American officials have closed down popular filesharing site Megaupload, accusing its owners of breaking copyright laws. Kim Dotcom (oh yes, pic above) and Mathias Ortmann, founders of Megaupload, were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, at the request of the FBI, and accused of $500 million-worth of piracy. The US Department of Justice issued a statement saying "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime."
Charges brought by the FBI include: "engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement."
The prosecution alleges: "The conspirators’ content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet. The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy’s criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $500 million. The conspirators allegedly earned more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships."
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