Kim Dotcom Does Interview With Australian News Station

Megaupload Limited was a fairly large website, which provided a single service, cloud storage. Kim Dotcom founded the website in 2005, active for almost seven years before the United States FBI seized the website. But not only that, they froze all his assets, confiscating computers and equipment.  It has been a year and a half since Megaupload was seized, but that won’t stop people who want to illegally obtain software, movies and more.

The F.B.I. “Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement”, which is just the start to a laundry list of charges.

• Engaging in a racketeering conspiracy
• Conspiring to commit copyright infringement
• Conspiring to commit money laundering
• Two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement

If found guilty of all charges, each individual could easily spend the rest of their life in prison. Racketeering conspiracy and money laundering both carry a 20 year sentence, while copyright infringement carries a 5 year sentence, each charge of substantive criminal copyright infringement caries a 5 year sentence.

Cloud storage is getting more and more popular, many websites use cloud storage, allowing you to store and share your files, and many of the services tell users right in their “Terms of Service” that you are not allowed to upload copyrighted material, just not in so many words. For example Dropbox says “Dropbox respects others’ intellectual property and asks that you do too.” As websites and services offered are not able to monitor everyone on the internet, unless you are the F.B.I. & N.S.A. and have PRISM doing all of your work. Megaupload received over 15 million takedown notices for copyright materials, in which they complied faster than the law requires.

Mega, the successor to Megaupload was launched January 19, 2013, advertised to be “BIGGER. BETTER. FASTER. STRONGER. SAFER” is hosted in Dotcom’s home country of New Zealand.

Kim Dotcom stated in an interview with the Australian Public Television station, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  “Let me make one thing crystal clear. I haven’t uploaded any copyright infringing material, I haven’t shared any copyright infringing material”

If you would like to see the full interview, produced by ABC, you can check it out HERE. During his interview he stated that he would upload video of the raid to YouTube.

One theory is that the reason for the takedown of Megaupload is that the New Zealands Prime Minister handed the U.S. Government on a silver platter as part of negotiations with Warner Brothers executives for filming “The Hobbit in New Zealand.

Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload charged for users uploaded content, do you think he should be held accountable?

I would like to give a special thank you to Australian Broadcasting Corporation News for sharing this interview.

Image from http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk