Photo Credit: X/Twitter Kim Dotcom
After a 12-year fight with the U.S. government, alleged piracy facilitator Kim Dotcom will be extradited to the United States from New Zealand.
The New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed the news, saying he signed an extradition order for Dotcom this week. “I considered all of the information carefully, and I have decided that Mr. Dotcom should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial,” Goldsmith says in his statement.
“As is common practice, I have allowed Mr. Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision. I will therefore, not be commenting further at this stage.” Speaking on social media about the extradition, Kim Dotcom said: “the obedient U.S. colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.”
On April 10, 2014, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a civil lawsuit against Megaupload.com and its main operators for “engaging in massive copyright infringement of sound recordings.” Named in that lawsuit are Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom, Chief Technical Operator and Co-Founder Mathias Ortmann, majority shareholder Vestor Limited, and Head Programmer and Uploader Rewards Program Manager Bram van der Kolk.
That lawsuit alleges that each of these people willfilly engaged in and actively encouraged massive copyright infringement from its users. A DOJ indictment alleges that the defendants generated more than $175 million in illicit profits, while causing $500 million to harm for copyright owners of music, movies, books, games, television shows, and other media.
“Megaupload played an active role in ensuring that it had the most popular content on its servers, that the URL links to those infringing content files were widely disseminated on the internet, and that the links were advertised and promoted by pirate linking sites, so that a maximum number of users would access the infringing content,” the lawsuit reads.
“It further exercised active control over the process of providing that content by regulating the volume and speed of transmissions to users who had not yet purchased ‘premium’ subscriptions,” the lawsuit continues. “Megaupload made money in two ways—through premium subscriptions and online advertising.”
“In exchange for payment, premium users would receive faster access to infringing files, including Plaintiff’s copyrighted works hosted on Defendants’ computer servers.”
Megaupload shut down in January 2012, with the RIAA stating the impact on reducing piracy among internet users was “profoundly positive.” The RIAA says that according to a comparison of Q4 2011 and Q4 2012 (after shutdown), 50% of Megaupload users were no longer using any unauthorized music sites. The same dynamic was noticed after the shut down of Limewire—but even to 2024 the fight against digital lockers like Megaupload continues.
As recently as July 2024 major labels are suing Verizon for the alleged ‘pervasive’ copyright infringement of its internet subscribers, focusing on P2P file-sharing networks and BitTorrent itself.
