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(4) plays in the lounge outside the office where they coded Mega into existence. From the moment of the raid, both men had been reeling from the impossibility of what they were confronting. The website they had built and nurtured from birth to a wealth-creating dynamo had been destroyed in moments on 20 January. They sat through every court hearing, and attended legal meetings, feeling largely as if their control of the future was slipping beyond their reach.

It wasn't until they began work on Mega that they began to see the future with different eyes. It also allowed them to see the past, and the seven years it took to build Megaupload, as an apprenticeship for what would come next.

Van der Kolk tells how their emotional state shifted once the new business became a solid objective. "That half year was like we had been hit hard in the face." They were recoiling in pain, he says, and trying to recover.

The technology and the advances they were making shifted the focus entirely. They would attend legal meetings and sketch out ideas for Mega while the lawyers were discussing the case. "We were already working on the future while the lawyers are cleaning up the mess that has been made of the past," says van der Kolk.

The destruction of Megaupload was turning into an event which created an opportunity.

Ortmann: In a way we were quite grateful when this cut was done on our behalf by the Americans. We actually started appreciating it when we started work on Mega.
Van der Kolk: Let me underline this is only from a technical point of view. This is not from a financial point of view, not from an emotional point of view. Purely technical. This cannot be quoted out of context.

It was the opportunity to start with the latest technology, when Megaupload had been stuck in 2005. Suddenly, there was nothing holding the pair back.

"We have tried to turn it around into an opportunity and to make something of it," says van der Kolk. "The technical clean slate approach with the new site," agrees Ortmann. "That makes us feel good."

The idea made even more sense as it became clearer how much of their data had been used against them. Van der Kolk now calls the idea of data moving openly around the internet "crazy . . . If we have encryption technology — why are we not using it? We store our money in a safe bank."

It has happened in five years, he estimates, whether it be through

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