U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million — mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -— before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers.
we were at the time. Note that it has been 11 years and Kin Dotcom still hasn’t been extradited to the us
What does NZ charge him or these guys with? I mean if they broke NZ laws, it’s fine, I know how this piracy thing works, but at the time it seemed made up.
It looks like they were charged in the US. I didn’t see with what specifically but the US sentenced them to prison for about a year and they elected to do their prison sentence in NZ (which is allowing one of them to wait until the birth of their child before beginning their sentence). It looks like NZ’s role in this isn’t harmful (besides allowing foreign search of their home)
undefined> (besides allowing foreign search of their home)
So it is harmful.
Even in the US there’s no law against hosting encrypted files. They could be liable if they knew a specific file was illegal/pirated and didn’t take it down but a recent SCOTUS case (think it was Twitter v Taamneh) set the precedent that general knowledge of illegal activity is not enough.