Another Anniversary of Dotcom’s Arrest

As you remember, Kim Dotcom, the well-known NZ entrepreneur who used to run MegaUpload, marked the first anniversary of his arrest (which took place in 2012) with a huge party and the launch of new file-sharing service, Mega (which proved to be quite successful). Next year, he announced a new political party, though this one failed completely.

What about this year? Well, it seemed to be all quiet at his mansion. Dotcom’s new music service, Baboom, is expected to launch soon, but no particular announcements were made on that front. However, when Sony was recently hacked by Korea, Dotcom announced MegaNet for 2016 on his Twitter, which is supposed to be an alternative non-IP-based Internet, not vulnerable to hacking attacks.

Still, this plan for a new international cable remains at the conceptual stage, and another big project, a US version of the Internet Party, seems abandoned as well.

The only news about Kim is that he has recently renewed his offer to the American government. Dotcom agrees to travel to the US and face trial if he’s guaranteed bail and the return of his assets. That’s an interesting proposal, of course, but it doesn’t fit for anniversary. Actually, Kim has already made it before, and the United States is unlikely to change its mind this time. The US entertainment industry believes that Dotcom made $175m by infringing copyright, and therefore can’t consider the assets are his to give back. Moreover, the American government is doing the opposite: back in 2014, it tried to get a court order to freeze Kim’s assets to seize them through forfeiture.

So, it seems to be just another anniversary of the arrest for a big man who knuckles down ahead of his extradition case, which is scheduled to be heard in June 2015. Its key question is why the US government included money laundering and racketeering charges in its indictment. Another question is whether Dotcom is able to convince the court that MegaUpload was just a common file-sharing service, despite its practice of paying cash incentives to uploaders (and nothing to copyright holders) and making the illegal content easy to find (though defendants deny this allegation).

The final question is how can Dotcom tell a court that he has made about $40m since his arrest, and at the same time claim to be broke after spending around $10m on legal fees?