Down but not out: Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom teases his next venture, meets Steve Wozniak

For someone who’s had his assets seized and his business shut down, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is doing all right for himself.

Founder of one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Dotcom was on top of the world before authorities intervened and ended the whole operation.

Now, Dotcom is bouncing back, starting with MegaBox, the cloud-based music service he was working on before Megaupload was shut down.

“The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead. Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you,” Dotcom teased on Twitter Wednesday alongside the screenshot posted below.

In a guest post on TorrentFreak last December, Dotcom said that MegaBox will let artists sell their work directly to consumers, allowing them to keep most of the profit from the sales.

The service will work alongside Megakey, a program that will allow artists to profit even from users who download their work for free. How that part of the effort works isn’t at all clear, but Dotcom is confident the project will be a success.

“The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users, and it works. You can expect several MegaBox announcements next year, including exclusive deals with artists who are eager to depart from outdated business models,” he wrote.

In an unlikely twist, Dotcom’s efforts have attracted the attention of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who flew all the way to New Zealand to visit the Megaupload founder. Dotcom, who was on house arrest at the time, told TorrentFreak that Wozniak was intent on helping Megaupload users get their seized files back from the U.S. government.

Not bad for a guy who’s facing charges of Internet piracy, racketeering, and money laundering.