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For each move Dotcom made, the copyright industry would make another to head him off. When Megaupload agreed a deal with a company which held the database of cover art for CDs, the deal was sunk by the recording industry. “They stopped us from becoming a proper licensor of their content and their cover art. They didn’t even allow us to become a partner.”

While Hollywood was keeping the eager Mega team at arm’s length, Dotcom could only see common sense in some sort of a deal. He wanted to turn the infringing links into an opportunity to make money, diverting traffic attempting to download infringing material to an MPAA-approved website where they could buy it. “We had great ideas for them,” said Dotcom. “So let’s say Hollywood identifies the Terminator 2 movie. Their team has to take it down from Megaupload. By providing us with a content ID . . . we know what it was and we link to the site where they sell it legitimately. They weren’t interested in that — can you believe that? We were going to give them so much traffic so they could sell this stuff and they didn’t do it.”

Hollywood presumably would have seen it as legitimising Megaupload. From Dotcom’s perspective, it was a natural online evolution. “This is one of the ways we can help you deal with the piracy issue,” he says he told them. He said Hollywood needed to work harder to identify and remove infringing links. Although it complained about material which infringed copyright and had access to Megaupload to delete links to the material, Dotcom believed it did not put in enough effort to meet its own obligations under the DMCA. He said the opportunity to turn each infringing link into “a potential advertisement for real product they can monetise” would be impossible for Hollywood to resist. “We thought they would welcome that with open arms and upload piracy themselves just to make more links. We were so excited about this idea.”

Dotcom’s view of the deals he believed were possible seems incredibly optimistic. In 2011, Hollywood was angrily and openly calling for action on cyberlockers. One executive, in evidence to the US House of Representatives, referred to Megaupload, when testifying about internet sites, “trafficking in stolen content”.

Dotcom infuriated the copyright industry even more with a catchy music video promoting Megaupload, performed by and featuring some of their most bankable artists.

The project was pulled together by Dotcom and Printz Board at Roundhead Studios. They also worked heavily on the Megaupload song, released on 9 December 2011.

It was intended to include New Zealand singer Gin Wigmore. Dotcom asked if she would help record the song. Wigmore went to the studio “and nailed the song in three takes”, Dotcom later told bit torrent

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