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US shuts down popular fileshysharing website

Friday 20 January 2012 0917

By Agencies

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The US justice department has shut down one of the worldsmost popular fileshysharing websites for allegedly violatingpiracy laws as police arrested MegaUploadcoms coshyfounders and two other staff members in New Zealand

Working with US authorities police in the New Zealands cityof Auckland detained coshyfounders Kim Dotcom also knownas Kim Shmitz and Mathias Ortmann as well as thewebsites chief marketing officer Finn Batato after a raid ona luxury mansion

Bram Van der Kolk a Dutch national was also arrested

The four appeared in Aucklands North Shore District Courton Friday and made applications for bail but Judge David McNaughton remanded them in custody until Monday

Grant Wormald New Zealand detective inspector said that after about 70 police raided 10 properties connected tothose arrested they seized in excess of $6mn worth of top end motor vehicles and over $10mn in cash from severalNew Zealand finance companies

Wormald also said that Dotcom a 37shyyearshyold German national has been held on warrants relating to breach ofcopyright offences in the US money laundering and racketeering

Rick Shera a property lawyer said that was the first time New Zealand had taken action to extradite an overseasperson to the US for internet copyright infringement

Mega conspiracy

The group dubbed by prosecutors as Mega Conspiracy was accused of engaging in a scheme that cost copyrightholders more than $500mn in lost revenue and of generating over $175m in proceeds from subscriptions andadvertising according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday

US justice department officials said that the estimate of $500mn in economic harm to copyright holders was on the lowend and probably significantly more

If convicted the maximum penalties are 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit racketeering and moneylaundering five years for each count of copyright infringement and five years for conspiracy to commit copyrightinfringement

Critics of the US Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA and Protect IP Act quickly showed their opposition to the shutdown ofMegauploadcom with hackers attacking the public websites of the US justice department the worlds largest musiccompany Universal Music and the two big trade groups that represent the music and film industries

The film and music industries want the US congress to crack down on internet piracy and content theft

But major internet companies such as Google and Facebook have complained that current drafts of the legislationwould lead to censorship

Many US celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Alicia Keys have publicly voiced support for MegaUploadcomwithout getting paid to do so

Pavan Duggal an expert on cyber and eshycommerce law in Indias capital New Delhi said that the celebrities believedfileshysharing websites were absolutely necessary to spread their content to the general public and support the freeexchange of information

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