TorrentFreak

In a filing to the Office of the US Trade Representative the major movie studios describe how successful the shutdown of Megaupload has been. According to the MPAA the file-hosting industry was massively disrupted, with carry-over effects to linking and BitTorrent sites. Nonetheless, the movie group says the work is not done yet and lists The Pirate Bay, Extratorrent, isoHunt, Kat.ph and several other file-hosting and linking sites as remaining threats.

A new paper suggests that box office revenues were negatively impacted after the shutdown of Megaupload. The dip in revenues was most visible for average size and smaller films. According to the researchers this may have been caused by the loss of word-of-mouth promotion by people who used the popular file-hosting site to share movies. For blockbuster movies the Megaupload shutdown had the opposite effect.

Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing was initially scheduled to take place last August, but was delayed until March next year because legal arguments on a number of issues complicated the case. Today the news broke that the hearing may be delayed even further. MSN reports that Anne Toohey, a lawyer acting on behalf of the commissioner [...]

In 2010, individuals from the now-defunct NinjaVideo site stored copyright-infringing videos on the servers of Megaupload. These subsequently came to the attention of the FBI who were conducting an investigation into NinjaVideo and its operators. As a result Megaupload was served with a criminal search warrant requiring it to hand over information to the authorities, but in a cruel twist Megaupload’s cooperation and a desire not to destroy evidence is now being used as evidence against it.

President Barack Obama and New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key talked about Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom before a meeting at the East Asia Summit in Cambodia. The leaders didn’t comment on what was said during the private chat, but Dotcom took up the news to forward a request. He asked Obama to give him and his colleagues a green card so they “can come and help Hollywood to build a proper Internet business.”

As a direct result of the Megaupload raid many legitimate users of the site lost access to their personal files. To find out why the Government put the interests of copyright holders before those of the public, one user convinced the court to unseal the seizure warrant matarials. Surprisingly, however, there is absolutely no mention of Megaupload’s legal use in the released records. In a response Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says the whole case is a tragic copyright comedy.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has confirmed that the new domain for his fresh Mega project will be New Zealand-based. Next January it will launch on Mega.co.nz, a domain that Dotcom believes will enjoy great protection. “Prime Minister John Key can have as many dinners with Hollywood executives and copyright lobbyists as he likes,” he informs TorrentFreak. “The simple fact is that the NZ government, which has been acting like a subsidiary of the US government, is not above the law.”