IIRC, he was a "fugitive from justice" because he refused to fly to the States to defend himself in court actions there.
Which is a pretty weird definition of "fugitive", but it apparently meets the legal criteria.
I had a friend who had a lot of his thesis research backed up to Megaupload. He ended up losing all of it.
Sure there was a lot of copyrighted material, but there was some legitimate content owned by US customers that's now gone.
First, trusting a site that existed primarily to facilitate illegal content exchange to hold your critical data seems really naive. Second, if he lost his data because Megaupload went down, that's not a backup. That's the only copy. This isn't just naive anymore.
Maybe a group of 2-3 judges in an appellate court will decide that protecting democracy is more important than "whoring out" (excuse my language) to US interests. It's a slippery slope, and all you need is one precedent.
I don't like the guy at all, but this is just unacceptable in every way. Pathetic performance by the US really, if you can't even take on someone in a correct and ethical way, on equal footing.
The US already seized all his assets, and even denied him funds to defend himself, claiming he was a fugitive from justice (even though he hadn't gone anywhere). They also suggested that if funds were used to pay legal expenses, then those reimbursed (even US legal experts) could be considered part of the "criminal conspiracy". Moreover, they seized all the servers the business used to operate their business, not just infringing content, and then refused to maintain those servers, even for the purpose of preserving evidence Dotcom and co could use to defend themselves in the US. They don't want to sue him, because they already have everything. They want him, in a US prison, probably for the rest of his life.