Kim Dotcom’s stayed busy while on house arrest in his $24 million Auckland mansion. The Megaupload founder seems to have developed a newfound passion for the survival of free culture on the Internet and a distinctly critical opinion about President Obama’s handing of copyright law. Dotcom’s newly launched website, kim.com — Kim dot com, get it? — hopes to ride in the wake of the protests against SOPA and PIPA in order to protest how the American government treats issues like file-sharing. It announces boldly: “The U.S. government has declared war on the Internet” and polls visitors about whether or not they would vote for Obama if Megaupload.com isn’t back online by November 1st."The real appeal of Dotcom’s new campaign for freedom, though, has to be his new music video. While comparing himself to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Che Guevara, the file-sharing kingpin lays out the dire state of affairs rather dramatically in the song’s opening lines: “The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The Government is killing innovation. Don’t let them get away with that.” The rest of the video is a mix of Kim Dotcom pulling a Citizen Kane at a podium and radical types marching at anti-SOPA rallies. There are a lot of Guy Fawkes masks involved.It’s not that hard to see through the veneer of Dotcom’s new career as an activist. Faced with extradition to the United States where he’s potentially looking at a 20-year prison sentence, Dotcom is trying to win allies. Ripping a page from Julian Assange’s playbook, the mission of the site, he told Wired was to “inform about the unreasonable actions and phony charges against Megaupload and its management.” (Hence the 10 Facts About the Megaupload Scandal section.) “It is important for people understand how dangerous the Megaupload case is,” he said. “[There] is no due process or rule of law, just politically driven aggression and destruction lobbied for by the MPAA.” He added, “They can’t win this case simply because there was never any criminality.” Indeed, the case is already messy, after the New Zealand judge presiding over Dotcom’s extradition trial recused himself. Turns out calling the U.S. “the enemy” when it comes to copyright law before a case largely about U.S. copyright law isn’t such a good idea.Dotcom will get his day in court, and at least a few, activisty friends will support his new campaign against Obama in the meantime. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who recently called the U.S. charges against Dotcom “weak and phony,” is apparently one of them. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to more Kim Dotcom productions to hit the web. Homeboy’s not that bad a bad rapper.
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