MegaUpload

MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom has the right to sue New Zealand's spy agency for illegal surveillance, a court ruled Thursday.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal rejected a request from the country's attorney general to exclude the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) from DotCom's lawsuit. The GCSB collected intelligence on Dotcom ahead of the 2012 raid on his house to determine whether he posed any danger to the police who would later swoop in by helicopter to arrest him.

New Zealand law prohibits the GCSB from conducting surveillance on the country's citizens, but the agency was … Read more

The U.S. is one step closer to bringing Kim Dotcom to its shores.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal today ruled that the U.S. government will not be required to turn over all of their evidence against Kim Dotcom in order to obtain his extradition to the States. A summary of its case, the judges ruled, will do just fine.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the ruling.

Dotcom had been hoping to force the U.S. government to present all of its evidence against him before it could move forward with hopes to extradite him from New Zealand. … Read more

A year after file-storage site MegaUpload was brought down by U.S. law enforcement officials targeting piracy, flamboyant founder Kim DotCom has cut the ribbon on his new site, Mega.

"As of this minute one year ago #Megaupload was destroyed by the US Government. Welcome to http://Mega.co.nz," DotCom tweeted today.

Not long after, he followed up with a tweet trumpeting what he said was the site's immediate popularity: "Site is extremely busy. Currently thousands of user registrations PER MINUTE." And indeed, as of this writing the site was difficult to access at … Read more

Kim DotCom plans to launch his new site in two days, and users will get 50GB of storage for free, the infamous entrepreneur tweeted today.

DotCom also tweeted that his lawyers are working on giving former premium users their premium statuses on the new site but that the site "can't at this time."

50GB is a huge amount of free storage right off the bat. DotCom's tweet comes a day after another cloud storage service, MediaFire, announced it would be offering 50GB of free storage. Other storage services may offer as much -- or more -- … Read more

Entrapment is one of MegaUpload's claims in its legal battle against the U.S. government. The feds are now saying this claim is "baseless."

"Megaupload's allegations are baseless, as even a cursory review of Megaupload's pleading and the search warrant materials at issue disproves the allegation that the government misled the court as part of a conspiracy to entrap Megaupload," the government wrote in a Friday filing (PDF).

MegaUpload, which was founded by Kim DotCom, is the highest-profile service to be accused of criminal copyright violations by the U.S. government -- and … Read more

How much stock can you put in the many predictions being made for the tech sector in the new year?

Well, here's my record as a tea-leaf reader from last year: 1-for-2 on the major picks. That's right, I was wrong -- dead wrong -- when I said the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would pass. Going into 2012, the entertainment sector appeared to have all the congressional support it needed to pass the legislation designed to make it easier for federal authorities to shut down accused pirate sites. The reason the defeat of the bill was such … Read more

Fun, fun, fun!

That's what digital movies, music, and books are supposed to be about. But for the people who create and sell the stuff, it's been all crumbs, crumbs, crumbs.

The past year was another tough one for the sale of entertainment media on the Web. The irony is that as more entertainment fare is sold online, the less profitable the businesses become.

Few, if any, online music services are profitable. In Web movie distribution, download sales are dismal. Even Netflix, the Web's top video rental service, saw a slow down in the rate it added … Read more

In what looks like another blow in the U.S. case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom, New Zealand's spy agency is forced to turn over records of its illegal surveillance and raid of DotCom's home.

According to Reuters, New Zealand's high court ordered the agency to reveal the records to DotCom, which could possibly aid him in his battle to fight U.S. extradition. The court also ruled that DotCom and his company managers could seek damages from the government because of the agency's unlawful actions.

DotCom's saga has played out over the past year … Read more

From the start, the MegaUpload case promised to be one of those long-running courtroom fights -- and that's exactly what it is turning into.

Anne Toohey, a lawyer working for the commissioner of police in New Zealand, said in court today that there is a "high likelihood" that the extradition hearing to determine whether MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom and several other company managers can be extradited to the United States will be delayed until July, according to a report by MSN in New Zealand.

If postponed, it will mark the second time the case has been pushed … Read more