Kim Dotcom, Megaupload's beleaguered founder, will have some of his assets returned. Judge Judith Potter, the New Zealand High Court judge assigned to the asset seizure issue, reversed her previous decision on the matter and declared that a court-ordered seizure in January and a backup order filed in February were invalid and should not be enforced.
United States district court Judge Liam O'Grady declared today that Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom's trial may never happen, as criminal charges were never formally filed within or by the United States. Prior to shutdown, Megaupload was the world's biggest file repository on the internet, and was allegedly responsible for up to 4 percent of Internet traffic. Megaupload's headquarters and a Virginia data center were raided on January 19 of this year.
MegaUpload's newly-hired lawyers on Friday successfully fought for the data of nearly 60 million MegaUpload users stored on 1,100 servers. The US District court's Judge Liam O'Grady agreed to require further negotiations between the lawyers representing consumers, major Hollywood studios, the US government, and MegaUpload's hosting service, as well as MegaUpload itself. The servers could could have otherwise been sold by Carpathia Hosting, with the information contained on them possibly sold or deleted as a result.
The MegaUpload execs who were jailed in New Zealand have hired law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan along with lawyer Andrew Shapiro to represent them in their upcoming legal defense, CNET revealed on Friday. Shapiro, part of the law firm, is known for successfully defending YouTube from Viacom in a high-profile case back in 2010. The firm is one of the best in the country, according to MegaUpload attorney Ira Rothken. The new hires will have their hands full as they try to defend their clients against criminal conspiracy charges that are said to have cost copyright owners over $500 million in damages.
The movie industry watchdog MPAA has asked the court that is presiding over the Megaupload case to prevent the file locker site from buying the servers, and the data stored on them, from the hosting site where the equipment and data currently reside. The motion comes after Virginia-based Carpathia, which owns the servers, made an emergency motion to the court, complaining that it's incurring costs of $9,000 daily in order to maintain the data. The stored information takes up 25 petabytes of space.
Despite the US trying to extradite Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom from New Zealand, a Monday court hearing has given the executive basic rights. Dotcom will be allowed to surf the web and swim daily to help ease back pain, TorrentFreak revealed. He will also be allowed to finish a music album he has been working on.
Megaupload has dropped its lawsuit against Universal Music Group for allegedly illegally getting YouTube to pull its "Mega Song" video off of the video sharing site. The company said it decided to focus its legal resources on defending itself against criminal charges for copyright violations. Company lawyers insist they will retain the right to reinstate the lawsuit in the future if appropriate.
Kim Dotcom, the MegaUpload founder who was arrested and his site shut down by the US government, is now speaking out quite vigorously against the government and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). He stated that Megauplaod wasn't a host for pirates, but instead a legitimate service that was likely shut down for political reasons, TorrentFreak reported. He goes on to call his indictment as being MPAA-sponsored and allegedly has evidence that will prove his innocence.
Entertainment company ValCom has filed a lawsuit against Megaupload, demanding compensation for alleged copyright infringement. The company is said to hold the copyrights for over 6,000 audio and video titles, many of which it claims were found to be illegally distributed through the file sharing service.
The Motion Picture Association of America has reportedly asked server host Carpathia to retain Megaupload user data. The trade group is attempting to ensure that the data can be used for civil lawsuits, as the government recently gave Carpathia permission to clear the data—totaling 25 petabytes—from its servers.
Google has filed an amicus brief in the ongoing lawsuit filed by Motion Picture Association of America studios against file sharing site Hotfile. The search giant has accused the plaintiffs of attempting to "distort" the accepted interpretation of safe harbor provisions detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
A German appeals court has ruled that RapidShare musit monitor the traffic being uploaded by its user to look for and try to stop pirated content. The ruling upholds three lower court decisions against the storage and sharing service. In each case, the company was told to do more to prevent any violation of any copyrights.
The US government has filed to extradite MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom following his arrest on Internet piracy charges. as well as racketeering. The request was formally submitted in a New Zealand court, and also seeks to extradite three of DotCom’s associates. According to the New Zealand Herald, US officials had up to 45 days following DotCom’s arrest, which came shortly after the dramatic shutdown of his MegaUpload file sharing website.
Jailed Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom, after being denied bail time and time again, has now left a prison in New Zealand. The decision came after Judge Nevin Dawson ruled Dotcom didn't have access to funds that would allow him to leave the country. All of his financial resources were seized and the Judge said it was "highly unlikely" that he had other resources to draw from.
The charges against Megaupload grew late Thursday after it was targeted with additional and potentially more difficult to overcome charges. US officials accused Megaupload of directly producing copies of content from other sites, such as videos on YouTube, with the intent of redistributing it without permission. The claims vary from those that had focused on allegations of more conventional media piracy.
Kim Dotcom, founder and chief of Megaupload has lost his appeal to be released on bail. Following a NZ court’s decision to remand Dotcom in custody pending an extradition hearing, Dotcom’s legal team appealed to the NZ High Court to overturn the original decision. However, the High Court concurred with the original ruling on the grounds that Dotcom had the means to be able to flee the country.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has accused law enforcement authorities of using excessive force when he was arrested at his New Zealand residence on January 19. Dotcom claims the officers that entered his home were "quite aggressive" and punched him in the face, kicked him and stepped on his hands, according to a 3 News report.
Ukrainian authorities have reportedly shut down file sharing site Ex.ua over alleged copyright violations, just weeks after US authorities pushed to shutter Megaupload. A spokesman with the Interior Ministry, Volodymyr Polishchuk, suggests the site was closed following complaints from a variety of companies, including Microsoft and Adobe.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has vowed to help Megaupload users gain access to legitimate data, after the government shut down the file sharing service for its alleged role in copyright infringement. US prosecutors recently admitted that third-party hosting companies may begin deleting user data within days.
User data of the recently shuttered Megaupload site may have all their data deleted by this Thursday, US prosecutors revealed. This would reduce the ability of his clients to defend themselves in court, the lawyer representing Megaupload founders added. The site was shut down for allegedly sharing pirated content with the owners' full knowledge.
YouTube's anti-piracy screening has both come under fire and gotten some relief on Friday. The system is now known from an anecdote at Vice to generate false positives if enough of a song is improperly attributed to the wrong group. When Universal-backed group Yelawolf took a sample from an After the Smoke track and had its adaptation leaked, the Universal takedown claim not only brought down the Yelawolf leak but the original track the sample came from.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been denied bail by a New Zealand court. The presiding judge, David McNaughton, accepted prosecution arguments that Dotcom posed a flight risk and remanded him in custody until February 22. At that time, US authorities will put forward their grounds for the extradition of Dotcom to face criminal charges.
Megaupload saw its troubles expand on Sunday in multiple directions. The file upload service's founder Kim Dotcom pressed for bail in a New Zealand court. In a Reuters account, his attorney argued both that he had done nothing wrong and that he wouldn't be a flight risk. He added that he wouldn't try to restart Megaupload if let out of jail.
Megaupload's lawsuit opposing a takedown of a promo video may have taken an unusual turn. The company was claimed by a Hollywood Reporter source with access to the case to have dropped Universal, which orchestrated the takedown, from the suit. Only a number of unnamed people who had participated in the takedown remained.
Megaupload reacted vigorously to shutdowns and arrests with action of its own. In conversation with Reuters, defending attorney Ira Rothken said Megaupload was "looking at its legal options" to bring its site back online. The lawyer objected to FBI and media industry claims that Megaupload was a criminal conspiracy and said that simply having a file upload service wasn't grounds for the raids this week.
The latest to speak out against the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills is European Union Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes. "Glad tide is turning on SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net," she wrote in a Twitter message. The legislation, if passed, would give the US Justice Department to shut down sites simply suspected of sharing pirated content.
(Update: FBI too) The forced closure of Megaupload and accompanying arrests may have backfired on proponents after Anonymous launched one of its largest attacks ever in retaliation. Multiple statements from the hacking collective confirmed they were responsible for successful denial of service attacks against the websites of the Department of Justice, MPAA, RIAA, and likely arrest instigator Universal Music. All of the sites were partly or completely unresponsive as of early Thursday evening.
Megaupload's troubles were magnified Thursday after word emerged that it has been shut down by Federal prosecutors in Alexandria. The site is currently inaccessible. Reports have also emerged that company staff have charged with violating piracy laws, allegedly contributing to $500 million of lost revenue.
The argument between Universal Music Group and Megaupload over a YouTube-hosted music video from earlier this week has raised some new issues. UMG now claims that it had the right to take down the video from YouTube not under the DMCA but rather thanks to a private contract with YouTube, Ars Technica revealed on Friday. If this holds up, it could bring a dangerous precedent, as the deal would effectively get around the DMCA's abuse protection.
Following the blockage of a YouTube video on Friday at the request of the RIAA and IFPI, cloud-storage service company Megaupload has stated it will sue Universal Music for prompting what it sees as a wrongful takedown. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom requested YouTube reinstate the music video, dubbed Mega Song, while Universal asked to pull it again. The video in question was a promotional one for Megaupload and included P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Macy Gray, Chris Brown, The Game, and Mary J Blige. TorrentFreak learned.
Fon today formally rolled out its once-teased Fonera 2.0n router. The new update adds 802.11n Wi-Fi speeds but is better known for adding built-in clients for several services independently of computers. Owners can upload content to Facebook, Flickr, Megaupload, Picasa, RapidShare and YouTube when the relevant computer is turned off; it can also download BitTorrents and send Twitter updates to signal when a transfer has been completed or a guest connects to the public hotspot.
FON today significantly improved its core wireless router by launching the Fonera 2.0n. The device appropriately has 802.11n Wi-Fi for faster speeds and longer ranges than the older 11g model. More importantly, though, it adds USB and dedicated clients for multiple services directly on the router. Owners can download from BitTorrent, Megaupload or Rapidshare to USB storage without turning on a computer; they can also upload photos or videos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa or YouTube from an attached camera.
FON on Thursday held a small, informal demonstration of its Fonera 2.0/La Fonera+ router in Paris, announcing in will be made available in Europe on April 21st, with other markets that include the USA, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan being added in May. Compared to the original La Fonera, the new Wi-Fi router adds an extra LAN port that allows users to connect a wired device. The new device also can share 3G data network access as a Wi-Fi connection and users can set how much of their own bandwidth they want to share with other FON members.
