The court authorized the extradition of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in the US

The founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, the

Supreme Court of New Zealand has authorized the extradition of Megaupload’s founder, Kim Dotcom, to the United States, reports The Guardian.

In the States, Dotcom faces a total of up to 20 years in prison on 13 different charges. Among them is conspiracy to extortion, money laundering and, of course, copyright infringement.

Recall, for the first time Megaupload founder was detained back in 2012 on charges of copyright infringement, but released on bail. Soon he was again arrested during a special operation with the participation of the FBI. Megaupload servers were removed.

The United States demanded the extradition of Dotcom from New Zealand to try him for crimes committed against American companies and citizens.

Megaupload was a huge tracker with an average daily audience of 50 million people. Based on this, Dotcom claims that it could not control the activities of users in any way, when, as he himself did, he did everything possible to respect copyright.

The founder of Megaupload positions itself as a “provider” who, according to New Zealand law, is not responsible for copyright infringement by its users. However, the authorities disagree with him:


Earlier, Dotcom tried in court to challenge the legality of the warrant, according to which 135 objects were seized in 2012, including Megaupload servers, hard drives, flash drives, laptops and other equipment, as well as searches.

The FBI believes that Dotcom, along with the pirates, made an illegal profit of $ 175 million. The damage caused to copyright holders due to the activities of Megaupload is estimated at $ 500 million.