This is huge:

The United States Justice Department filed charges against MegaUpload today, calling the file-sharing service an “international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy.” Founder Kim Dotcom and three MegaUpload executives were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand at the request of the US government under provisional arrest warrants, and the DOJ describes three other execs as “at large.”

The complaint alleges that MegaUpload, founder Kim Dotcom, and his team are responsible for $175 million in “criminal proceeds” and “more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners.” Specifically, Kim Dotcom and six of his executives are charged with running “the Mega conspiracy websites” under a business model “expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works.” The DOJ also says MegaUpload also developed its uploader rewards program as a means of laundering money.

More information here. Combined with yesterday’s protests, this is sure to keep online piracy issues in the conversation for a good long while.

27 replies on “Justice Department Shuts Down Megaupload, Arrests Executives”

  1. So wait, are they gonna do this to Apple and their MobileMe service next? Or anyone involved in any torrent sites?

    Also, last name is really Dotcom? really?

  6. I wonder if this is part of a White House strategy to show that the current set of copyright & RICO laws are perfectly fine for prosecuting piracy and the urgency to pass SOPA/PIPA is unwarranted.

  7. Check the link – she used to be Schmitz. I hope they keep their mitts off CEO Swizz Beatz, who needs to keep out of custody in order to continue bearding Alicia Keys properly.

  10. “Provisional arrest warrants.” How the bloody hell can an arrest warrant be provisional? Either they have enough evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant, or they do not. If they do not, they have no warrant. Or is this something specific to NZ law, some kind of unwarranted warrant?

  13. There is no denying the fact that MegaUpload is all about the free (pirate) distribution of copyrighted material. There are others doing the same. Is Veoh next? What about YouTube?

  15. Too bad the pirates already retaliated and took down five government web sites in retaliation …

    An arms race with a bunch of script kiddies with nothing better to do is not a fair fight.

  16. @13 – Bullshit. “All about” my ass. There are plenty of people, myself included, who use Megaupload for totally legal purposes. But hey, if you’re OK with Hollywood money telling you what you can do and how you can do it, you just keep greasing up like a good little twink.

  19. @15 Yeah, they can think about how they temporarily inconvenienced the man when they are sitting in a jail cell.

    Going after pirates the old fashioned way is a hell of a lot better than SOPA.

  21. Welp, didn’t take long for the neckbeards to get mad. How will I get my Pokemon ROMs, I wonder?
    Oh right, just use a different upload site.

  22. Yep, plenty of other upload sites, although my big concern is how good their logs were and whether Hollywood and the spooks will end up using them to chase down users.

  23. One of my friends lost all her data from her old computer, she was reloading them onto her new computer, but had to do it pieces at a time to avoid exceeding her campus’ DL limits.

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