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move and so little does it heed obstacles in its way that the few speed bumps it encounters are barely noticed.

The system is powered by engines, of which copyright is one. It has two states. There is the embedded active and tactical state, which is the industry of Hollywood and the recording studios, which chugs along on jobs and money. Then there is the higher, over-arching, self-supporting and strategic state which spans corporate America and reaches into Congress and the White House. It uses as fuel the senators and presidents propelled by the engine through elections which need the burn and churn of Hollywood's money and power, fed into the engine through a network of lawyers and lobbyists.

Such an engine causes pollution and it is thick, clogging the lungs of society in a way which makes it difficult for democracy to draw breath. It overwhelms the rights of a broad swathe of individuals by ranking their needs lower than the self-perpetuating engine.

The intelligence community is another engine. It eats privacy, compromising countries and their relationships with their citizens for fear of missing out. Snowden has exposed this to the world — we suspected we were spied on, but now we know.

Dotcom's argument has it that these lobbies have reached across the world to New Zealand, overtly through personal entreaties to government ministers, less obviously through diplomatic channels to officials and even subversively, perhaps, through the world of the spy agencies. It also comes in the form of international treaties, like the TPP, which are negotiated in secret between the governments — advised by many of the corporates which stand to benefit. It comes through the Five Eyes relationship, which has seen New Zealand's spies exposed and then enriched — empowered now to legally spy on their own population in the same manner which has caused outrage across the United States as Snowden leaked and leaked and leaked.

This fight, Dotcom says, is now his fight. He will fight the copyright extremists. He will fight for privacy.

That life which was snatched away almost exists again. Dotcom still has the mansion. Recently, there was a trip to Queenstown for a holiday. It was the first in a long time. As Mega's success grows, the helicopters are seen more frequently. He intends to launch the company on the New Zealand stock exchange. The riches will flow again.

“What I have in my head is my capital,” says Dotcom. “If I see an opportunity I know how to turn it into money. It's my gift. I'm an entrepreneur. It's in my blood, it's in my brain. If you would strip me naked and I don't have anything, in a year from now, just from what I have up here,” he points to his head, “I will be rich again.”

The Queenstown trip exposed weaknesses. “I want to lose weight,” he says. “It's important for my health.” The Queenstown trip left

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