Request regarding Mega, from a Brazilian user

[PokemasterLord]

Hello there. This is most likely an unknown issue for most of you, but a couple weeks ago the Brazilian governament filed a lawsuit against them, so Mega.nz is currently blocked off here. No public reasons were given at first but apparently its due to copyright infringement from content uploaded there.

They did not asked Mega to do so, because our governament most likely doesnt holds any ground to do so on the current Mega hosting land I believe, but they forced our biggest ISPs to do it instead. The ISPs blocked off Mega either via IP or DNS, and while there are workarounds for both ways those are kinda of a hassle to do for the average user.

[Here's a news link for those interested:

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EDIT: also in English:

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, thanks AON]

Now, this is not a big issue for the games as usually those are uploaded on many other places as well (I avoid Mega because they have a hardcap on bandwidth here in Brazil, putting up a time of like 4h to be able to complete any download above a threshold of about 1GB or bigger unless you pay for premium), but not everything gets the same treatment.

Often walkthroughs, patches or mods are uploaded on few websites or a single place, and when this happens to be on Mega is when the problem arises.

So I humbly ask that if you are uploading such things (small files), please, also provide alternatives links other than Mega. Even embeded here on F95 is good enough (specially walkthrough .pdf's).

Thanks for your time.

 

[anne O'nymous]

(Here's a news link for those interested:

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)

For those interested, here's another

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, but in English.

 

[Avenger777]

Really? Mega is blocked here? Right now (01:31 BRA UTC-3) is opening fine. Maybe is region locked or something?

On a side note. Today I tried to download something, and at the 99%, the computer froze for a long time and needed a reboot. Tried again and the same thing happened. Don't know if there is a connection between these things, but my paranoid mind gets crazy with coincidences.

 

[Drakan47]

From what I gather the block can be bypassed with relative ease, the coment section in the article posted above has people explaining this better than I could hope to:

For those interested, here's another

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, but in English.

 

[9thCrux]

Just use a VPN:

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Providers:

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[redknight00]

1. Use a VPN (which you should be using anyway, regardless of Mega).

2. Use

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.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

Windscribe gives 10GB free per month if anyone is looking for a free VPN.
Fastest VPN has a lifetime deal on StackSocial - 5 devices, unlimited data, $20.

 

[PokemasterLord]

Unlike USA and other northern countries there's little-to-no need to hide behind VPNs for a Brazilian, really. We do not have big agiencies tracking our movements or personal information (besides the ones that to it worldwide, like Facebook or Google). Theres nothing like NSA here, our governament isnt very bright on this side (be it for good or bad).

Like I said, for the average user its not intuitive.

 

[Drakan47]

Unlike USA and other northern countries there's little-to-no need to hide behind VPNs for a Brazilian, really. We do not have big agiencies tracking our movements or personal information (besides the ones that to it worldwide, like Facebook or Google). Theres nothing like NSA here, our governament isnt very bright on this side (be it for good or bad).

Like I said, for the average user its not intuitive.

a VPN does get you around blockades like the one mentioned here, as well as letting you ignore region blocks (which ARE a problem here in the south in general), and also keep in mind there's a big "for now" on the government not doing much, especially if politics end up giving power to someone who wants to get friendly with the aforementioned northern countries (wether or not you support him, we can all agree bolsonaro styles himself as "brazilian trump"), as bending over for their copyright regulations is a relatively low effort/cost way of putting up a "we love the american entertainment industry and want to protect their profits" sign.

 

[DiroGoodboy]

It's also worth noting that while 20 USD might not seem a lot for some people, if you convert it to BRL it goes up to 10% the minimum wage, which is pretty substantial investment

 

[polywog]

Really? Mega is blocked here? Right now (01:31 BRA UTC-3) is opening fine. Maybe is region locked or something?

On a side note. Today I tried to download something, and at the 99%, the computer froze for a long time and needed a reboot. Tried again and the same thing happened. Don't know if there is a connection between these things, but my paranoid mind gets crazy with coincidences.

That's normal for Mega. Mega files have to download, and then decrypt. Decrypting takes longer than downloading, and decrypting can crash older computers. It's less than half done when it says 99%.

 

[Avenger777]

decrypting can crash older computers

...oh. Guess it's time to do an upgrade (been saying this for the last 11 years, but ok). Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Lufi-X]

Brazillian here. Here mega.nz is working fine.
Maybe it's a regional thing? Only in some states? Here in RJ is normal.

 

[PokemasterLord]

Brazillian here. Here mega.nz is working fine.
Maybe it's a regional thing? Only in some states? Here in RJ is normal.

Your router is probably already using a different DNS, either you or someone else might have changed it at any point and would be enough.

 

[PokemasterLord]

1. Use a VPN (which you should be using anyway, regardless of Mega).

2. Use

You must be registered to see the links

.

I would like to adress something else here: JDownloader and other similar softwares (like Mega Downloader) DO NOT bypass the bandwidth limit Mega has. If you have reached your daily limit those sws will not help you at all. At least not here (probably IP related).

I think you can download around 5GB before hitting the cap in USA, but here in Brazil this limit is of about 1GB, then you have to wait 4~5h to resume your download.

Mega is a terrible service for Brazilians, its real discrimination. It appears they had more issues with piracy with our governament than anywhere else, so one could say its not completely unfounded restrictions, but then again piracy doesnt exists only here, right? I though their new encryption system was their way of saying 'we dont know whats uploaded, we just host files and cant verify what they are', their way of washing their hands off and putting any blame into the users (which is not wrong).

 

[Daxter250]

DO NOT bypass the bandwidth limit Mega has.

it does bypass it. but you gotta be a bit tricky here (i use jdownloader 2 for mega, so i know what i'm saying here). if you alr. have your daily limit, you alr. fucked it up for the day. if you only download stuff one by one with pauses in between, you already fucked it up...again.
if you wanna bypass the limit you have to download all the stuff you want form mega IN ONE GO.
btw. it doesn't (really) matter where you live, it's always around 1 GB for firefox users. here some infos about it:

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[PokemasterLord]

btw. it doesn't (really) matter where you live, it's always around 1 GB for firefox users. here some infos about it:

You must be registered to see the links

I have not used Firefox in about a decade, I only use Chrome.

Gonna try with Jdownloader again tomorrow then.

 

[Sphere42]

it's always around 1 GB for firefox users. here some infos about it:

You must be registered to see the links

What that is referring to is their "use our app" scam which triggers if the size of one individual download is over 1GB (or 2GB or whatever) all by itself. That bullshit can be bypassed via download managers or simple scripts because it's either a programming limitation in firefox or an outright lie.

That has nothing to do with quota limitations though, those probably use a combination of IP, cookies and maybe other info they can get their hands on. I myself am rather lucky in this regard because my ISP allocates a new IP address when I tell my router to reconnect which combined with deleting site data/cookies has skipped past most of these quota blocks.

 

[Sam]

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Should bypass the block, if they're using the typical DNS sniffing to block.

 

[PokemasterLord]

Thanks for giving more options to bypass it.

I had success in three ways so far: mobile Mega app, Chrome Mega extension (which does have the cap but at least I can open the website) and now with Mega Downloader using the tips @Daxter250 gave, a fresh new day bandwidth downloading 5 files at once (total size is about 6.3GB, way above the regular quota; at this exact moment Ive downloaded about 2GB, just started a few minutes ago).