Hollywood studios sue Megaupload and Kim Dotcom

“Seven major Hollywood movie studios have filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom,” APNZ reports. “The film companies filed the legal action through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which made the announcement this morning New Zealand time… Today major studios 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros filed claims in the Virginia federal court.”

“He is personally named in the indictment, which claims Megaupload and its key operators ‘facilitated, encouraged, and profited from massive copyright infringement of movies and television shows’ before it was shut down in 2012,” APNZ reports. “Dotcom is already facing extradition to the United States on criminal copyright and racketeering charges in relation to the now defunct file sharing website.”

“Dotcom has tweeted about the new lawsuit, saying: ‘Breaking: The @MPAA is suing me & #Megaupload,'” APNZ reports. “He included a link to a white paper written by his defence team, entitled Megaupload, the Copyright Lobby and the Future of Digital Rights.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]

11 Comments

    1. It was his responsibility to remove/ban copyrighted material. Instead, the dodgy fat bastard (Austin Powers reference) chose to ignore the rampant pirating of movies and get rich.

      1. How was Megaupload supposed to know what type of files users were sharing without violating the privacy rights of those users??

        What next? Shut down ISPs because they “facilitated, encouraged, and profited from massive copyright infringement of movies and television shows” by providing the means to uploads/download pirated content?

        1. When an ordinary user went to MegaUpload and looks for files on it, it was quite obvious that vast majority of those files were in violation of copyright laws.

          You didn’t have to “violate” any user’s privacy in order to know what kind of files are there.

          Google will remove YouTube videos if they appear to be infringing; they will turn off audio if it uses copyrighted content; they will remove files from Google Drive if they determine that the files are there illegally.

          Megaupload is the same as the old Demonoid (or the Pirate Bay): an off-shore service designed for media content piracy.

  1. Seriously, who stole the copyrighted material, the people who watched, listened or otherwize used the copyrighted? The people who enabled the user crowd by providing a download pipe?

    Both parties?

    Neither party?

    I think those who used the copyrighted material without permission deserve to be nailed to the cross.

    They are the thieves.

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