By Cleo Fraser
Internet piracy accused Kim Dotcom's new file-sharing website will be launched early next year on the anniversary of his arrest.
Dotcom is wanted in the US on internet copyright charges relating to his file-sharing website Megaupload which was shut down after he was arrested during an FBI-led raid on his mansion in Coatesville, north of Auckland, on January 20.
At its peak Megaupload attracted about four percent of the world's internet traffic or 50 million hits per day.
On Thursday Dotcom launched a teaser of his new website - www.kim.com/mega - which promises to be "bigger, better, faster, stronger and safer" and "will change the world" when it is fully launched on January 20.
The website will be run from servers based outside the US.
The preview hosting partners can't be based in the US because the Department of Justice "with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload" has undermined the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
"The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process," it states.
Dotcom said, via his Twitter account, that the number of people visiting the site had been "total overload" and that FBI agents had also been browsing it.
Earlier this month Dotcom, a New Zealand resident and German national, said it will be impossible for US authorities to shut down his new website.
Dotcom admitted to Associated Press that US prosecutors would "probably" see his plans as a poke in the eye.
The US says Dotcom pocketed tens of millions of dollars while movie makers and songwriters lost some $500 million in copyright revenue.
He faces an extradition hearing in March.
NZN