We think the pace of events in MegaUpload piracy case is hard to keep up with. Hence, here’s the entire story.
The founder of the website, Kim Dotcom and three others were busted by the U.S. Justice Department and FBI for massive worldwide online piracy case. The gravity of the crime is such that they were presented in court on Friday and denied bail. A twist in the story came when the hacker group Anonymous came forward and accepted responsibility for disturbing sites run by Universal Music, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Recording Industry Association of America. Taking advantage of this, someone created a fake MegaUpload site for the purpose of phishing which is another serious crime.
The Founder nick named Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim was in a New Zealand jail on his 38th birthday. He reportedly resisted arrest when a team of New Zealand police department swarmed his house with a helicopter and broke in to his high tech mansion. He was caught with a sawed-off shotgun. “Despite our staff clearly identifying themselves, Mr Dotcom retreated into the house and activated a number of electronic-locking mechanisms,” Detective Inspector Grant Wormald from the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand told Reuters.
The police seized a lot of stuff from the place like two guns, computers, documents and many vehicles. Many of them had fancy license plates like KIMCOM, GOD, POLICE, GUILTY, MAFIA, HACKER, STONED. There was also this rumor by the New York Post that musician and producer Swizz Beatz was the founder of MegaUpload.
“To my knowledge, Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way,” MegaUpload attorney Ira Rothken said, adding, remarkably, that “he was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official.” Beatz’s publicist had earlier said Beatz was the CEO. Even the site listed that Beatz was the CEO for a brief amount of time.
Sites like MegaUpload do more harm than good to the music industry since they encourage piracy but stars like Beatz’s wife Alicia Keys still promotes them.