Are you kidding this guy and others are stealing the hard work of others and you want to defend him and accuse people who are there to protect the people from thieves like them.

This guy and others sit around and contribute nothing to society but gets rich off of others contributions.

I don't believe that New Zealand should apologize for anything, they should send this guy to the U.S.A. for prosecution.

@Jon,

If you wish to hand over your rights to due process that's fine, however I'll keep mine. I know what this guy was accused of, but just find it hard to believe that authorities had to go to such extents to get him if the case is that "cut and dry".

@Jon Exner

you need to get the facts straight. Megaupload was a site for file storing. The creator of the site gave its users carte-blanche to use the site as they saw fit with no monitoring by them. That does not equate to the creator of the site stealing copyright work. If I run a thousand unit storage facility and one customer stores stolen merchandise in his/her unit, I am not, as the owner of the storage facility, guilty of receiving stolen goods. The US case against Megaupload does not hold water and that is why they haven't been able to extradite him.

Lobbying by the corporations caused this.

The corporations said they wanted this man and the US Justice department bent over.

I love the last part of the article where it mentions that the U.S. does not what the accused to be able to see the evidence used against him. Whoa, really? Here in the U.S., that's a mistrial.

bostonaccountant if you truly believe that you example is applicable you are not living in the same world as I am.

Do you truely believe that this guys intentions from the very biginning was to allow his site to be used this way you are naive. He is as complicate as the people he allowed to use his site for illegal activities.

BostonAccountant

The creator of the site gave its users carte-blanche to use the site as they saw fit with no monitoring by them. That does not equate to the creator of the site stealing copyright work. If I run a thousand unit storage facility and one customer stores stolen merchandise in his/her unit, I am not, as the owner of the storage facility, guilty of receiving stolen goods.

What you say is true. However, if you know a customer is storing stolen merchandise, and fail to act, you are at the very least aiding and abetting, and possibly could be charged with criminal conspiracy.

denver bill 2 you have to excuse Boston Accountant for the following reasons.

1. he is from boston an ultra liberal city.

2. he is an accountant; you know the people who took down Wall Street and all the big Banks, trasfering the wealth of American citizens to their own pockets, then claimed is was just bad investiments their not responsible for the loses.

It's a shame once again we could not get it right with another country, we look so bad and we just keep intruding on other countries. Stop please your destroying our good image to other nations and our allies are loosing faith in the USA. Get it right before you leap. Money and control for our wealthy is not more important then our image to the world.

denver bill 2

What you say is true. However, if you know a customer is storing stolen merchandise, and fail to act, you are at the very least aiding and abetting, and possibly could be charged with criminal conspiracy.

The thing is: Megaupload did comply with takedown requests when material was reported. That's the thing - it had to be reported by someone before action would be taken due to the fact that users files were not monitored by the company. You know, like how what you put in a safe-deposit box at a bank isn't monitored? Or at least use to not be... Yet if the government got a warrant and found meth in that box they don't charge the bank with a crime. You think banks don't know that some shady s**t gets put in those boxes? They do.

chriscrossing non-sense!

You have bought into the obama theory of the world. We are losing our standing in the world because of obama.

No Jon, we are losing our standing because people have NO MORALS and download/STEAL these files..

As for blaming the President, you need to grow up.. ALL politicians DEMS and REPS have done this to us.. and we let it happen..

Dotcom KNEW exactly what he was doing when he created a storage site and it's a shame some over zealous people blew this.

For all of you who download these files illegally; you are thieves, plain and simple. Might as well go to a store and shoplift..
Which brings us back to NO MORALS..

First it is New Zealand's goverment that was spying not the US goverment. He will get a full pardon if Mitt gets in because this guy was just being a good business man.

New Zealand admits illegally spying on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom

As opposed to "legal" spying?

I haven't been able to download plenty of LEGAL stuff(mods mostly) since megaupload went down! The creators of said mods have since started useing other sites, but these sites are slow and painful, some of them even require registration!

@John Exner

refer to John-Doe's comment. Megaupload complied with all requests to remove copyright data when it was brought to their attention. As for your observations about where i live and what i do:

1) Yes I live in Boston but I am a libertarian and dont vote D just because i live in a blue state.

2) Yes I am an accountant. Accountants are not the same as investment bankers, day traders, and financial analysts. To just lump all professional service fields that have to do with money into one category and then demonize them shows how much of an idiot you actually are. Its too bad that your going to now resort to some sort of class warfare because I happen to hold a profession that has to do with large amounts of money. I wont hold it against you, but I will say one thing, "When you put my order together, I'm going to want a large french fry with that, and can you make sure there is no ice in the coke." Thanks and good luck with your career at McDonalds.

Police and other servants of the law are not supposed to do anything illegal in the US. Why should they be allowed to break these same laws overseas. If it was dine illegally our forces should not be allowed to do anything more except give back to him the things we took and pay a penalty at least for doing it illegally. Even if the guy was breaking the law-two wrongs don't make a right.

While what he did was wrong, I am tired of us giving up our rights in the name of "safety" whether bodily or of our inventions.

Cmon people this guy did not make that much money from a web site they were involved in selling pirated material. They may have been also selling access to the files on their web site.

John exner is a troll and uses this site to post his daily quota of hate Obama crap.

BostonAccountant, the only issue is MegaUpload used filechecking during upload(s) to see if that file was already on their servers. That cut down on space and upload time. However, when they disabled and removed downloads due to copyright alerts, they would only disable the one reported not all the others that had been generated after duplicate uploads. In other words the actual file itself remained. It was just the reported link that disappeared.

So to use your analogy, that would be like it being discovered that someone was storing stolen stuff in a facility and then when the law comes looking forgetting to tell them about the other 50 units the guy has...

One of the things that annoys the hell out of me is people attributing Copyright infringement to stealing, theft and fraud.

Outside of the moral argument this has been settled legally. Dowling V United States (1985). Copyright infringement is not stolen goods, theft or fraud, period. What the FBI is going off of is DMCA which should stand for Draconian Media Copyright Act. This is where Congress attempted to re-categorize copyright infringement as a criminal act, instead of civil, and have the government prosecute people who infringe as a kiss a$$ move to the entertainment industry. Even though this question has already been settled clearly by the SCOTUS.

These types of cases should stay in civil courts, copyright should be enforced only by the copyright holder civilly, again something the SCOTUS has made clear, and the government should worry about much more weighty things then who views a movie or listens to a song on the Internet and who got paid or didn't get paid to make it happen.

bread,

you are wrong. The fact is Megaupload sold nothing. None of the content located on their servers was ever sold, not once, to anyone. What they sold were accounts to download multiple files at once, to be able to track the files you had stored, and also to get the full downloading speed possible from their servers (non-payers were throttled).

None of the information on their servers was ever sold to customers. If that is one of the claims against MU by the Feds then they are bull@!$%#ting the system because that did not happen.

@chiht,

I approve of your satire but it is actually Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It needs to be replaced wit something that the RIAA cannot corrupt and the RIAA needs to be thrown behind bars for being the extortion racket they are.

really, i had no idea White people were into intellectual property thefts too.

according to msnbc message board, only Asians (esp. Chinese) are guilty of this.

please tell me this article is fake.

Cniht, you conveniently overlooked a pretty important statement in the SCOTUS decision in the case you mentioned:

Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

They didn't rule copyright infringement was OK, they just ruled that in the particular case in question the decision reached by the underlying courts was erroneous.

And most notably, you forget that Dowling did NOT appeal the actual copyright infringement charge. The decisions he appealed and the SCOTUS found in his favor on relate to the actual transportation of items across state lines. They concluded those transported items didn't meet the standards of transporting stolen property.

So come up with a better argument seeing as to this day his conviction on copyright infringement remains intact.

What the hell are you saying? Nothing that has anything to do with the article.

Jon,

Bundgaard is being sarcastic (Snarky).

But.................Think Dept. of Homeland Security, Patriot Act, Drones Over America, fast wiretaps, etc. I could go on and on. If anyone wants to add to the list please do so.

howard you are as nonsensical as bundgard this has nothing to do with the list you made.

I take it you are one of the people who think it is OK to download stolen property that it is your absolute right to other people intelectual property without paying for it.

Jon,

"I take it you are one of the people who think it is OK to download stolen property that it is your absolute right to other people intelectual property without paying for it.'

That would be INCORRECT stop making assumptions and work on your reading skills. Mine were better than yours in 6th grade. Then again I tested at a 2nd year college level.

Are you SLOW? Retarded maybe or at least intellectually challenged. Bundgaard was making snarky references to the illegal spying and big brother (drones and so on)

Its easy to see by some of the other replies to your comments that you probably failed your IQ test. Thats a shame.

Its what I get for being polite in my first reply to you. Now I know better. Ignorance I can fix with knowledge but STUPID is FOREVER

Gee howard you are so full of yourself, you hurt my feelings, I think I'll go home and cry. Don't bet on it. You are one of those conspiracy nuts that everything always goes back to how bad the government is. Well the government we have is the government the people voted for.

There is enough blame to go around to both the democrats and the republicans, but that has noting to do with the guilt or innocence of this individual.

Since he is a German National it would be in New Zealands best interest to just kick him out of the country.

Jon Exner................you accuse others of saying things that have nothing to do with this article............have you read your own posts? This is Obama's fault? You're a fruitcake. Go away.

sosick I have been a registered democrat since 1972, the democrats of today are not the democrat of the past.

Jon Exner:

Well the government we have is the government the people voted for.

Au contraire, Jon. The government we have is the government the people were spoon fed and handed on a silver platter by our bettors. Voting is just an exercise in futility, where getting a third candidate even on the ballot is a miracle in itself, orchestrated in an attempt to make the people believe we live in a republic. Neither Obama nor Romney should hold office, they're not my pick. So who does do the choosing?

You may classify those who question the system as "conspiracy nuts", but I view it as not being naive.

sosick I have been a registered democrat since 1972, the democrats of today are not the democrat of the past.

Right they sent all the racists to the Republican party and probably ticked you off.

First off, if it was nothing more than file storage, he wouldn't have anything to worry about, for instance Skydrive by Microsoft is a file storage system. It wouldn't matter the amount of bootleg movies, software, songs or anything illegal was uploaded, the problem is sharing. Yet, Kim here knew that file storage wasn't going to be making him wealthy, especially since his services were not going to be touted under the umbrella of a well-known corporation, much less, respectable, secure and highly revered business. So instead, he created a web-based(cloud) file-sharing service, much like Napster did back in the day, a service whose main source of income was advertisements, which of course, were shown to end-users viewing or downloading the stolen goods.

Sure he can always claim it was nothing but a storage service, but we all know the main stream of his income was from the sharing of stolen property, via the advertisements placed on those pages propagating stolen intellectual property. I am all for sharing and the like, but lets just say you have a car that you've parked on the street, hell even with the keys in it. Would you think it was okay for someone to take your car and store(park) it anywhere they pleased, then further their criminal acts by lending your car anyone asking to borrow it. So lets say they run down your car, put hundreds of thousands of miles, destroy the interior, crash it and finally they decide to park it back in front of your home. Of course, they wouldn't give you neither a reason nor compensation for your loss. Are you seriously telling me this would be okay with you? I didn't think so, hence why it is illegal to facilitate the stealing of intellectual property, for someone worked to create those properties, there should be no reason a Kim should come along and make money by making it easy to steal and share those stolen goods.

I dont know how things work in NZ, but the problem with your logic is that the US wants to try him and therefore US laws are in play with these charges. According to US law, one does not have to "prove his innocence", as you so eloquently put it, but is instead "innocent until proven guilty". The reason the corrupt US Justice Department has not been able to extradite Dotcom, is because their case holds no water.

The man is not a US citizen so there is no sending him back, I for one do not want my tax dollars spent on trying people who are not citizens. The only thing he's guilty of is creating one of the first versions of the cloud and giving people free rain over it. This type of case is generaly handled as a civil matter not a criminal one. There is so much wrong here I honestly don't know where to end this. Oh and how the heck do you hide in your own country. If Mexico sudenly wanted to take me from my home and try me on some B.S. I guess you'd think i was hiding out down here in the U.S. where I was born, raised, served, and pay taxes. I'll be damned before i let that happen.

sleeplyvet go back to sleep. First off no one is trying to take him from his own country, he is a German National not a New Zealand citizen.

Just what the hell is the first version of the cloud or are you looking through the pot smoke you have in your room?

You truly can't see that he created this site for the specific purpose to allow other people to commit the crime of theft.

Jon Exner you need to stop using your butt cheeks as ear muffs and get ur head out of ur@zz. you don't make any sense in light of the FACTS and your opinion sounds like that of a drunk who knows nothing but won't shut up.

And that comes from a self identified inbredcrkr. Did your mother marry her brother and you are the result or did your father marry his sister and again you are the result.

So I guess you believe that this guy was sitting around one day with nothing better to do so he decided to create a site that would download other peoples intellectual property not pay for it and in some foolish belief that now one would use his site to again steal other peoples intellectual property.

Jon, several times you have stated he is a German national, which is correct, but he is also a citizen of New Zealand which made the spying illegal. I believe that was the whole point of the article.

Many countries allow duel citizenship.

Dotcom is a NZ resident. He was granted residency November 23, 2010.

Megaupload is no different than the storage locker that the FBI and Homeland Security uses. It is Mediafire and has its servers in the US down by Houston. Funny how the govt. will take down foreign sites but not domestic ones.

I can go to any library and get someones intellectual property the first day it is out for free, while it is being sold at retail stores through out the world. I guess this isn't copyright infringment because the government likes it. Last time I checked books at the library have the copyright symbol on the first page. I can also get music and movies from them.

How do you give people a free reign over something if that free reign has netted you 165million dollars$

Yes, John furthermore he complied with requests of copyright infirngement to be removed IMMEDIATELY after it was reported. If an artists makes his song and freely disburses form his site, some bad apples are bound to be found. Those bvad apples are found and reported. He was a VAULT. What people do with that vault is there business, if crazy stuff happens in the VAULT and is reported, they check on the VAULT to make sure nothing can get htme in hot water. If you put a gun in the bank deposit box, the bank receives a notice....they dont arrest the bank manager...they arrest YOU.

I've reread this article and they really do only allude to the fact he is a New Zealand citizen, however that should not stop you from reading other articles and finding facts for yourself. I neither smoke pot nor do I sit in my room all day, I'm sorry if your world is so small and your arguments so shallow you have to resort to slinging insults. One fact I'd like to point out is that millions of peoples intellectual property has been stolen by the very U.S. Government that is shutting down this site for being used by pirates. Is my property of less importance because I'm not wealthy? Do I need a senator in my pocket or something?

Piracy sells more material than the ads they buy for it. As long as there is no profit in it it has been overlooked. In this case this guy and his followers overlooked the idea that pirates do not make money off of the property they grab. For years many of todays dot com generals were pirates and in fact even today look to them for insight. If tomorrow we cleaned out all pirates and let the software people do what they will a copy of Winodows would be a thousand bucks. While I do not agree with piracy overall because so many are greddy and make money off of it it does have a place in this wierd world of ours.Myself I go to the library grab a movie I am interested in and if I ilke it I go to the movie theatre to see it as it was supposed to be. 9 out of ten of them are not worth driving to the theatre to see.

Funny how all the movies at my library are so old they appear on the shelf LONG after the movie left theaters and sometimes long after they sat in Redbox for a year. Hm...I'd like to get a card at your library.

You are another problem of this great country. If you live in the USA then GET OUT. If you don't live here then SHUT UP!!!!

Ken, for starters, you have no authority to tell anyone to leave, second, everyone has the right to have and state an opinion. Third, if you don't like it, tough, deal with it, and learn to live with it. The country itself isn't screwing up, it's our inept leaders who are screwing it up.

Thats the US spirit. If you don't agree with the government then you should leave, and if you're a foreigner don't critisize our policies. Good'ol land of the free. Oh wait, I just remembered. That's actually the exact opposite of what it means to be an American and you're an idiot.

O.I.A and B.A.,

Nice.......... very very nice :)

Ken..........Our country is great because we don't have to do what azzholes like you tell us. We don't have to shut up and we don't have to get out just because you don't like us. YOU get out, sleazeball.

bill.... the U.S. is not one being screwed its all the people who work hard to develop their intellectual property only to be stolen by the likes of other people who think they are entitled to it and not to pay for it.

65 bucks for a kids shootem up which is loaded with bugs is intellectual property? Look at Windows....Most people do not even buy the new version until the first major updates have been released and that Inellectual property. You go buy a car without driving it first i imagine or you argument is null and void. Pirates for profit as is the case here should be prosecuted. BTW when we get to it we should also make a case for the millionaires you seem to favor paying off politicians so they will make copyright laws last forever! Music wise those songs are for the most part owned not by individuals but large corporations like Sony

if you don't like it don't purchase it. If the artists don't like it they don't have to sign contracts.

In this day and age there are many ways that artists can produce their own material.

Just where do you get the idea that the efforts of other people should be free to you?

And I don't favor millionaires but I also don't favor thieves like you.

@ken1963 Actually you are incorrect sir. Not every file stored in his on his site was illegal. Megaupload was a cloud style storage website. It allowed users to store their files and allow others access to them. His money did not come from the sale of others intellectual property. Websites make the bulk of their money from ads. The more people that use the site, the more you make on ads. It would be one thing if he himself ripped and shared the material, whether he did or not is up for debate and we will have to see what proof there is. If some users uploaded copyrighted material, he should not be held liable. It would be close to impossible to check every file that was uploaded to his website. If you want to talke about criminals, lets talk about the music industry. It costs them about a dime to make a music cd for which the sell at 15-20 dollars. The artist cut is usually .35c to a little over a dollar per unit sold. The artist is the one that creates the music, why do they get so little?

The internet is for information sharing, what you need to realize is that when the entire "wired" world is involved there will be people that misuse it. Unless Kim ACTUALLY shared copyrighted material himself I am not for his prosecution. One has to actually steal something to be guilty of theft. Just because he ran a website that some people may have posted "stolen" material on does not make him guilty.

@Ken, how and where do you think the money was made. The site was free, just upload your pictures, video, music what ever to an account and let your friends get at it. Your home movies from your trip to disney world, your grandma's picture collection, yeah real illegal stuff there. Your neighbor however put up his music collection so that he and everyone else could get it was another thing. The thing here is, that Megaupload had a policy to remove any copyrighted material if they were told about it. Great, pull it down and its back up the next day. Hollywood and the music industry wants to shoot the owner of the storage facility. Its about like you own a second house. The guy staying there free is having wild parties that disturb the entire neighborhood and the cops come and arrest you, not him.

You want to cry because he got CAUGHT.

I don't shed any tears for people who break the law, but any evidence to be used against them must be acquired legally. The NZ government, by its own admission, didn't follow the law when acquiring evidence. That isn't acceptable. Two wrongs don't make it right.

Except that the US would never have had the honor or the courage to admit to illegal surveillance. Instead, Dotcom would just have been "found dead" somewhere.

Big brother has been alive globally for well over a decade... Read your history books. Just sayin'.

Actually, it's more like saying a gun manufacturer who used some of his own guns to commit a crime is guilty. The JD isn't accusing Megauploads of being an illegal site in of itself; it is accusing it of being a front for an activity that Dotcom was supposedly fueling himself. THAT is where the case is, trying to prove his motives and behind-the-scenes actions. Whether or not you believe he is guilty there is up to you.

But that's not what they're saying. They're saying he made millions from his website (not an illegal activity) that was utilized by 3rd parties to store and share copyrighted information (illegal activity). If they're trying to show that he, himself, participated in the pirating of copyrighted information, well good luck with that one. Say I'm the owner of Smith & Wesson and I make millions off of my gun sales. But I'm going to go hold up a convenience store for a few hundred bucks? Not likely.

Ken,1963,

My D.O.B. is 1966. OUR Gen X is NO stranger to instant gratification and entitlements and most of our parents and grandparents said the same thing about us.

"One day your going to wake up and find yourself in a third world country" Ummmm...........With the current poverty levels and unemployment, education in trouble, teachers having to play Mom and Dad ( don't say that they don't as my younger brother(14yrs) teaches 3rd grade and is the offensive coordinator on their H.S. football team, and my 2 younger sisters teach in Clevelands inner city. All 3 of them say that the more parents are involved the better the students grades are), infrastucture in need of repair, GARBAGE POLITICIANS, corporations buying politicians, and on and effing on.

The point being is that we are not far from there now.

Dude, come off your high horse--Oscar shot your point down already:

Saying this man is guilty is like saying gun manufacturers are guilty because their product is used in crimes.
...which some people argue is true. I guess a better comparison would be saying car companies are guilty because their products aid in the escape of criminals.

Or do you advocate the government going around breaking the law, murdering people and whatnot if it leads to a bigger target... guess you can argue that's happening in the war, but that's a different issue. Point is your little comment:

YOU DO THE CRIME----BE A MAN AND DO THE TIME---DON'T CRY YOU CAUGHT ME ILLEGALLY!

goes against due process and however guilty Dotcom may be, you can't break the law to get him and if you're coming on here so vehemently pontificating your "patriotism" at the expense of due process,

I know where this country has been, where we are now and where we are headed just wait and see.

you might need to reread the Fifth Amendment, you know from that little Constitution thing that's been around long before were ever thought of...

tiggie just out of curiosity do you complain when president obama ignores the constitution and the laws of the land and does what ever suits his purpose?

You know when he doesn't deport illegal aliens he gives them the right to go to school at taxpayers expense.

@Tim, Obama did nothing about this. Hollywood and the music industry went to the attorney general. get your facts straight before opening your mouth. You look like an idiot for saying this.

The Megaupload raid and case happened completely on Obama's watch. It was his AG, his DOJ, and his Administration that was kissing music industry and hollywood backside to go after this guy and the site. I know tons of people who lost their legitimate work from the FBI closing it down. They can't get their files back, their work and backup is lost to the system and their copyright (literally 10's of thousands of people) is being shat on by our government to front for the big wigs of entertainment in LA and New York.

This is what happens when Government picks favorites and people with money parley that money into power and influence. Rights get tossed to the curb, government acts like a third world dictatorship, and a lot of innoccent people get rail roaded and run over in the process.

F Hollywood, F the music industry, and F Obama for kissing their butt.

This guy is a loser collecting money from dumb marketing. I guess I need to get a slice of the marketing sham. Silly for him to feel he is smarter than Bill Gates since he made no operating system he made a website that has an upload button LoL. Also, this guy was notified but content didn't go away. F him and you. The fact that we have losers talking junk on Obama here scares me. The man has done an awesome job (minus republicans blocking him). Have I viewed "free" video... sure. I'd of never been able to see movies otherwise due to the expense. My bitch is make something worth seeing and make it cheap enough for the poor people too!

So, if a guy owned a storage facility and KNEW he was storing stolen property and / or the bodies of murder victims, that would be okay?

Tim W.-1074098

So, if a guy owned a storage facility and KNEW he was storing stolen property and / or the bodies of murder victims, that would be okay?

Unless he was working for the cops and snooping through the storage units to see what was in there, why would he know? It's not his job to police what people are storing.

The reason people get butthurt over piracy is because they develope an intellectual property, whether it be a book, song, movie, painting, or program, and they expect be compensated for their efforts. For many, it may well be the only great composition of their lives. Creativity is not something that can be massed produced over and over again on demand.

Then, someone else comes along, and cuts them out of their compensation for their work by bootlegging copies for profit. Let's not pretend he's innocent, and doesn't know what is going on. The guy in this article makes his money by "enabling" this practice.

Now I realize there are some that believe the artists that develope these properties are just greedy, self centered, capitalist pigs, and are not entitled to a single penney from the end users of these products.

That's why these type of sites exist, so some can shamelessly enjoy the results of other's creativity without paying for it.

Actually, it is his responsibility. It's his property. ALL storage unit owners know what is in their facilities.

Tim,

"ALL storage unit owners know what is in their facilities"

One word................... PoppyCock !

Mine doesn't nor do most that I know.

@Tim, that is invasion of privacy. If you have a storage facility your not allowed to open the tenants area unless your charging them and they have not paid. If your still getting paid, then a court order is requried for it to be opened by anyone but the renter.

ALL storage unit owners know what is in their facilities

I will add one more Poppycock, and throw in a Hogwash for good measure.

Its a monumental task to know what each file contains, not to mention that is files are renamed there is no way to identify pirated files from legal ones.

TFNJ,

Tony, thank goodness the Cavalry has arrived its been rough here :)

Sadly I have to run up to the corner for a bit but I've seen you in action. If anyone can fend off the forces of ignorance its you. Watch out for the stupid ones though they are dangerous:)

Actually, it is his responsibility. It's his property. ALL storage unit owners know what is in their facilities.

I wouldn't store anything at a storage facility where the property owner was going through my stuff. If you want to do so, knock yourself out. I'll take my business to someone who respects some measure of my personal privacy.

I'll add a BS to TFNJ's poppycock and hogwash. If somebody stores 12 pages of incriminating papers within 16 file cabinets of non-related papers, do you honestly believe the property owner knows the contents of every page contained within those file cabinets (which are probably locked)?

LOL. I've been skipping many a post lately. I'm getting brain drain from reading the over reactions to basic stuff.

Actually, it was a rented mansion, and people like his service because he has free storage thats totally private, exept to whoever you give the download link to. If people like that, then they pay for an upgraded account and he gets money for adding a persons name to a list.

Irish you were doing good until you made that silly New Zealand comment.

"The U.S. need to pull the plug on New Zealand. We don't need them. They need us!"

How do the Kiwi's need us? Please elaborate if you will sir........We don't send them foreign aid and they have their own military. Heck if they have a natural disaster they seldom if ever accept help from anyone other than the Aussies and the same if the roles are reversed.

BTW- The Kiwi's and Aussies have cared enough about the U.S. and freedom/ liberty/ honor and justice to send their troops to help us out in the war against terrorists. The cost for them being a smaller country is very high.

No sir the Kiwis and Aussies are pretty damn awesome people. Most are kind and good hearted. Ask any of our sailors that have been down there. To most of my friends those were their favorite places to visit.

Bravo! Well said. The prosecution of this case is not the government's business. If the record companies, movie studios and others with "intellectual property" concerns want to sue someone over the items and actions in question let them do so. Don't waste my tax dollars doing it for them.

Who woulda thunk

Reasonable points. I wouldn't quite compare it to Youtube since Youtube does actually make a reasonable attempt to police their own service. I don't know about the statement that he was never given notice; I imagine no one REALLY knows except him and the authorities. I'm sure both sides would claim whatever suits them best.

That being said, this article is about an admitted mistake in the performance of the legal system. I give NZ kudos for publicly admitting it. People do have a right to bring this neglegence of justice under fire. I just want to see people use clean and proper arguments, and not pollute their own cause with anything but facts. A man's legal rights were compromised; FACT. The legal rights of a man who is being stalked by Big Brother because he started a site that just happened to be used in a crime are being trampled on; Spin. There's far more than enough of that going on in politics right now.

I will agree with that. And the question remains, what happened to his equipment, his customer base and accounts, and his earnings? What legal right does he have to that now?

I do know that Megaupload had a policy to take down copyrighted material if they were notified. The problem was that Hollywood and the music industry made a stink over the fact those accounts were not blocked from uploading anything else. Nor were there filters in place to catch the upload of content by size or by name. Face it, if megaupload took something down in the morning and the people that had originally uploaded noticed, they would have the files back up by lunch.