The company’s founder and head, Kim Schmitz (who now goes by the name of Kim Dotcom) has been arrested in New Zealand along with three other top executives. Local media reports from New Zealand showed the cops there taking away his collection of luxury cars from his residence, believed to be one of the most expensive houses in the country.
Kim, originally from Germany, was one of Germany’s top hackers in the late 1990s. Megaupload gave him his big time success. His colorful past also saw him participating in car races in Europe and posing with a host of glamor girls. His cars displayed license plates such as “GOD” and “MAFIA”. Kim Dotcom was arrested at his mansion on Thursday.
The arrests were made when Kim’s 38th birthday party celebrations were underway and the cops knew that the top execs would be flying in for the event. All the defendants will be tried in the US and are likely to get a maximum jail sentence of 20 years.
Most of the company’s assets including its domain names and other $50 million in assets have been seized. . The indictment says that the company earned $175 million in profits since it began in 2005, mostly from copyright infringement. Megaupload gets over 50 million visitors everyday and almost 4% of the Internet’s traffic.
The charges against the company are:
- Conspiracy to Commit Racketeering
- Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement
- Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering
- Criminal Copyright Infringement
Wow, I wonder what will happen considering a bunch of people in the supreme court just realized that copyrights are unconstitutional and there’s a huge debate over that, now. However, we won’t hear about that until AFTER SOPA doesn’t pass. SOPA is just so stupid. Hollywood really gives America a bad name.
This is utter bullshit. I say right here and now, if they even attempt to arrest the users of this site, the shit will hit the fan and the US will find itself in more trouble than it can deal with. And no matter what the CITIZENS of the US will suffer the most. Poor bastards, this is ridiculous do you think that you can just arrest EVERYBODY on the planet? Look at the investors of other pirating software! Look at who has distributed these things!!! The only reason no one goes after things like bittorrent is because its owned by billion dollar companies! FUCK these fat mother fuckers and FUCK their companies and FUCK these anti-piracy laws!!! Its all dissolving into a police state! Some bad shit is on the horizon and believe you me this is going to end even worse.
If this pisses people off… just remember we all then brought this upon ourselves if cyber anarchy cannot be controlled… which sucks for the rest of us be there it is… let’s stop whining and take it like champs if that’s possible before the world turns into a bigger apocalypse