Kim Dotcom is finally speaking out. In an interview with TorrentFreak, Dotcom outlines his eagerness to fight claims from the government that Megaupload was nothing more than a site designed to make others copyrighted material available to the masses. Dotcom believes the site offered a legitimate service and is being shutdown for political reasons.
In January, Dotcom was arrested in an armed raid on his New Zealand home on charges of criminal copyright infringement in connection with his site Megaupload.
Dotcom has had plenty of time to take in the indictment, and in the interview he gives several instances where the government is grabbing at straws to make the charges stick.
One claim the government is making is that Dotcom personally posted copyrighted material on Megaupload to be shared, a direct form of copyright infringement. According to Dotcom, the song in question was posted as a private test for the new upload feature. The upload file was hidden and not intended for distribution. As a result, the song was never downloaded by the public.
“The URL to this song had zero downloads. This was a ‘private link’ and it has never been published,” adds Dotcom, “According to the Department of Justice I am an infringer, and this is all they got? One song?”
The government is claiming that Dotcom was actively attempting to prevent copyright holders from removing the offending material. The example they give is Warner Brothers at one point was unable to delete content through the abuse tool, having hit their limit. When Warner Bros. contacted Dotcom about the issue, he refused to raise the delete limit on their account.
Dotcom says this is false, noting the direct delete feature is voluntary, as in, not a legal requirement. Warner Brothers was not denied. They were given a 100,000 max daily delete limit soon after the incident.
Dotcom believes the indictment is full of holes, so why is he being targeted on such flimsy pretenses. Dotcom says he is the victim of a political game. “Mega has become a re-election pawn in the White House / MPAA affair.” adding what he says the consequences are of such a witch hunt. “The MPAA / White House corruption has weakened US technology leadership. Internet businesses, hosting, cloud, payment processors, ad networks, etc. are going to avoid the US. There is an opportunity for liberal countries to welcome those businesses with better laws. The loss of IT business & jobs in the US will substantially outweigh the inflated losses claimed by the MPAA & their billionaire club.”
The Megaupload founder plans to fight the charges till the end, and is confident he will prevail. “We did nothing wrong. Watch out for our first motion in response to the MPAA-sponsored Department of Justice indictment. It will be enlightening and maybe entertaining.”
