this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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I can't actually find what these guys were actually guilty of. All media is sharing the same story that they pled guilty to something, and the charges "could have included racketeering if they were extradited to the US", but they apparently weren't.
AFAIK the whole story was that they specifically started Megaupload in NZ because it was not a crime there, yet the FBI raided their place in a foreign country. If I was a Kiwi, I'd be up in arms about it.
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)
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.
I don’t think the original MegaUpload site hosted encrypted files, at least not in a zero-knowledge way. They also encouraged users to do things like upload their entire music libraries and had a searchable database of them called Megabox. They weren’t just a file hosting provider, they were in many instances encouraging their users to upload pirated content and had all of the tools to see what was being uploaded and what was infringing.
So it is harmful.
Definitely lol but NZ didn't have a cause to arrest/charge them which is what I originally believed had happened
Membership in a criminal organization and several conspiracy charges
The crime of making rich people think they might be a little less rich than they could be.