Dotcom fights pirate charges
The U.S. is accusing Kim Dotcom, the founder of the cloud-storage service Megaupload.com, of crimes that don’t exist under U.S. law, his lawyers said. Dotcom, 39, was indicted in January last year in Virginia on charges of racketeering, money laundering, copyright infringement and wire fraud through the website. The Internet entrepreneur is scheduled in August to face an extradition hearing to the U.S. from New Zealand, where he is a resident.
“The United States has charged Kim Dotcom with criminal liability for the acts of his Megaupload cloud storage users, a form of secondary copyright infringement,” according to a statement from Dotcom’s attorneys. “But no criminal statute for secondary copyright infringement exists.”
The statement and a white paper from Dotcom’s lawyers Robert Amsterdam and Ira Rothken, were released to coincide with a meeting Tuesday in Auckland of attorneys general from the U.S., Canada, Australia, England and New Zealand.
Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, and his counterparts are also scheduled to meet with the Strategic Alliance Group.