It seems not even a multi-million dollar international raid can keep a crazy business entrepreneur down.
Following the United States Government shutdown of controversial media service Megaupload earlier in the year, the site’s batty media mogul, Kim Dotcom, has announced plans to relaunch his file-sharing empire on the anniversary of the raid on his New Zealand mansion in Auckland, and additionally, use the funds to provide free, high-powered internet to his new home country.
As The Age reports, the 38-year-old German is currently free on bail and fighting extradition to the United States following his arrest on January 20 by New Zealand police as part of a major US investigation into the alleged copyright breaches and major theft of licensed material on his website Megaupload.
Dotcom is free on bail but still fighting extradition to the United States following a raid on his Auckland mansion on January 20, when New Zealand police arrested him as part of a major US investigation into alleged copyright theft and shut down his website Megaupload.
Now following noises that he’s making a bid to rebuild his business empire through his new streaming music service, Mega (formerly Megabox), Dotcom has alleged he plans to relaunch his new service on the 20th January, 2013, regularly tweeting his plans about Mega, which along with a video teaser brought millions of hits in internet traffic to the mogul’s new domain in a manner of hours.
“This must be the biggest launch of a splash page ever,” he tweeted, adding that “it’s not even the final site yet. Just a new domain & info.” Then later posting: “One thing is sure: The world wants MEGA!”
While details of the planned streaming service are still scarce, the new music and media site is planning to use cloud-based services, similar to those that The Pirate Bay recently proposed, in order to enable better encryption methods that puts the onus – and therefore legal ramifications – on users, not the site’s administrators on the content that’s being uploaded.
Essentially meaning that even if government officials can crack down on their physical machinery, the pirated contents and data is still backed up virtually through cloud-based media, which theoretically stops authorities from being able to accuse Dotcom and his associates of knowingly aiding music piracy.
Not only that, but Dotcom is planning to use the funds from the new music service, as well as suing the US Government and the same Hollywood studios that indicted his file-sharing website to begin with, over their “unlawful and political destruction of my business,” to construct a new fibre optic cable that will bring free broadband internet to his new New Zealand home.
According to the New Zealand Herald, Dotcom is proposing to build a new $NZ 400 million cable – which would double the country’s bandwidth – constructed to supply the demand needed for his new Mega service, providing use of the cable for free to NZ’s internet service providers and its individual customers and instead charge a business fee to central government.
While Dotcom’s ambitious plans are seen as pipe-dreams by the New Zealand government, especially considering his original 12,950km cable connecting New Zealand to Los Angeles via Sydney, that was being constructed by Pacific Fibre, fell over in August after failing to raise enough capital for the project.
Even Paul Brislen of Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand agrees the proposal, if it materialises, would be a huge boost for the country, adding “If anyone can put together a deal like this, then it would be Kim Dotcom.”
Dotcom is adamant about bringing about the technology revolution and is obviously looking for brownie points with his new country of residence, particularly given he’s facing charges of extradition over an American court hearing to take place in March.
The New Zealand court has already ruled that the January raid and seizure of Megaupload’s property was unlawful, including accusations that the spying on the website and Dotcom were illegal, but US authorities are hoping to bring Dotcom to America – and to justice – on charges of money laundering, racketeering, fraud and online copyright theft with a potential 20 year jail term if convicted.
The news of the new music streaming service is possibly good news for music lovers, at least that don’t mind how shady their source material is, and bad news for music labels looking to make a profit from their wares – already aggravated by the likes of controversial streaming service Grooveshark that’s looking to cut the labels out with its newly-introduced payment scheme that will see artists earning bank through social media activity.
Either way, everyone can agree that the Megaupload mogul makes the music world that much more interesting…
