Kim is someone I really don't like and I have to admit I get a certain amount of pleasure in seeing him fail but I am really not happy with this whole case. Mostly because I don't want to see people being extradited over IP crimes even when they are for profit like in this case but also because it has led to a large segment of the population seeing Kim as some sort of hero fighting for their freedoms instead of a convicted conman who would happily screw you over for a buck.

I wonder what effect this will have on the million dollars he just raised to develop MegaUpload 2(I thought that was mega).

MEGA's actually quite good, FWIW. Dotcom, however, has an ongoing feud with it for murky reasons, and has been claiming that MU2 will kill it dead when released.

This is 1 year old.. can OP or mod add (2015) to title?

Added - thanks!

Not sure how I feel about this. He was certainly a character. I'm not sure why, but what's the deal with all of these guys basically wanting to be comic book villains? (Kim Dotcom, martin shkreli, etc)

I hate to bring politics into HN, but isn't Dotcom's character highly reminiscent of Trump? Same ideals, different skills.

This article is from almost a year ago.

This is a year old story????

How was Megaupload really that much different than say Dropbox or any other sort of large file sharing service? Did they actively encourage piracy?

Yes, and they actively engaged in piracy as a way of attracting users.

Cite?

The emails between kim and the other staff discussing it were part of the court case and are in most news articles specifically about the case.

IIRC they were written in German, and when translated the translation at the worst didn't mention piracy - but did reference them as bad people.. with the best translation that it would be a confusing mess for the authorities to look through... You'll have to check the exact reference, but it wasn't as clear cut as your comment looks.

"The men who ran the Mega sites passed around customers' e-mails with reactions, complaints, and compliments, many of them mentioning obviously copyrighted content. For instance, in May 2009, Batato sent an e-mail to Ortmann with a customer note reading: "We watched Taken successfuly [sic] and then tried to watch the Alphabet Killer a day later and got the message to upgrade if we wanted to continue watching."

Another user in 2010 e-mailed Batato asking, "where can we see full movies?" Batato answered, “You need to go to our referrer sites. Such as www.thepiratecity.org or www.ovguide.com[.] There are the movie and series links. You cannot find them by searching on MV directly. That would cause us a lot of trouble ;-).”

In 2008, a user wrote directly to Dotcom complaining about video problems. "I’ve been trying to watch Dexter episodes, but... the sound doesn’t match up with the visual," he wrote. "I didn’t choose to use your site, you seem to dominate episodes 6 and 7 of Dexter on alluc[.org, a linking site]."

Dotcom forwarded the e-mail to Ortmann, writing: "on many forums people complain that our video / sound are not in sync... We need to solve this asap!”

from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/us-unveils-the-ca...

An article[1] published 4th November 2016 states that

>Where is Kim Dotcom now?

>He could face 55 years in prison if Dotcom convicted. All his assets would be handed over to pay for the alleged $500 million in damages to the entertainment industry.

>But for now, the internet mogul continues to live in his £15million mansion with his wife and five children in Auckland.

[1]: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2115443/

He never actually owned the mansion it was a rental and it's sold recently so I don't think he lives there anymore.

The plutocrats' sheriffs need their pound of flesh to intimidate the peasant sheeple into spending all their money on pointless trinkets and distractions to keep the billionaires rich. Anything or anyone presenting a threat to the corrupt establishment must be destroyed economically, socially and militarily.

If racketeering and money laundering is the only grounds on which to extradite him do they have any hope of succeeding or are they just aimlessly trying everything on the list? As far as I know those are made up charges.