👵🏻 👨🏽 ☑️ Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 2 🕴🏼 🛰️ 👩🏽‍🔧

For some, Kim Dotkom, the founder of the infamous file hosting MegaUpload, is a criminal and an Internet pirate; for others, he is an unbroken fighter for the inviolability of personal data. On March 12, 2017, the world premiere of the documentary film was held, in which interviews were given with politicians, journalists and musicians who know Kim “from all sides”. New Zealand director Annie Goldson, using a video from personal archives, talks about the essence of Dotcom's legal battles with the US government and other government agencies that have proclaimed a battle for global Internet piracy.

In his youth, Kim Dotcom considered the United States a bastion of world democracy, a country whose government selflessly fights for the triumph of justice throughout the world. After playing the roles of a hacker, a juvenile delinquent and a computer security consultant, by the age of 30, Kim decides to start a business and creates the largest file hosting service, MegaUpload, which has reached 160 million users. Almost until the closure of the site in 2012, it ranked 13th in the ranking of the most visited Internet resources. Over the 7 years of MegaUpload’s existence, Kim has earned more than hundreds of millions of dollars, but as a result of litigation has turned into bankrupt. The United States initiated the prosecution, accusing Dotcom of posting pirated content and copyright infringement, which allegedly caused damage to the copyright holders in the amount of 500 million.dollars.

So far, Kim has not been able to recover from the blow and improve financial matters, since he spends all his money on the services of lawyers and the creation of new innovative projects, such as the K.im platform, the so-called “file store”, which makes payments to based cryptocurrency.

The article tells about the plot of the film "Caught in the Net", as well as excerpts from other journalistic materials inaccessible to the Russian-speaking reader.

Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 1

“It was awesome!”

In September 2011, Kim gave Auckland a 10-minute fireworks display, for which he spent more than $ 500,000. He personally shot this spectacular show from a helicopter, which he was with his wife, and uploaded a clip with the most colorful effects on his YouTube channel. The nightly show was dedicated to celebrating New Zealand residency permits, and it was the most spectacular fireworks display in the history of the country.

Dotcom's arrest was 4 months away. The imprisonment and interrogation did not last long, but Kim took away many nerves - the matter was aggravated by the fact that he had discovered illegal weapons.

A special forces police officer said that Dotcom was taken from a locked guard room with a loaded shotgun in his hands. The arrest nevertheless did without a shootout, but the presence of an unregistered weapon in the house prevented Kim from immediately securing his bail.

Show must go on

In February 2012, less than a month after his arrest, Dotcom was released, and searches of his house were declared illegal. Thanks to lawyers, he managed to free part of his property from arrest and sell nine of his cars to pay off the same lawyers. This victory over justice meant a lot, but in general the general situation in New Zealand was favorable for him, probably due to the fact that the government of this country did not want to "bend" under the FBI. In addition, the country's prime minister felt guilty for the clumsy work of the special services, whose surveillance of himself Dotkom spotted literally in the very first month of his stay in New Zealand. When this revealed, she had to publicly apologize to Kim, including due to pressure from the local opposition and journalists.

Dotcom was not going to put up with the fact that his business was covered up. Already in August 2012, he promised that he would release a new, improved and completely legal service. This legality will be ensured by encrypting all materials uploaded to it “at the military level”. Each user will receive a key, without which it will not work to look inside the downloaded material. Thus, even if the police arrest the server, it will be impossible to determine what is stored on it.

Virtuous Piracy

It is not known whether Dotkom had foreseen what MegaUpload could grow into, but users understood this. When they found the latest Hollywood news on the site, the file hosting service simply exploded. People just google the movie they wanted to watch, or the song they wanted to listen to, and the file link appeared at the very beginning of the search results. They followed the link and got to MegaUpload, where they saw the inscription: “By the way, if you want to download the file faster, just pay!”. They paid and got a premium account to download faster. Everything was very well thought out in order to lure people who did not even think about whether it was legal or not. They wanted to watch a movie and honestly paid for it, and the money went to Kim's company.

However, formally, they did not pay at all for the film, but for speed! No one forced them to download files for money.

MegaUpload was where Kansas University students applied for free movies. When Greg Sandoval, a computer-related reporter, saw that his girlfriend was watching the movie “Mad Man” that had just been released on a computer, he wondered where she had downloaded it. A former graduate of the university answered: “From the site that our 63-year-old professor showed me!” Greg thought it was serious, because in fact the owners of the site are streaming movies in streaming mode. “It's very easy, and if they made it so simple, such a technology can become a real mainstream!”

Kim and Mona

Kim recalls that he traveled a lot in Asia. When he was at a disco in the Philippines, he saw Mona dancing there and immediately drew attention to her. She was incredibly beautiful, and since Dotcom was, as he himself says, “a little shy,” he asked his assistant to come up to Mona and invite her to join Kim's company.

Mona says she saw a guy sitting alone in a corner, and wondered why no one was talking to him. As it turned out, they had a lot in common, including a difficult childhood, but for a long time they remained just friends.

Kim says: “I knew I wanted to be with her! Look at me, I'm far from a super model. Therefore, I need to put more time and effort if I want someone to fall in love with me. " He took Mona to Europe, showed her Paris, and “in the end, she fell in love with me! We were very happy together. ”

In 2009, they went on vacation to New Zealand and were simply fascinated by this place. Once, traveling along the green New Zealand hills, they reached Coatesville and saw a house that they immediately fell in love with.

By then, MegaUpload was a huge success, bringing Kim tens of millions of dollars a year. In New Zealand, they knew almost nothing about Dotcom - for the neighbors, he was a secretive wealthy foreigner who lived in the largest house in the entire county.
Dotcom very slowly entered the public life of New Zealand and gained some fame only thanks to the grandiose Auckland fireworks. Upon learning that Dotcom received a residence permit in New Zealand, Chris Dodd, the head of the American Association of Film Companies, said in January 2012: “Now these thieves, these arrogant pirates are emigrating to an offshore, to which the jurisdiction of the US courts does not extend. Therefore, we need to develop a mechanism to protect our jobs and our property and cover all these sites or search engines, thanks to which there are illegal foreign file sharing ”!

Kim had a plan to register MegaUpload and go public with the company. According to his calculations, his project cost $ 2 billion. For him, this would be a transition to a whole new level of business - the legal level.

Kim recalled how in 2010 they were about to launch several new sites, one of which was MegaMoovie. It was planned that he would become a competitor to Netflix - an American company that supplies users with streaming video movies and TV shows. The goal was to obtain licenses for showing your own stream from large film studios. Among other projects there were subsidiary sites MegaClick, MegaKey, MegaVideo, MegaLive, MegaBackup, MegaPay, MegaBox. The latter would give artists 90% of what they earned on the site and could become a platform through which they could sell films to their fans. “We thought about how we can improve the principle of copyright. How can we make a digital copy of a film bring direct benefit to both actors and creators? ”

Kim’s team understood that his projects, like other similar platforms for the distribution of digital multimedia content, at the beginning of their formation violated copyrights, but an authorized and legitimate business model could grow out of all this.

A snippet of an audio recording of Kim’s phone conversation with Universal Music:

UM representative: This technology of yours is already up and running, right?
Kim: Yes, it is!
UM representative: I will be happy to make a deal with you guys, this is not a problem!
Kim: Super! Amazing, very happy to hear that! We got a lot of negativity from the content industry because of MegaUpload, you know?
UM representative: Well, I can talk with certain people so that you are removed from the "black list" and transferred to another list.
Kim: if it is from “black” to neutral, and then from neutral to “white”, I think it will be honest!
UM Representative: Yes, we can do it!
Kim: Great, I'll wait.

Kim thought that soon his file hosting was waiting for the transition to the side of legitimate platforms. The film industry was also thinking about such an outcome, and this panicked it. “This is a violation! This is bad! Stop it! ”

Steve Fabrizio, chief executive officer of the American Film Association, said that MegaUpload was essentially just a copycat of existing pirate sites. There was nothing new in what they did, they just did it better than others. The whole business model was to distribute content that MegaUpload did not have rights to.

Jonathan Zittrane, a professor of law and computer technology at Harvard University, said in an interview with the creators of the Dotcom film: “Time passed, and this guy became a multi-millionaire. His resource had a dual purpose: people not only used it to share their vacation photos with friends, while others pay to download them much faster, they downloaded film after film, again and again! ”

“Kim Dotcom made a lot of money for himself. Did he spend at least part of these funds to support art, which he distributed free of charge? No! And in general, the author of any creation has rights, they are recorded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by the UN, and not the American Association of Film Companies. Therefore, a person has the right to protect his moral and material interests. This is serious!" - this is the opinion expressed by journalist and writer Robert Levin, whose books users could also download from Kim’s file hosting service - “Do you want to give it out for free - give it out, want to show it - show it, want to burn it to disk, project it into space, show it on airplanes - this is yours right. But by selling content, Kim thereby violated the rights of many people. "

“When someone like Dotcom creates a website, puts movies there and makes millions on it to buy yachts, estates, private planes, I see it as parasitism!” - says the movie producer Jonathan Taplin, - “He is a parasite who drinks blood from a single organism of artists! He is a criminal and must be in prison, he deserves it! ”

In 2011, Kim began recording an album of his own songs at Auckland's Roundhead Recording Studio. At that time, he worked on the MegaBox music site, which he considered a real threat to music labels, because this site helped musicians get rid of intermediaries in the realization of the fruits of their labor. “These labels are monopolists who steal money from musicians,” Kim sincerely believed that by striking the income of record companies, he could improve the well-being of singers and musicians, “Musicians really liked my idea, they were delighted and wanted to participate in our project. They wanted to advertise the company the way we did. ”

The words of the song “MegaUpload Song”: “I will send files all over the world, I use MegaUpload, send me a file today, MegaUpload” was sung by many musicians, andThe clip , performed by Prince Board, Kim Dotcom, and Macy Gray, posted on YouTube December 17, 2011, was watched by more than 15 million people. Such famous singers as P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris took part in the recording. Brown (Chris Brown), The Game and Mary, J. Blige (J Blige).

With his video, Dotk "showed the middle finger right in the face of Hollywood record companies." Music writer Gabriella Coleman says: “It was amazing because many of the labels that represent these celebrities were not at all happy to see this promo. Its meaning was not well combined with the studio’s message that any copyright infringement harms the musicians, and does not help them. ”

What is going on? Musicians support Kim Dotkom and MegaUpload at a critical moment. Kim is a PR master, he knows what really works and has an impact on the public. In this sense, Dotkom turned out to be a genius, and Hollywood could not assume that he would be capable of such. It was a complete surprise.

“Hello, I am Alisha Keyes, I use MegaUpload!”, “Hello, I am Naomi Campbell, ...”, “Hello, I am Demi Moore ...”, “Hello, people, I am Kim Kardashian, and I love MegaUpload.”

Enemy of Hollywood №1

“These people are whores! Wave a small check in front of them and they will appear anywhere! You see, it’s very sad! ” - this is how Hollywood film producer Jonathan Taplin said about the actors and musicians who supported Kim, “Before, the music business was not like that. And now all these Kim Dotcoms ... people want so much to earn money that they are ready for anything. ”

It seemed to the moguls of entertainment content that Kim was just bullying them by living in a huge mansion, owning all these cars, living a luxurious life. They believed that he had all this at their expense.

Kim Dotkom's personal fleet in the courtyard of a New Zealand mansion.

He had to be stopped, and in a sense, he himself incurred trouble. The Hollywood film industry has long regarded Dotcom as its enemy, and after all, it has great political influence in the United States. This implies the influence in the corridors of power of both the White House and Congress.

Chris Dodd, head of the American Film Association, Hollywood's most influential lobbyist, told Fox News that the industry intends to stop supporting the president financially. “It is naive to think that if we did this in the past, we will do the same now. The industry is very carefully watching who will intercede for it at the time of the threat! ”

He bluntly made it clear to Barack Obama, who was on his second term as president: “If you don’t give us what we want, you can don’t expect financial assistance from us to conduct the election campaign.”

Hollywood really put pressure on the president and the US government to shut down the Dotcom pirate site. "Standing between America and its money - wait for big problems!".

January 19, 2012. Capture

From secret correspondence of FBI agents: “Tomorrow is the birthday of the target. Most invited guests are expected. ”

The original video from the surveillance cameras records the events in the Dotcom mansion, which began at 6:15 in the morning. By the way, the cameras really write sound, as one of Kim’s neighbors expected, and at a fairly large distance. The record shows how two police minibuses and three patrol cars are approaching the mansion.

A recording from a helicopter of a special unit of the New Zealand police broadcasts an order to a ground group to take a position at the gates of the mansion. Two agents jump over the fence, one of them quickly runs up to the guard talking to the policeman at the gate, puts his hands behind his back and leads him into the police van.

A helicopter lands on the front lawn; a group of heavily armed agents jumps out of it and runs into the house through the main entrance. The radio transmits the negotiations of the capture group: “We are in the house, went to the bedroom of the object. The door is slammed with a combination lock. Hacked, stopped by. He ran away! We don’t see him either in the studio or in the bedroom. ”

“They took the inhabitants of the garage. Three persons. We are carrying out the arrest procedure. ”

“The physical location of the facility in front of the building. Key Directive: One of the male objects uttered the name "Finn." He is arrested. "

“We see the nanny and his children on the roof of the garage.”

“Found a target. Security room, 3rd floor. “Confirm the presence of the target.”

From a secret correspondence of FBI agents: “We were happy and had a lot of fun. We are just immensely happy with the result! ”

Kim’s case was heard by the North Coast District Court of New Zealand. He and his team were arrested for alleged copyright infringement, money laundering, and extortion. In New Zealand, a court arrested Dotcom's elite vehicles worth $ 6 million and more than $ 10 million in cash received from several New Zealand financial companies. Soon new details of the raid appeared: the police said that when they arrived on 2 helicopters, Dotkom locked himself in the guard room with electronic locks on the doors. When the doors were cracked, they found Kim clutching a sawn-off shotgun in his hands.

The court indicted Kim for having found illegal firearms in running gear in the mansion. Given the gravity of the charges, the court refused him bail.

According to the FBI in court reading the list of charges, Kim Dotkom earned $ 175 million in criminal transactions, damaging copyright holders in the amount of half a billion dollars.

“He was considered a criminal because he was a criminal and remains a criminal, and not the latest. The fact that he did not commit violence does not mean that his actions were not criminal in nature. People are being sent to jail for securities fraud, and personal injury has nothing to do with it, ”said Steve Fabrizio, SEO of the American Association of Companies. “He harmed at least two million people who earn a living in the film industry.” He compromised a small business that creates platforms for distributing content on the Internet and at the same time plays by the rules. ”

February 22, 2012 Release

Kim leaves the courtroom, and reporters immediately approach him. “Hi Kim! How are you?" “I am glad to go home and see my three children and a pregnant wife there. I hope you understand that now I don’t want to say anything else! ” But reporters are not far behind: "How were you treated in prison?" Kim says again: “I want to go home to my family! Excuse me, gentlemen! ”

“What about the extradition hearing in the US?” Will you resist this? ” Camera reporters accompany Kim to the car. “Yes, I will fight this!”
So, after 31 days in jail and making a bail, Kim was released. The court was to continue the consideration of the case and, at the "urgent request" of the US authorities, decide on the extradition of Kim and his accomplices, each of whom was threatened by American justice with a prison term of about 80 years.

Home video footage captures Kim’s meeting with his wife and children. Kim doesn't hide tears. “We seemed to live in a rainbow bubble! Before this raid, everything was too successful for us ... ".

The video camera captured Mona in the maternity ward of the New Zealand District Hospital and the birth of two twin daughters. Kim, in a hospital gown and hat, sits by the parturient bed, looking at the babies with admiration and love.

“Today I became a father again,” says Kim, “These are two beautiful girls, two little pirates!” “It's great that I was released earlier and I was able to observe the birth of twins. It gave me energy, reminded me that I must continue my struggle, fight for them! ”

Translator's note:

In 2014, Kim and Mona broke up, having been married for 5 years and having given birth to a son and 4 daughters. Mona and her children live in Queenstown - a city on the shores of Lake Wakatipu on the South Island of New Zealand, which is surrounded by the picturesque Southern Alps.

In February 2018, 44-year-old Kim Dotkom married 22-year-old Elizabeth Donnelly. The acquaintance of the spouses happened via the Internet. When Liz, 20, was having lunch with friends at the Botswana Café on Oakland Embankment, her smartphone flashed an Instagram message from a stranger. He wrote that he saw her photo on the network and wants to meet you. They corresponded all lunch, and then Dotkom invited her with friends to his house in the Princes Wharf penthouse, a 5-minute walk from the promenade. At first they just talked. They exchanged SMS, chatted, met again and talked ...

In 2016, Elizabeth first came to the Dotcom mansion in Coatesville, and her son Kimmo. who was visiting his father at that moment, said: “Dad, she deserves 11 on a 10-point scale!”
“I’m not the first, not the last of the girls who fell in love with men who are suitable for their fathers,” says Liz Dotkom, “I’ve never been upset because of what people say about Kim or because of what it is written by the press. The truth really hurts, but nothing of this chatter and scribble is true! ”

Kim Dotcom's second wife, Elizabeth. February 2018

So, Kim was released on bail, the amount of which is still unknown. Kim tells the crew that when they were arrested and the charges read out, he just laughed, they sounded so absurd. “I knew that we were innocent, that we did not commit any of the crimes that we were accused of. I told my lawyers that this would end very quickly. ” He assured lawyers that proving the innocence of the founders of MagaUpload would be very easy.

While in custody, Kim looked through many newspapers, dotted with notes about the arrest, about his person and his luxurious life. It was said there that he resisted the arrest with a sawn-off shotgun in his hands, while a lot of unregistered weapons were found in the house. Kim was surprised how far this is from the truth. This was a complete lie, and in the very first interview after the arrest, Dotkom decided to clarify all the circumstances of the case.

“Of course, everyone knows that the Internet is used for illegal activities, and I think that all online entrepreneurs had the same difficulties as ours. YouTube, Google - we are all in the same boat. Our lawyers have always assured us that we are insured against legal troubles and are protected by DMCA, an American law that protects the interests of online service providers from the consequences of unscrupulous users of the service. ”

Kim’s team of lawyers convinced the court that the actions of the Dotcom resource were no different from the activities of other file sharing services, when the service owners could not be held responsible for the pirated actions of users. That’s all, there’s nothing more to discuss, the charges should be dropped. The state, in the person of the United States, claimed that the site was originally created with the aim of encouraging people to upload there valuable content such as recently released films, new music and the like.

In an interview with the crew of the movie "Caught in the Net," Kim says how important it is to note the following. “I should not have been in a situation where I was forced to defend myself against extradition simply because there was no such legal basis in New Zealand.” The US authorities had to prove to the court that the extradition treaty between the USA and New Zealand includes a copyright clause. However, the court did not see anything like it. According to Dotcom, “it's just falsification. The US authorities are cooking up such documents in order to create a business where there should be no business. ”

One US official says their New Zealand partners screwed up the Dotcom case to the fullest, from start to finish. So, in the search warrant used during the raid on Kim’s estate, the alleged criminal act, which served as the basis for this event, should be indicated. However, the warrant did not contain any indication of a criminal article and was drafted incredibly vaguely.

New Zealand police copied data from laptops seized at Dotcom’s home during the raid. The court ruled that these evidence should remain in New Zealand, after which the FBI took a copy of the data and sent it to the United States. This was unheard of, since copies of computer data were not accepted by the court as evidence, since in the process of copying the original information from the laptop’s hard drive to an external medium and transporting it to forensic experts, changes could be made to it. Dotcom rights, procedural rules - everything was violated, and this had to be somehow fixed.

Many people continue to believe that Dotcom has a clear criminal talent, because he always felt to what extent it was possible to break the law with relative impunity. Kim knew exactly the circumstances under which the prosecution would try unsuccessfully to prove criminal intent. For example, at the second trial in Germany, when he was accused of misappropriating money from investors who invested in Kim’s “megaprojects,” he readily stated that at that moment he was blinded by the prospects and did not realize that he could not repay the debt.

Defending MegaUpload, Dotkom used the hackneyed cliches about the greedy businessmen of the media content industry, the restriction of the free Internet and the slogan "Copyright is universal evil!" Saying "The main pirate is Google, they are no better than us!" and Dotcom’s photo in black beret on Twitter, stylized as a portrait of Ernesto Che Guevara, won him the understanding and sympathy of millions of users of the World Wide Web. “If he’s not quite the noble robber Robin Hood, then certainly not the ruthless pirate Francis Drake.” Kim Dotkom always knew what to appeal to, although his image of an Internet freedom fighter was greatly spoiled by his love of money and luxurious life.

Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 3

Topic: , : Megaupload, , , . 1

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Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 2