Six major film studios unite to sue file-sharing website Megaupload and its key staff

Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is now fighting extradition to the US over charges of copyright infringement.

17:11 08 April 2014

Six major film studios have joined forces and taken legal action against Megaupload, its key operators, and founder Kim Dotcom accusing them of facilitating, encouraging, and profiting from copyright infringement. 

 

Megaupload, which used to be one of the biggest file-sharing sites, was shut down by US regulators in 2012 after it allegedly cost copyright holders more than $500million in lost revenue. 

 

Kim Dotcom, who is now fighting extradition to the US over charges of copyright infringement, has denied all charges saying that his site was a storage service. 

 

Steven Fabrizio, the global general counsel of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement: "When Megaupload.com was shut down in 2012 by US law enforcement, it was by all estimates the largest and most active infringing website targeting creative content in the world."

 

"Megaupload was built on an incentive system that rewarded users for uploading the most popular content to the site, which was almost always stolen movies, TV shows and other commercial entertainment content.” 

 

"Megaupload wasn't a cloud storage service at all, it was an unlawful hub for mass distribution.”