Kim Schmitz owner of Megaupload facing 50 years in jail

WASHINGTON—Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced today.

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.

The individuals and two corporations—Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited—were indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 5, 2012, and charged with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering, and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement. The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.

The indictment alleges that the criminal enterprise is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand. Dotcom founded Megaupload Limited and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites.


http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/pr...with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement

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Cars they took off him
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Edit: Also was ranked number one in the world in mw3 LOL.

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http://youtu.be/l-ltcCF_cAQ

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That's a ton of jail time, just for owning a file sharing website, holy.

45 years in prison, bet he didn't see that coming when all this time he was enjoying the money xD

Tbh i think he can beat this. He can't actually control what people upload, its like youtube but more private. I can upload a movie right now to youtube and it won't be taken down for days maybe weeks.

man, just seems a little overkill...

While most pictures of these kind ARE true, the law isn't blind. There were reasons for giving him 20 years and the other guy 50. We don't know. It could have been ANYTHING.

I could go murder someone and not steal any of their possessions and get less time in prison, if it is a 2nd degree murder or even a man slaughter (Especially manslaughter, I mean you can get off with 5 years for manslaughter and only serve half that.)

Capitalist society for you. Money over life.

Wow I feel bad for him, to much jail time...
R.I.P Megaupload :/

Wasn't he involved in money laundering aswell or something?

The people who he "stole" money from as in lost revenue from copyright infringement are powerful people and properly put alot of money into making an example of him. He got 50 years? wow? he will serve about 15 of it. A rapist in other countrys get stonned and beaten, so just due to that one guy gettin 20 is not anything suprising as things like death sentence do not happen everywhere

That is unbelievable.. 50 years for that, while you can murder, rape, and desecrate a human being and serve maybe 10-20 years before being released from prison.

Unfortunately, I think this guy is just being made a MAJOR scapegoat by the United States government and many powerful copyright organizations, in an effort to deter future entrepreneurs from running/operating similar businesses. I read up into his past before he created Megaupload, and apparantly he has been convicted in the past on a number of hacking and fraud related charges, including buying/selling stolen credit card numbers, insider trading & embezzlement, and so the US is probably just trying to make an example of him.

SomeFormOfHuman said:

While most pictures of these kind ARE true, the law isn't blind. There were reasons for giving him 20 years and the other guy 50. We don't know. It could have been ANYTHING.

Click to expand...

LAW IS BLIND.

JohnK said:

man, just seems a little overkill...

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The intelligence displayed on Sythe sometimes I swear...

First, Kim has not even been sentenced yet. He MAY get 50 years because that is the MAXIMUM amount of time for his crimes. Depending on circumstances, he will most likely get much, much less.

Emperor_Nero said:

I could go murder someone and not steal any of their possessions and get less time in prison, if it is a 2nd degree murder or even a man slaughter (Especially manslaughter, I mean you can get off with 5 years for manslaughter and only serve half that.)

Capitalist society for you. Money over life.

Click to expand...

Second, that other scumbag wasn't even tried through the US legal system. He committed the crime in Spain, and was sentenced in Spain. Hypothetically though, if he was sentenced in the US, his MAXIMUM could be LIFE in prison.

JohnK said:

man, just seems a little overkill...

Click to expand...

This pretty much seems to sum it up.

It's just the government trying to prove a point and they're being power abusive and even though they know they're being complete idiots, showing an signs of weakness would make the government look feeble.

ridiculous shouldnt be sentenced to 50 yrs in prison

SomeFormOfHuman said:

While most pictures of these kind ARE true, the law isn't blind. There were reasons for giving him 20 years and the other guy 50. We don't know. It could have been ANYTHING.

Click to expand...

The law is pretty goddamn blind. A random woman being killed doesn't hurt corporations (and therefore congress), widespread pirating of movies/music does.

That's the law for you. People value money over life and it is a shame.

Whilst what he did was wrong, I don't think he deserves 50 years jail time. A tonne of those artists are still filthy rich, even with piracy etc. These artists can manage fine with piracy.

I miss megaupload already

A lot of this had to do with his soon-to-come music sharing site/site-addition.
Producers would have made no money because musicians would make money directly from advertisements/downloads with Megaupload getting a certain percentage. It would have decimated the music industry. It was done "unlawfully" however.

To add to that plan of his, the United States has been finding a way to shut down MegaUpload for good for quite a while, it's just that MegaUpload has been defending themselves effortlessly with the "It's the users' faults" till now.