A year ago Kim Dotcom burst into the public consciousness when his Auckland mansion was raided by police and his business shut down by US authorities.
Twelve months later, Dotcom and his co-accused from the Megaupload site have tonight taken to a stage at his home to officially launch a new service, mega.co.nz.
The cyber-locker service, which went live at 6.48am this morning to mark the exact time of the police raid had, according to Dotcom, a million visitors on its first day and 500,000 registered users. (The site experienced overload, and while it was possible to register there has been twitter comment about the difficulty of uploading files to the service, something Chief Marketing Officer Finn Batato has apologised to Computerworld for.)
Tonight's launch in front of 200 guests, including media and supporters, kicked off with a re-enactment of the raid and a performance from Tiki Taane. Then Dotcom and his Mega team took to the stage for an official press conference.
"I'm convinced the internet is the key to the betterment of mankind," Dotcom told media. But, he says "Hollywood is strangling growth".
"The internet belongs to no man, no industry or government."
He says Mega is a start-up that has been scrutinised by lawyers like no other and he praised his adopted country.
"The New Zealand legal system has given us our lives back, [it's] beginning to hold the government accountable for the legal things they did to us," (Dotcom's extradition hearing was continually delayed last year, and is now expected to be take place in August.)
Dotcom says he doesn't intend to sue the government. Indeed, it looks as if he will stay in New Zealand (assuming that Megaupload case is settled in his favour) and plans to list on the local stock exchange, the NZX. He also wants to create a few hundred jobs within New Zealand.
His more immediate project however is to write a memoir that is due out in June this year. He jokes that the actors who will play Prime Minister John Key and ACT Leader John Banks should have memory loss to be believable. (A reference to both politicians' well-publicised inability to recall specific occasions about the raid - in the case of Key - and about political donations - in the case of Banks.
The press conference ended just before 10pm with Dotcom promising to take a step back from publicity: "You will see much less of me, it is not healthy,"he says.