Mega now hosting nearly 50 million files but just 0.001% infringe copyright, Kim Dotcom claims

It’s less than two weeks since Kim Dotcom launched Mega, a new file-storage site, but already the service currently hosts nearly 50 million files, the flamboyant German entrepreneur has revealed. Dotcom says that, of those files, just 0.001 percent have been taken down by the original content owners for piracy.

“MASSIVE non-infringing use!” he said over Twitter, before confirming that Mega is seeing around 50 content take-downs per day. Dotcom compares that to Google — which sees 450,000 daily — but that’s a somewhat uneven comparison since Google is publicly indexed which makes its content more easily found, while it operates on a far larger scale than the young Mega service.

Equally, 50 take-downs per day is unlikely to represent all of the copyright infringing content that sits on the site each day. But we take Dotcom’s point that the service is not the haven for rampant torrenting and illegal content distribution that US authorities claim (with little evidence) that Megaupload was.

Mega offers users a whopping 50 GB of space for free. It was launched at an extravagant party at Dotcom’s mansion and quickly hit 100,000 registered users after an hour of its launch, despite going down due to the rush of traffic to the site. The service later topped 1 million sign-ups after its first day online.

The service has faced criticism for the way that it handles security but Dotcom responded to criticism by countering a number of arguments and claiming that new measures — including a change password feature, and more — will come soon to boost the safety of accounts and data.

There’s no word on what US authorities make of Mega or Dotcom’s claim that it is fighting off copyright infringements. Dotcom’s extradition trial set for March and, given previous history, it’s pretty share to assume that they won’t be impressed with anything the German says or does.

The Department of Justice took down Megaupload in January 2012, leaving files inaccessible for users. Dotcom previously revealed he is working to have give Mega customers with content in Megaupload a way to export their data over, but that requires legal steps which are likely to take time.

Related: Face to face with Kim Dotcom as he launches Mega, talks about Megakey and the future of free content and Say hello to the new Mega: We go hands on.