14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this year, Kim Dotcom, the founder of MegaUpload asked the court to grant him permission to record an album. At the time, he was still in jail and had all his accounts frozen. Surprisingly or not, a judge allowed him to visit the studio for several hours a week to record said album.
Well, all the hard work is paying off and Dotcom dropped his first single. Just in case you thought the entire MegaUpload case wasn't weird enough.
As you may have expected, the single deals with internet freedom and the likes. In it, Dotcom spurs people to take action. The message is not very different from that of everyone opposing SOPA, ACTA and so on. Don't expect a Grammy-level hit though, the actual song is pretty bad. Not "Friday" bad, but still.
The quality of the music or the lyrics are beside the point. The messages is what counts and, coming from Dotcom, at this time, it could be seen as a bit disingenuous.
MegaUpload's "successes" so far in the lawsuit brought against it by the US coincided well with the rising movement against copyright maximalists and attempts at regulating the internet. It hasn't been hard for Dotcom to hitch a ride and enjoy the benefit of this free PR.
Let's not forget though that Dotcom is not exactly a champion of the free internet. He wouldn't have been making videos like this one if his multi-million dollar businesses hadn't been destroyed, abusively, by the US government at the behest of the entertainment business.
The MegaUpload lawsuit is leaking in all directions, there's little evidence against the company and the FBI is doing what the rest of the US government has been doing lately when it comes to copyright issues, making itself look like an ignorant bully.
The ICE started it with abusive and marginally legal domain name seizures and, as more details about the MegaUpload case surface, the FBI is taking it to the next level. But if MegaUpload goes down, other companies are next. This doesn't make Dotcom a martyr or a hero.
