Kim Dotcom ridicules charges against him
On Monday MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom said he is preparing an “entertaining” motion in response to the US government’s charges against him.
The German born, New Zealand millionaire who spent approximately five weeks behind bars for allegedly running the largest media piracy operation, said in an interview with Torrent Freak that not all of the charges against him are accurate.Dotcom was accused of illegally uploading millions of songs. But according to the millionaire himself many of charges against him are absolutely inaccurate. For example, Dotcom cites an audio file of a song by the rapper 50 Cent he was accused of illegally downloading and distributing. In reality, the New Zealander claims the file was legally purchased.The file’s link was emailed to several of his friends for the purpose of testing the website’s new email feature. Furthermore, Dotcom claimed the song had a total of zero downloads.The indictment filed by the US government for his alleged involvement in an online conspiracy that authorities claim stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the entertainment industry, states the 50 Cent email he sent was part of the prosecution’s evidence.According to Kim Schmitz, aka Dotcom, the file was legally purchased and posted back in 2006 and isn’t relevant due to the statute of limitation having been expired.In addition to the 50 Cent file, Schmitz also contended that a Louis Armstrong song mentioned in the indictment was also legally bought.“The indictment contained an email in which I suggested to provide Warner Brothers with a limited number of deletes per day,” Dotcom said in his interview.“In fact, days later Warner Brothers got the maximum quota of 100,000 deletes per day,” Dotcom said in response to allegations of his refusal to cooperate with the media giant.Dotcom believes the fact the he was willing to remove the material for his site verifies that he was more than willing to cooperate with copyright holders. Warner Brothers also was able to impede part of the problem by using MegaUpload’s built in tool that allowed for reporting of copy written material on the site.According to Dotcom, the tool aided Warner Brothers in removing more than one million files from the notorious site.Dotcom also added that not all users were transferring “pirated” material and claims the recent happenings have hurt those users who held accounts strictly from the purpose of transferring files over long distances without the need of a hard drive, memory stick or DVD. Among those members he added that 15,000 were US military servicemen that probably used their account to share photos with loved ones back home.Since he set bail in early March, Dotcom has been under house arrests and has been critical on how the US government has handled the situation.The seven year operator of the MegaUpload has slammed the entertainment industry and the politicians behind the legal proceeding claiming his site's policies are no different than that of YouTube.“If you read the indictment and if you hear what the prosecution has said in court, at least $500 million of damage were just music files and just within a two-week time period. So they are actually talking about $13 billion damage within a year just for music downloads. The entire US music industry is less than $20 billion,”explained Dotcom in an interview with New Zealand's 3news earlier this month.“In my opinion, the government of the United States protecting an outdated monopolistic business model that doesn't work anymore in the age of the Internet and that's what it all boils down to,”he added.Dotcom promised the motion would soon come.Amidst a pending extradition request by the US, Dotcom may have the case shift further in his favor, especially after a New Zealand judge ruled that law enforcement apprehended his possessions with a fake warrant. The authorities behind this have filed for another warrant, but if the judge denies the request Dotcom could have access to all his assets once again.
