 Welcome to Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE TV for Thursday, November 1st, 2012. I'm Kristen Folletti. Mega Upload founder Kim Dotcom is planning a comeback, but will the Department of Justice stop him in his tracks? Join us now with breaking analysis on Kim Dotcom's future in file sharing is Silicon Angle contributing editor John Casaretto. Welcome, John. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Mega Upload founder Kim Dotcom could violate the terms of his bail or face new criminal charges if he launches a new file sharing and storage service as planned, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a court filing last week. John, we've spoke about the Kim Dotcom charges previously on our program. Remind us what the Department of Justice has accused Kim Dotcom of. Well, Kristen, we're coming up on about a year now since the Department of Justice had cracked down on the Mega Upload operation and arrested the owners and had an indictment against them. Basically the charges were for running an organization dedicated to copyright infringement. So a lot of the illegal file sharing and things like that were the kind of things that they were trying to crack down on. Dotcom made claims in early October that he plans to launch a service called Mega. Can you tell us about this new service? What makes Mega different from Mega Upload? Yeah, it's definitely different. The service works in a way that previously you had to install Mega Manager on every computer that you ran Mega Upload from. This is a cloud-based service. So all the data is actually stored in the cloud. They have support for encryption, cross-account folder sharing. So basically the users themselves have got a degree of anonymity and a degree of ability to share files without actually having the files in their hands. And it's also designed in such a way that none of the servers at all are here in the U.S. In a January affidavit given in New Zealand, Dotcom said he has no plans to relaunch Mega Upload or a similar service until the DOJ's case against him is resolved. The Defense Council claims that Dotcom's new plans to launch his Mega service undermine the sworn statements he gave stating that he has no plans or ability to continue to operate or fund the businesses in the indictment during pendency of the extradition process. The question the DOJ is now asking is whether or not Kim Dotcom intentionally misled the court in New Zealand about his intentions and capabilities in order to obtain his release from pre-extradition confinement. What's your take on all of this? Do you think Kim Dotcom planned to rebuild all along? It definitely appears so. He wasted little time in announcing his intention once he was basically released. If he didn't have a plan originally at that point, it didn't take him long to make one. And I think that really the impression is the biggest thing here. It really looks like it didn't take him long to put together the business partners, the service partners, and so on, and the funding to really put this thing together as quickly as he has. So it's fascinating, and that's a great question. And I think that, again, how that looks to the people that are trying to prosecute him and come after him in a legal way, it appears that he definitely has not really kept to his word on that. That was never his intention in the first place. With all the controversy surrounding Kim Dotcom's previous practice, why is he so determined to relaunch a site that could potentially get him into the same kind of legal mess? Well, that's a great question. It was obviously a very profitable business for Kim Dotcom. He's convinced that by avoiding US, avoiding US hosters, the domain, the people that run the domains, the backbone providers, with the secured nature, the cloudified nature of the new service, he can avoid all that trouble that he had previously. So in other words, he made a mistake, he's staying away from the US side of things, and he feels he can just avoid that trouble altogether this time around. Kim Dotcom has confirmed the launch date for MAGA is January 19th, 2013. What dangers does Kim Dotcom face if he follows through with the launch of his new service? Well, it definitely appears that he's dangerously close to violating terms of his bail, or he could be facing new criminal charges. The assurances that he gave, it definitely appears that he's going back on those assurances. And depending on how they take it, whether they wish to pursue it, it really depends. It's going to be very interesting to see what dangers he actually manifest in terms of actual charges and things like that in the near future. Ira Rothkin, a lawyer representing Dotcom and MAGA Upload, says it sounds like the United States is attacking a technology before they fully investigate it. This looks to be the second time they're doing that. Kim Dotcom is innocent, and he's entitled to be involved in technology and business. What do you make of Rothkin's statement? Well, he sounds like a great lawyer. I think that's the other piece of the foundation. What makes Kim Dotcom so confident in the actions that he's taken, the things that he said, is that he's armed himself with a great army and a great lineup of legal people that are giving him advice and apparently are very aware of the various complex and sometimes the gaps in law that he's facing. So I think the statement really indicates more that the lawyer himself has a lot of things in his pocket and a lot of things that he's looking at in terms of that they're confident that Dotcom can run with this business and pretty much stay out of legal trouble. Do you think Kim Dotcom's new venture has the probability for success? Yeah, absolutely. He had a number of popularity in terms of users. He had many users on the service previously. I think that a lot of people will be interested. First off, there's a lot of other providers and services that tried to fill the gap and a few things like that, but I think that what we'll see is a good degree of success initially and as it continues with the encryption and the security, I think that a lot of people will be attracted to using that service in a new way. Let's not forget about Mega Upload's previous users. Right now, federal prosecutors are proposing a process that would make it essentially impossible for former Mega Upload users to recover their data following the government seizure. One Ohio man is actively pursuing a court battle to retrieve data he lost in the Mega Upload mix-up. John, it seems like some users are victims here. Do you think the respective owners of the data will have a shot at recovering what they lost? It's not likely, at least not until it's all over. I don't see that as being something that's going to be a likelihood for them to recover that data. I mean, it could be taken as a sign that they were wrong all along. I don't see them firing up those servers and giving people their data back unless they're looking through hundreds and thousands of accounts and trying to find some of the materials that they feel like they want to find in there and what they feel is illegal. I just don't see that happening. Now should the government fear legal retaliation from some of those users who have lost data? I think that there will be some threats and a few things like that. But again, I think that they'll be very, very adept at taking those things down or just kind of inaction until it's really not as relevant. Who knows what the future holds? But I think that with some legal actions, there could be some, it's a long, long road and it could be a long time before anybody sees any type of movement there. Kim.com is being tried in New Zealand. How do you think this would be handled if you were being tried in the U.S.? Well, there are a number of indictments here from the U.S. So I think that in terms of handling, I'm not so sure he would have been released on any type of agreement for one. It's a bit of speculation, but I think that perhaps we might be looking at a little more aggressive evaluation of what his activities were and a little deeper investigation of some of his connections and things like that. I think it's very telling that Kim.com is focused on avoiding the U.S. altogether in terms of where his servers are running, where the services exist and so on and so forth in terms of the domain and the networks and the backbones, just avoiding that all. He feels he can avoid trouble and I think that he's right and I think that's going to be his biggest threat to his operation long term. As people increasingly store documents in the cloud, do they need to worry about the government's role of protecting intellectual property, which allows them the ability to seize servers and domain names first and worry about the consequences later? Well, I think that governments are starting to become a little more active in terms of securing some of the digital rights and some of the copyright laws and things like that. There is a degree of worry, a heightened worry in terms of what the governments are doing in terms of securing intellectual property and so on. That's on the uptick and it'll probably continue to increase. It's up to the private sector to really fight back on those things and that's just going to be an ongoing struggle. Well, John, thanks so much for your time today. We appreciate you joining us. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. For all the latest in-depth coverage and breaking analysis on tech innovation, keep up to date with News Desk on SiliconANGLE TV.