Kim DotCom still kicking, still trying to dismantle the music business

Remember Kim DotCom, the rabble-rousing founder of Megaupload? We’ve not heard much from the internet’s favorite non-Anonymous pirate lately, as he’s been stuck on house arrest in his New Zealand home. Mr. DotCom has been on a Twitter rampage these last 24 hours, though, promoting his meeting with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and vowing that his new music-sharing site Megabox is still in the works and ready to mega-remake the music industry.

Shortly after Mr. DotCom began his mega-tweeting, Twitter experienced an outage of almost two hours. Coincidence?

Megaupload, one of the biggest of the copyright-violating file sharing sites, is still shut down -- with the old tried-and-true “This domain has been seized” message from the FBI plastered on its home page. Undaunted, Mr. DotCom is proceeding with his plans to shake up the music business with Megabox. In a guest post on TorrentFreak, he described Megabox as “a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations direct to consumers and allowing artists to keep 90% of earnings.”

Conspiracy theorists among us, as well as Mr. DotCom himself, argue that his arrest and attempted extradition are an attempt to squelch Megabox before it gets a chance to squelch the revenue of the record companies.

We get a little more detail about Megabox on Mr. DotCom’s latest barrage of tweets. “The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead,” Mr. DotCom tweeted on Tuesday. “Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you.”

Though still under house arrest, Mr. DotCom does have his internet access back. He was visited by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at his New Zealand mansion this week. Mr. DotCom posted a photo of his meeting with Woz, and tweeted, “Great guy & supporter of EFF. EFF is helping to give Mega users their files back. Thanks Woz & EFF.”

Translation? EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit devoted to digital rights in the information age. “Mega users” who want their “files back” are the 16,000 Megaupload users who claim their seized files did not violate any copyright laws, and the EFF is representing them to get their files back.

Megabox is still in a Beta version, with no official announcement of when it when it will go live. My guess is not until Kim DotCom gets through his possible extradition to the U.S. on criminal charges.