In another twist to the saga that has become the Megaupload case, a New Zealand High Court judge has since ruled that the court order used to seize Kim Dotcom's assets is null and void due to the NZ police using the wrong "type" of legal document when conducting the raids on Dotcom's assets.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says not all of the file-sharing site's users were what some might imagine them to be: Crooks sitting in dark rooms, selling pirated movies, TV shows and music.
In fact, Dotcom contends, "a large number" of customers are from the U.S. government -- the very same folks prosecuting him in what may be one of the biggest copyright cases in history.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is due to appear in Auckland High Court on Tuesday morning as representatives of the US government appeal a ruling that set him free on bail last week.
Dotcom was granted bail on the conditions that he wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, stay at his rented mansion outside of Auckland and not access the internet.
A U.S. grand jury added more charges against file-sharing website Megaupload and its executives, and also accused them of taking copyrighted content from sites such as YouTube for its own service, according to a new indictment released last week.
The founder, Kim Dotcom, and six others employed by the site were charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud. They were originally charged with five counts of conspiracy and copyright infringement.
The authorities said Friday they have seized $50 million in Megaupload-related assets and added additional charges in one of the United States' largest criminal copyright infringement prosecutions.
Megaupload, the popular file-sharing site, was shuttered last month and its top officials indicted by the Justice Department, just days after online protests scuttled a Congressional proposal to make changes to the internet to reduce online copyright infringement.
Megaupload has been down for three weeks now, and while Internet traffic took a dive in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, file-sharing activity has not decreased, with users simply moving to other services, according to a new report.
As noted by ITWorld, Much of the file-sharing activity has now shifted to Europe, and in particular, a site known as Putlocker, DeepField Networks said in a blog post this week.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today officially asked all parties involved in the Megaupload criminal case to refrain from deleting any data stored on servers once leased by the file-hosting service—and it suggested it was willing to sue over the matter.
US prosecutors have asked for Megaupload users' data stored by third parties to be deleted by Thursday, according to a letter from the US Attorney's Office.
The third party companies referred to were Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group, according to the prosecutors' letter.
Flight risks, firearms charges and an inflatable tank are just some of the latest wrinkles in the bizzare case of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. After his arrest, Dotcom's mansion received delivery of a full-size inflatable replica of a Russian T-72 tank, which is now parked in front of the "Dotcom Mansion" and is busy infuriating the upscale neighbors. The T-72 "Threat Decoy" is similar to those used by the military for field training and intelligence deception, manufactured by companies such as Inflatable Images in the US and Russia's Rusbal; each sells for thousands of dollars.
Megaupload's US attorney, Ira Rothken, has a succinct description of the US government case against his client: "wrong on the facts and wrong on the law."
The week has been a busy one for Rothken, a San Francisco Internet law attorney who has previously represented sites like isoHunt and video game studios like Pandemic. When I call, he's eating crab cakes and waiting for yet another meeting to start, but he has plenty of time to attack the government's handling of the Megaupload case.
