Megaupload Hit With More Charges
There is more trouble headed for the founder of Megaupload, one of the largest file sharing websites ever, and it is in the form of new charges.
Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, along with six others who were employed by the website, were charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud.
They were originally charged with only five counts of conspiracy as well as copyright infringement. There are currently two suspects who remain at large.
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Dotcom and four of his co-workers have been arrested and are awaiting extradition proceedings in New Zealand and also in the Netherlands.
Dotcom and his associates have been charged in a federal court in Virginia with a making millions of dollars from selling copyrighted materials, such as television shows, movies and music, to millions of users worldwide.
A lawyer had previously stated that the site served only as a place for users to store data online. The company has claimed that it had removed the content when requested.
When the Megaupload site was shut down it had 66.6 million registered users, with only 10 percent of users having ever uploaded only a single file. This led investigators to believe that most people used the site to download the illegal material, according to the Justice Department.
The indictment also accused the group of using copyrighted material from sites like Google's YouTube video service which they used on Megaupload websites.
The U.S. Justice Department seized the domain names for the websites causing the websites to shut down Jan. 19 of this year. The allegedly illegal operation was based in Hong Kong, and with its operations, was able to amass assets reaching north of $330 million, according to the Justice Department.
The shutdown led to several attacks by hackers on various U.S. government websites. The case has not been heard at trial yet.
