Kim Dotcom, the flamboyant founder of the shuttered web locker site Megaupload, seems to have obliquely announced the return of that site—prompted by a news article that got the story wrong.
“It’s coming. This year. Promise. Bigger. Better. Faster. 100% Safe & Unstoppable,” he tweeted Monday morning.
Megaupload was notoriously shut down by U.S. customs officials in January, coinciding with a swarm of New Zealand police invading Dotcom’s home via helicopter to arrest him. The site has been down since, though a High Court later declared the raid illegal. He’s perhaps the most prominent example of the open antagonism between intellectual property lobbying groups and sites that enable file sharing of copyrighted material.
Dotcom never actually mentioned what better, faster, unstoppable thing was coming, though he often tweets a desire to reinstate Megaupload. The Next Web published an article based on the “it’s coming tweet.” It inferred that he was talking about Megabox, a site Dotcom had teased before the raid. In an editorial for TorrentFreak before the raid, Dotcom had claimed that site would “pay artists even for free downloads,” and that “the Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works.”
When The Next Web tweeted the Megabox-is-coming story, Dotcom retweeted it—then, two hours later, tweeted “Yes… Megabox is also coming this year ;-)” implying that his earlier tweet was referring to a different site. Presumably, that site is Megaupload.
If so, it’s unclear how the new version will be better, or how Dotcom plans to make it “unstoppable.”
Admittedly, Dotcom is prone to grandiose statements. In that editorial, for example, he wrote “You need to understand that some labels are run by arrogant and outdated dinosaurs who have been in business for 1000 years.”
Dotcom didn’t immediately respond to a tweet requesting clarification.
Photo via @KimDotcom
