This article was published on January 22, 2013

Mega.co owner auctioning domain for $500,000 to fund ‘open Internet’ causes


Mega.co owner auctioning domain for $500,000 to fund ‘open Internet’ causes

On the heels of the launch of Kim Dotcom’s new Mega file sharing service, the owners of a separate but similar domain, Mega.co, are auctioning it for as much as $500,000, ostensibly in support of causes for the free and open Internet.

The site currently redirects to join.ome.ga and promotes “The Omega Project”, though there is scant information about what the project entails. A related Twitter account describes it as “building the cloud towards a free and open internet using already existing software,” but it has yet to send any tweets.

Some proceeds from the auction will also reportedly go to WWW.TF, a fund for established to defend Jeremy Hammond, Bradley Manning, Barrett Brown and Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer.

A banner at the top of Mega.co points visitors to an auction on the Flippa domain marketplace. The listing starts at $500,000 with a “buy it now” option priced at $1 million. In the description, the poster notes that Mega.co received nearly 30,000 visitors after 48 hours of being redirected to join.ome.ga.

Most of the visitors were likely looking for Dotcom’s new site, which launched officially on Sunday. Located at Mega.co.nz,  it achieved an impressive 100,000 users in its first hour before attracting 1 million users in just a few hours.

Related: Say hello to the new Mega: We go hands on.

Image credit: iStockphoto

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