Guess the thrill is gone: Kim Dotcom is resigning as director of Mega, the much-teased storage company that was suppose to replace Megaupload. He’s going to focus on the extradition case he’s spent the last year fighting, some new website, and also politics. Because that’s what New Zealand needs.
Mr. Dotcom tweeted this morning that, “#Mega is in excellent hands. I resigned as Managing Director to focus on my copyright case & a new political party.” The news was confirmed by a statement from Mega CEO Vikram Kumar, who told the New Zealand Herald that he resigned “to be able to focus on the extradition case, an upcoming music website, and to build a political party.”
His platform, as articulated on Twitter: “After the 2014 election I will get New Zealanders a new submarine cable, fair Internet pricing & no more data caps.”
Some have darker suspicions about Mr. Dotcom’s political allegiances, though. The Guardian reports that Mr. Dotcom was recently name-checked at a meeting of the BPI (like the U.K.’s RIAA) by musician Crispin Hunt, who runs the Featured Artists Coalition:
“Songs that we are now being told are valueless, by self-proclaimed revolutionary freedom fighters, posing as Robin Hood. Self-interest masquerading as idealism, champions of liberty and free speech, complete with revolutionary beret in the case of chubby Che Guevara Kim Dotcom, hell bent on furthering his own corpulent interests, rather than some of our more corporate ones.”
Now, now–no need for body-snarking. To be fair, though, it sounds like Mr. Dotcom is full of great, reform-minded ideas:
Rename all your files to “the_world,” so everyday when you “save” the world you can feel important 🙂 #Mega
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) September 3, 2013
