Kim Dotcom's Megabox: Music service or malware?

While Kim Dotcom awaits the outcome of the increasingly scandalous efforts by the US and New Zealand governments to extradite him to face charges of copyright infringement, the founder of Megaupload is preparing to launch a new business line soon—a cloud music service called Megabox. Dotcom told TorrentFreak that he already has a number of artists signed up for the new service.

To listen to songs through Megabox, users will have two options—purchasing the music through the service, or installing "Megakey" software onto their computer to listen for free. The Megakey software, as Dotcom explained to Torrentfreak, acts like ad-blocking software—except that it isn't. Megakey allows most advertisements to appear, but replaces about 15 percent of the ads served up by websites with ads hosted by Megabox.

"These new solutions will allow content creators to keep 90% of all earnings and generate significant income from the untapped market of free downloads," Dotcom told TorrentFreak. "I created an innovation that could solve the piracy problem."