Megaupload founder will be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges — now-defunct file-sharing website had cost film studios and record companies over $500 million

Kim Dotcom at a political rally in 2014
(Image credit: William Stadtwald Demchick, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

After a dozen years of court hearings in New Zealand, the country’s justice minister has announced Kim Dotcom will be extradited to the United States. Once brought to the U.S., Dotcom faces numerous criminal charges related to the now-defunct file-sharing website Megaupload. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order on Aug. 15, according to a statement from the New Zealand Minister of Justice. Goldsmith said he “considered all the information carefully” before agreeing to the extradition. Dotcom will be allowed a short period to prepare for his extradition.

Dotcom is German-born but lives in New Zealand. He and three executives from the Megaupload site were arrested in 2012 after a raid on Dotcom’s mansion in Auckland. These included the company’s chief marketing officer, Finn Batato, and chief technical officer and co-founder, Mathias Ortman, both from Germany. Also arrested was a third executive, Dutch national Bram van Der Kolk.

U.S. authorities say Megaupload cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted movies, T.V. shows, and music files. These files reportedly generated over $175 million in revenue for the website.

The website was also apparently used to share files among members of the U.S. military and other government workers. Investigators found 15,634 registered users with email addresses belonging to various branches of the U.S. military services.

After Dotcom’s arrest in January 2012, he lost access to 1,103 servers with around 25PB of data. A year later, he showed off “one of many racks with many servers” about to be launched for the still-struggling website. Each rack, he said, would be able to store 720TB of data.

Dotcom can still appeal the court’s decision. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), he lambasted that “the obedient U.S. colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload” and confirmed his battle wasn’t yet over. Dotcom expressed hope that he would still avoid extradition. “By the time the appeals are done, if ever, the world will be a very different place,” he wrote.

Ortman and van Der Kolk agreed to plea deals in 2023 that allowed them to serve jail time in New Zealand while avoiding extradition to the U.S. Batato, on the other hand, died in New Zealand in 2022.

Jeff Butts
Contributing Writer

Jeff Butts has been covering tech news for more than a decade, and his IT experience predates the internet. Yes, he remembers when 9600 baud was “fast.” He especially enjoys covering DIY and Maker topics, along with anything on the bleeding edge of technology.

  • hotaru251
    .....so when are they shutting down googledrive as its rampant w/ media sharing the same as MU was.

    also MU only cost em 500M? thats not a lot given the cost of stuff over the period of time the site was up for.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru251 said:
    .....so when are they shutting down googledrive as its rampant w/ media sharing the same as MU was.
    I'm sure Google responds to copyright-based takedown notices, whereas Megaupload probably didn't even have such a mechanism.
    Reply
  • 3tank
    That's quite a bold presumption to assume these people who obtained such content would have paid for it if megaupload wasn't availble- they would just live without it.

    By that metric, the USPS should be charged for every instance narcotics are mailed through 3rd parties using their service
    Reply
  • tamalero
    3tank said:
    That's quite a bold presumption to assume these people who obtained such content would have paid for it if megaupload wasn't availble- they would just live without it.

    By that metric, the USPS should be charged for every instance narcotics are mailed through 3rd parties using their service
    this!
    Sadly, the copyright big media (music and video of USA) is more about show of force and destroy lives akin to italian mafia. (aka, "don't touch my turf" )

    Anyone remembers when they sued that old grannie to hell and back, claiming she was "sharing" illegal stuff?

    Or how somehow.. sharing pirate videos can net you a worse jail sentence than murdering a person.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    tamalero said:
    Sadly, the copyright big media (music and video of USA) is more about show of force and destroy lives akin to italian mafia. (aka, "don't touch my turf" )

    First corporation that came to my mind was Nintendo.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Destroy Copyright
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    i remember the days of megaupload.

    once you figured out the right google-fu you could find pretty much anything you wanted on there. almost always came with a side helping of a virus or 2. but you could find most anything if you knew how to look
    Reply
  • jkhoward
    This lawsuit should be dropped. I can literally find anything that was ever posted on that site anywhere on the internet. He didn’t do anything wrong that every other storage site hasn’t.
    Reply
  • deesider
    jkhoward said:
    This lawsuit should be dropped. I can literally find anything that was ever posted on that site anywhere on the internet. He didn’t do anything wrong that every other storage site hasn’t.
    For the most part I agree that owning a content storage site is not criminal.

    However, the way the Megaupload made money was to charge for upgraded accounts that provided faster downloads. To make it worthwhile for paid subscribers, users were incentivised to upload content with payments based on the content's popularity.

    - In other words, anyone who could upload the best content (i.e. copyrighted movies and music) would get paid cash money for their efforts. That extra step is the difference between a mere copyright infringer and a petty criminal, with Kim Dotcom as their ringleader.
    Reply
  • peterf28
    He will survive in US prison. He will read, exercise, educate other inmates, looe weight. He is very strong personality, US prison will not break him, maybe even make him stronger.
    Reply