Justice Department's massive copyright case against the file-sharing website Megaupload.com had the Internet world hopping this week. But it also got lawyers talking, about the scope of a criminal investigation that spanned eight countries and the hard-nosed tactics that the government deployed.
Prosecutors and FBI agents who built the case against Megaupload call it an international crime ring - a racketeering enterprise, like the mob or a drug gang, that made $175 million from pirated movies and music since 2005 and cost copyright holders nearly half a billion dollars more.
Starting last August, the U.S. worked behind the scenes with law enforcement counterparts in New Zealand, whose organized crime unit and police moved in to arrest the company's flamboyant founder Kim Dotcom at his mansion near Auckland Friday.
That was a little much for electronic privacy advocate Corrine McSherry, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"What we're talking about here is, you know, copyright infringement," McSherry says. "And that may be a serious problem, but it's a little bit chilling if that can get you dragged from your house in the middle of the night."
It's not just rousting people out of bed or executing search warrants in eight different countries. From the indictment, it's clear the Justice Department pulled out all the stops, getting a judge's permission to try to put the Hong Kong-based company out of business by seizing domain names and, according to one federal source, getting a judge to approve search warrants for private emails that Megaupload officials were sending to each other.
Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), have been arrested in New Zealand, the authorities said; the three others remain at large. Each of the seven people — who the indictment said were members of a criminal group it called “Mega Conspiracy” — is charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The charges could result in more than 20 years in prison.
As part of the crackdown, more than 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites.
Ira P. Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload, said in a phone interview on Thursday that “Megaupload believes the government is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law.”
The case against Megaupload comes at a charged time, a day after broad online protests against a pair of antipiracy bills in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act, or PIPA, in the Senate.
The bills would give federal authorities expanded powers to crack down on foreign sites suspected of piracy. But technology companies and civil liberties groups say that the powers are too broadly defined and could effectively result in censorship. On Wednesday, Google and Wikipedia joined dozens of sites in political theatrics by blacking out some content and explaining their arguments against the laws.
Anonymous, which has previously set its sights on PayPal, Sony and major media executives, was more blunt in its response. The group disabled the Justice Department’s site for a time, and it also claimed credit for shutting down sites for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, two of the most powerful media lobbies in Washington, as well as those of the Universal Music Group, the largest music label, and BMI, which represents music publishers.
Prosecutors and FBI agents who built the case against Megaupload call it an international crime ring - a racketeering enterprise, like the mob or a drug gang, that made $175 million from pirated movies and music since 2005 and cost copyright holders nearly half a billion dollars more.
Starting last August, the U.S. worked behind the scenes with law enforcement counterparts in New Zealand, whose organized crime unit and police moved in to arrest the company's flamboyant founder Kim Dotcom at his mansion near Auckland Friday.
That was a little much for electronic privacy advocate Corrine McSherry, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"What we're talking about here is, you know, copyright infringement," McSherry says. "And that may be a serious problem, but it's a little bit chilling if that can get you dragged from your house in the middle of the night."
It's not just rousting people out of bed or executing search warrants in eight different countries. From the indictment, it's clear the Justice Department pulled out all the stops, getting a judge's permission to try to put the Hong Kong-based company out of business by seizing domain names and, according to one federal source, getting a judge to approve search warrants for private emails that Megaupload officials were sending to each other.
Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), have been arrested in New Zealand, the authorities said; the three others remain at large. Each of the seven people — who the indictment said were members of a criminal group it called “Mega Conspiracy” — is charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The charges could result in more than 20 years in prison.
As part of the crackdown, more than 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites.
Ira P. Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload, said in a phone interview on Thursday that “Megaupload believes the government is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law.”
The case against Megaupload comes at a charged time, a day after broad online protests against a pair of antipiracy bills in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act, or PIPA, in the Senate.
The bills would give federal authorities expanded powers to crack down on foreign sites suspected of piracy. But technology companies and civil liberties groups say that the powers are too broadly defined and could effectively result in censorship. On Wednesday, Google and Wikipedia joined dozens of sites in political theatrics by blacking out some content and explaining their arguments against the laws.
Anonymous, which has previously set its sights on PayPal, Sony and major media executives, was more blunt in its response. The group disabled the Justice Department’s site for a time, and it also claimed credit for shutting down sites for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, two of the most powerful media lobbies in Washington, as well as those of the Universal Music Group, the largest music label, and BMI, which represents music publishers.
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