpoena the cloud provider for the IP of the user, then the ISP for the subscriber's physical name/address. When they confiscate their computer they'll find the data on there. What is to stop this from happening with Mega? Do they not have to respond to these subpoenas in New Zealand? What if CP is involved - will they respond then, even if not compelled by the law? I don't understand how end-to-end encryption protects illegal file sharers if the file ownership information is stored unencrypted. I understand Mega's value prop is encryption, NOT illegal sharing, but my question remains.
- tomhenderson 14y ago
  For a server in New Zealand I assume it would be covered by our three strikes law (http://3strikes.net.nz http://3strikes.net.nz). Rights holders can send infringement notices via the users ISP for a $25 fee. After three notices (from the same copyright holder) they can then take you to our copyright tribunal for damages. From what I've heard some notices are being sent out, but RIAA have been complaining that the $25 fee is too high.
  - cantbecool 14y ago
    Did you mean too low?
    - jmaygarden 14y ago
      No, RIAA has to pay the $25 fee to send an infringement notification. Therefore, they want the fee to be lower.
      - mcintyre1994 14y ago
        What they really mean is they want to have automated systems do it for them without worrying.
bitsoda 14y ago
I just noticed something: Mega's cloud loading image seems to be a slightly altered rip of this image from Stripe's website, just animated. Mega [http://i.imgur.com/PH90lZ3.png http://i.imgur.com/PH90lZ3.png] Stripe [https://stripe.com/img/frontpage/api-cloud.png https://stripe.com/img/frontpage/api-cloud.png]
- cleverjake 14y ago
  Well, arguably, neither is terribly original http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...
  - andrewmunsell 14y ago
    It's not just the cloud-- the gears too.
    - atdrummond 14y ago
      SingleHop uses a very similar cloud + background icon motif (be it gears, a server or another object) throughout their site as well. Seems to be fairly common.
    - drcube 14y ago
      Pretty sure there's a Google property with the same cloud + gears loading animation. Blogger, or Tumblr or Blogspot or one of those.
      - cowsaysoink 14y ago
        I think its the blogspot theme with the gears in a box that your thinking of. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ It isn't the same but Mega uses their animation in the same way.
- bbx 14y ago
  I find these gears icons funny because it is implied that all 3 gears touch each other mutually. But obviously, such a setup would prevent the whole machinery to work at all.
pseingatl 14y ago
How does this work? The website shows a file as "downloading" but I don't see a file on my pc.
- kronholm 14y ago
  Mine downloads and goes to 100%, but just sits there, nothing happening. Weirdness.
  - sushi 14y ago
    It works only in Google Chrome. It downloads the file first and then asks you where do you want to save it.
    - kronholm 14y ago
      Nope, nothing happens. Should've said I used Chrome :)
benologist 14y ago
So now it's really the same mega service as before with the excuse that they don't save the keys that they can access... complete with affiliates like this to provide all the high-bandwidth customers. This is going to be fun to watch.
cryowaffle 14y ago
Waiting for car.zip for download
slig 14y ago
I searched for a very popular TV series and the first link was "$name_S01E01.avi", size ~500mb. Clicking on it, I gor redirect to mega.co.nz to download "movie.exe", 715KB. https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJkW8OKfOVuG89zY https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJk...
- cheapsteak 14y ago
  Interesting, my result's s1 e1.avi was also linking to a movie.exe The other episodes were linking to 500+mb avi files though There is a up-vote/down-vote system so these probably wouldn't be too problematic
tnuc 14y ago
And it's full of spam, spyware, trojans and fake stuff already. Just like megaupload used to be.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  MU (and now Mega) are just hosting services. If you don't have a good aggregation site, it's worthless. I had a long list of great aggregation sites for MU, and I never had a single issue with viruses when using them.
joblessjunkie 14y ago
The site features an "Infringement" button at the top of the page. Can I report the entire contents of the first page as infringing, since every item I see is obviously infringing? Can I then repeat that for each subsequent page?
- abailin 14y ago
  Clicking this just brings you here: https://mega.co.nz/#copyright https://mega.co.nz/#copyright So it's not likely any content from mega-search.me will ever be removed.
- RobAley 14y ago
  They may all be "obviously" infringing, but they're not all "actually" infringing. For instance, one I clicked on with the name of a well known movie led to an .exe file, which was a virus and not the movie in question. There's also one called "Gay.zip", how is that "obviously" infringing?
cantbecool 14y ago
How is this application getting the locations of the files, Google search parameters?
- dmix 14y ago
  I highly doubt Mega would have a public directory. So I'd assume, yes. Just like the other ones like http://www.filestube.com/ http://www.filestube.com/ does.
elliottcarlson 14y ago
There's actually quite a few mega.co.nz related search sites out there - e.g. my 4 hour weekend project made out of boredom: http://wheresthefiles.at/ http://wheresthefiles.at/
conductor 14y ago
If the author of this site is reading this, fix your scripts: Notice: Undefined index: lg in /home/sites/mega/config.php on line 49
coverband 14y ago
Putting the owner's megalomania to the side for a minute, I really admire how the guys behind this are putting it all together. First of all, (AFAIK) this is a high-volume/high-capacity site which was built in a record short time. Not only that, but they promised it would be coming Jan 2013, and they made it on time, such a rare outcome for an IT project. One also has to appreciate how they made sure everyone has heard of them, without spending a penny on promotion (well, if you exclude the launch extravaganza). Finally, they seem to be very transparent in how the encryption gets applied and can handle crypto-critics quite well. I think, little by little, they're earning the average user's trust.
- nolok 14y ago
  The part that gets me is that, had they (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, whoever) acted legally, they probably could have had something on him, I mean they didn't need to find a lot, only a little something somewhere. But no; they wanted to do it fast and with shock, probably to scare others and make sure megaupload went down, something that fits with the way they fight against piracy for the past decade or so. It just went so horribly wrong, first the NZ judge actually respect the law instead of bowing down like it seems they expected, then the guy they fight against has the balls to match his ego and refuse to go down to bullying, and then the hydra of piracy strikes again and proves why taking megaupload down didn't really matter. Kind of ironic how their fight against "illegal activities" fails because they refuse to use legal means.
  - youngerdryas 14y ago
    You nailed it man. The FBI had no right to kick down his door and now he has his revenge, he is going to embarrass them with his riches from this new project.
  - krichman 14y ago
    As much as I think he is an awful person profiting off of copyright infringement, I have to admire him for this.
qued 14y ago
It seems all but the newest links added have been taken down for 'copyright infringement.'
mirko34 14y ago
Hi, Http://www.mega-link.co.nz Offshore based indexer. Share yours links for free, no ad, no tracing
J4mes 14y ago
Why don't you try http://megaspotted.com/ http://megaspotted.com/. There you can share uploads on mega.co.nz and download files other people shared. Way better then similar 'Frensh' websites..

88 points by agopaul 14y ago

Can someone clear this up for me? How can I download someone's private uploads? Is the key to "unlock" the file embedded in the URL gibberish?

dewey 14y ago
Correct, that's the file key and you can choose between appending it to the URL or transfer it to a friend through a secure channel.
- sergiotapia 14y ago
  Thank you for answering so quickly. So where is this scraper getting the URL's from? A forum or something?
  - agopaul 14y ago
    None of these are scapped i suppose. It's all user submitted stuff

SODaniel 14y ago

This being a publicly available index pointing to data stored, I can only assume that encrypted or not the owner of 'mega' is still liable for any copyrighted material hosted.

wmf 14y ago
Presumably they never look at such indicies so they'd only be liable after someone notified them of infringement.
- rscale 14y ago
  Willful blindness isn't a particularly strong defense. Aimster tried it and failed.
  - NZ_Matt 14y ago
    Youtube used that defense and got away with it, isn't this what the DMCA is for?
  - watty 14y ago
    I'm not sure I follow - how are they legally being willfully blind? They can't offer private encrypted hosting AND know what they're hosting at the same time. Those two things are mutually exclusive.
    - wmf 14y ago
      We're talking about blindness of the search engines. Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it.
      - watty 14y ago
        Mega only knows the file name given, they don't know what is included. Google for "filetype:torrent + windows".
      - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it. Are you serious? You expect them to scour the internet for third party websites and then scrape them for links? How are they even supposed to know whether a particular instance is infringing or licensed? What happens when the third party site prohibits scraping? It isn't their job to be the copyright police. You cannot fix the problem of copyright enforcement being too expensive by foisting the cost onto a third party -- that doesn't fix that it's too expensive, it's just a textbook case of copyright owners engaging in the economic pollution known as externalizing costs.
Dylan16807 14y ago
It's the internet. You can't trust the labels on things, especially when it comes to piracy.

codemac 14y ago

Firefox 19.0 (a beta release) is too old to download a file? Can someone explain this to me? I wish they'd tell me exactly which API they're using..

petitmiam 14y ago
They explain a little more in their blog: https://mega.co.nz/#blog_1 https://mega.co.nz/#blog_1
- codemac 14y ago
  Ah ok, they have to do the file handling in javascript for the decryption? I hadn't thought about that. Thank you for the link!
doublec 14y ago
Mega are using the file-system-api: http://www.w3.org/TR/file-system-api/ http://www.w3.org/TR/file-system-api/ It hasn't been widely implemented and may be due for change: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012OctDec/0491.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012OctDe...
bbrizzi 14y ago
Mozilla explains why they don't support the FileSystem API on their blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/why-no-filesystem-api-in-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/why-no-filesystem-api-in-f...

telecuda 14y ago

Here's the part I don't get: IP addresses, file ownership and payment info are stored unencrypted (http://bit.ly/VswkJi http://bit.ly/VswkJi). If someone or something is advertising they have a trove of copyrighted material, the standard procedure for law enforcement is to subpoena the cloud provider for the IP of the user, then the ISP for the subscriber's physical name/address. When they confiscate their computer they'll find the data on there. What is to stop this from happening with Mega? Do they not have to respond to these subpoenas in New Zealand? What if CP is involved - will they respond then, even if not compelled by the law? I don't understand how end-to-end encryption protects illegal file sharers if the file ownership information is stored unencrypted. I understand Mega's value prop is encryption, NOT illegal sharing, but my question remains.

tomhenderson 14y ago
For a server in New Zealand I assume it would be covered by our three strikes law (http://3strikes.net.nz http://3strikes.net.nz). Rights holders can send infringement notices via the users ISP for a $25 fee. After three notices (from the same copyright holder) they can then take you to our copyright tribunal for damages. From what I've heard some notices are being sent out, but RIAA have been complaining that the $25 fee is too high.
- cantbecool 14y ago
  Did you mean too low?
  - jmaygarden 14y ago
    No, RIAA has to pay the $25 fee to send an infringement notification. Therefore, they want the fee to be lower.
    - mcintyre1994 14y ago
      What they really mean is they want to have automated systems do it for them without worrying.

bitsoda 14y ago

I just noticed something: Mega's cloud loading image seems to be a slightly altered rip of this image from Stripe's website, just animated. Mega [http://i.imgur.com/PH90lZ3.png http://i.imgur.com/PH90lZ3.png] Stripe [https://stripe.com/img/frontpage/api-cloud.png https://stripe.com/img/frontpage/api-cloud.png]

cleverjake 14y ago
Well, arguably, neither is terribly original http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...
- andrewmunsell 14y ago
  It's not just the cloud-- the gears too.
  - atdrummond 14y ago
    SingleHop uses a very similar cloud + background icon motif (be it gears, a server or another object) throughout their site as well. Seems to be fairly common.
  - drcube 14y ago
    Pretty sure there's a Google property with the same cloud + gears loading animation. Blogger, or Tumblr or Blogspot or one of those.
    - cowsaysoink 14y ago
      I think its the blogspot theme with the gears in a box that your thinking of. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ It isn't the same but Mega uses their animation in the same way.
bbx 14y ago
I find these gears icons funny because it is implied that all 3 gears touch each other mutually. But obviously, such a setup would prevent the whole machinery to work at all.

pseingatl 14y ago

How does this work? The website shows a file as "downloading" but I don't see a file on my pc.

kronholm 14y ago
Mine downloads and goes to 100%, but just sits there, nothing happening. Weirdness.
- sushi 14y ago
  It works only in Google Chrome. It downloads the file first and then asks you where do you want to save it.
  - kronholm 14y ago
    Nope, nothing happens. Should've said I used Chrome :)

benologist 14y ago

So now it's really the same mega service as before with the excuse that they don't save the keys that they can access... complete with affiliates like this to provide all the high-bandwidth customers. This is going to be fun to watch.

cryowaffle 14y ago

Waiting for car.zip for download

slig 14y ago

I searched for a very popular TV series and the first link was "$name_S01E01.avi", size ~500mb. Clicking on it, I gor redirect to mega.co.nz to download "movie.exe", 715KB. https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJkW8OKfOVuG89zY https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJk...

cheapsteak 14y ago
Interesting, my result's s1 e1.avi was also linking to a movie.exe The other episodes were linking to 500+mb avi files though There is a up-vote/down-vote system so these probably wouldn't be too problematic

tnuc 14y ago

And it's full of spam, spyware, trojans and fake stuff already. Just like megaupload used to be.

w1ntermute 14y ago
MU (and now Mega) are just hosting services. If you don't have a good aggregation site, it's worthless. I had a long list of great aggregation sites for MU, and I never had a single issue with viruses when using them.

joblessjunkie 14y ago

The site features an "Infringement" button at the top of the page. Can I report the entire contents of the first page as infringing, since every item I see is obviously infringing? Can I then repeat that for each subsequent page?

abailin 14y ago
Clicking this just brings you here: https://mega.co.nz/#copyright https://mega.co.nz/#copyright So it's not likely any content from mega-search.me will ever be removed.
RobAley 14y ago
They may all be "obviously" infringing, but they're not all "actually" infringing. For instance, one I clicked on with the name of a well known movie led to an .exe file, which was a virus and not the movie in question. There's also one called "Gay.zip", how is that "obviously" infringing?

cantbecool 14y ago

How is this application getting the locations of the files, Google search parameters?

dmix 14y ago
I highly doubt Mega would have a public directory. So I'd assume, yes. Just like the other ones like http://www.filestube.com/ http://www.filestube.com/ does.

elliottcarlson 14y ago

There's actually quite a few mega.co.nz related search sites out there - e.g. my 4 hour weekend project made out of boredom: http://wheresthefiles.at/ http://wheresthefiles.at/

conductor 14y ago

If the author of this site is reading this, fix your scripts: Notice: Undefined index: lg in /home/sites/mega/config.php on line 49

coverband 14y ago

Putting the owner's megalomania to the side for a minute, I really admire how the guys behind this are putting it all together. First of all, (AFAIK) this is a high-volume/high-capacity site which was built in a record short time. Not only that, but they promised it would be coming Jan 2013, and they made it on time, such a rare outcome for an IT project. One also has to appreciate how they made sure everyone has heard of them, without spending a penny on promotion (well, if you exclude the launch extravaganza). Finally, they seem to be very transparent in how the encryption gets applied and can handle crypto-critics quite well. I think, little by little, they're earning the average user's trust.

nolok 14y ago
The part that gets me is that, had they (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, whoever) acted legally, they probably could have had something on him, I mean they didn't need to find a lot, only a little something somewhere. But no; they wanted to do it fast and with shock, probably to scare others and make sure megaupload went down, something that fits with the way they fight against piracy for the past decade or so. It just went so horribly wrong, first the NZ judge actually respect the law instead of bowing down like it seems they expected, then the guy they fight against has the balls to match his ego and refuse to go down to bullying, and then the hydra of piracy strikes again and proves why taking megaupload down didn't really matter. Kind of ironic how their fight against "illegal activities" fails because they refuse to use legal means.
- youngerdryas 14y ago
  You nailed it man. The FBI had no right to kick down his door and now he has his revenge, he is going to embarrass them with his riches from this new project.
- krichman 14y ago
  As much as I think he is an awful person profiting off of copyright infringement, I have to admire him for this.

qued 14y ago

It seems all but the newest links added have been taken down for 'copyright infringement.'

mirko34 14y ago

Hi, Http://www.mega-link.co.nz Offshore based indexer. Share yours links for free, no ad, no tracing

J4mes 14y ago

Why don't you try http://megaspotted.com/ http://megaspotted.com/. There you can share uploads on mega.co.nz and download files other people shared. Way better then similar 'Frensh' websites..