Kim Dotcom opens up legal file sharing service for 10,000 users

[Len]

Kim Dotcom, known for creating the file-sharing website, MegaUpload, and later getting in trouble for it, has opened up a demo of his new file-sharing website, Bitcache for just 10,000 users. The Bitcache demo went live on Tuesday and received 185,000 requests to join but only a small fraction have been given access. The service is due to launch sometime next year.

Bitcache will allow content creators to create a wallet in order to receive micro-payments. Content can then be uploaded to file storage websites, torrent sites, and other file-sharing sites for anyone to download. The catch is that the content is encrypted upon upload and end users will have to pay a fee (chosen by the content creator) in order to decrypt the file. Dotcom expects that this will give creators more reach for their content because some countries can't access stores like iTunes.

Discussing the availability issue, Dotcom said:

“Content often becomes available in one place in the world, and when people are willing to pay, and they try to, they get a message that the content is not available in their country … I think the solution to the piracy problem is to offer content globally at the same time, at the same price … There will always be people who will pirate content – you can't stop that, but you can get to all the people who have the money to pay for content, but have no way to access it. That's about $10bn worth of revenue that is just being left on the side.”

Dotcom has a measure in place in order to stop piracy being done with his new service. If a content provider finds their content online that someone is making money off via Bitcache, they can report it to the system and take control of the content and introduce their own price point in order for people to pay the actual price.