[Dotcom] It's really like a Hollywood script. That's how I see it.
This whole thing is a live movie
that's playing out for, like, four and half years already,
and I'm the main act.
Ridiculous.
[Annie] So what about the notion of being innocent until proven guilty?
Yeah, exactly, where did that go?
You know?
Guilty until we say he's guilty,
you know, which is now.
I mean, it's crazy.
[indistinct murmuring through radio]
[birds chirping]
[ducks quacking]
[horse whinnying]
[Alan] As local people, we just knew there was a very large house.
Because the house itself was not easily seen,
it became more noticeable
when they started building the stone wall,
which pretty much surrounds it.
[France] And there were all sorts of rumors about
who was gonna move into it,
and our favorite one was that it was Tom Cruise
who was gonna put a Scientology center there.
We thought that would be kind of exciting.
[electronic beeping]
[computer keys clacking]
[Alan] This person turned up who had changed his name to Dotcom,
and we just thought, well, that was fascinating,
but otherwise, I mean,
it's not as if we saw him walking along the street.
[Wendy] Then the cameras went up.
I don't know whether there were listening devices on the end,
but I always wondered
whether we were being listened to or watched.
It didn't mesh very well with the community.
And then, there was a little bit more digging into the background.
And then it was, "Oh, my God, who's just landed in Coatesville?"
So I started looking into who our new neighbor was gonna be,
and I went onto all sorts of websites.
And the more I looked into it, the more frightened I became
of what kind of person was gonna be coming into our community.
[indistinct murmuring]
[computer keys clacking]
[helicopter engine running]
[man through radio] Ground unit, gates are opened.
[reporter] Top story this hour.
New Zealand is at the center of one of world's biggest Internet piracy investigations.
Police conducted dawn raids on behalf of the FBI.
Kim Dotcom, the founder of massive file-sharing site.
Megaupload was...
[woman] The notorious Dr. Evil of the information highway.
[speaking Danish]
[man] Some say he's a criminal master mind,
others, an online innovator,
but he has to be the most wanted man online.
[computer keys clacking]
[man speaking German]
[Dotcom] I was a hacker.
Hackers were wizards.
Any kind of system,
any kind of network,
you know, a hacker right away identifies weaknesses...
[electronic beeping]
And I'm really good at that.
[speaking German]
[Fisher] Kim Schmitz wasn't the only identity that he assumed.
He became Kimble,
styling himself after Richard Kimble from The Fugitive.
He claimed that he'd hacked into the Pentagon,
that he had reduced the credit ratings of world leaders down to zero.
[Mike] You know, there were all these stories,
and some people didn't believe them.
They did seem sort of very fantastic in some ways.
They seemed sort of, you know, the sort of Hollywood version
of what a hacker must be.
My impression was that, you know, it was someone
who seemed to be bragging quite a bit
for someone who's clearly breaking the law in certain cases.
[sirens wailing]
[Fisher] All the other things that he did were about reputation
and learning how stuff worked.
The thing that he was convicted for,
that was a very obvious criminal enterprise.
It was a scam using phone cards
that would then generate cash that would be Dotcom's.
[dial tone lingering]
And he got caught.
[bells chiming]
[footsteps]
[Dotcom] The judge rightfully ruled that, you know,
I should get a two-year probation sentence,
and he also said that there was an important factor
which was my youthful foolishness.
Not understanding enough at my young age
you know, that I shouldn't have done this.
But it actually launched my career.
[keyboard keys clacking]
[Sean] That arrest actually helped him boost his reputation.
[speaking in German]
[Sean] He set up this whole business
around the idea of protecting companies
from hackers like him,
and when you're dealing with businesses that really don't have
any sort of computer security expertise internally,
that's a really good business to be in
because you can say anything.
[man speaks in German]
[laughing]
[computer keys clacking]
[Sean] He used his hacker mythos to build his credibility
as this security guy.
I do know that his reputation that he built up
by the things he said he did
allowed him to get investment from people
and to build up his company.
[Dotcom] All my life, I've been an innovator,
and all my life, I've been a little bit ahead
of what everyone else was doing.
In the data security space,
we were one of the first companies
to create firewalls that alert you of a hacker attack.
[distorted male voice] MegaCar.com.
[Dotcom] When no one was thinking
about computers and cars,
I created the MegaCar,
real time video conferencing from a car,
that was driving on the highway at 200 miles an hour.
You know, all these things I thought about early on,
you know, and again patented it and sold it.
[speaking in German]
[Schmidt] Kim Schmitz.
[audience clapping and cheering]
[Sean] He did everything he could to exude this new image of himself
as this hyper successful hacker
to really turn everything about his personal life
into a promotion for his professional life.
[speaking in German]
[audience laughing and clapping]
He has this weird appearance of the big guy
with this black suit,
and then, he is just nice,
nice like a nice bear to cuddle with.
He wrote me an email and asked me,
"Well, I see you like motor-sports."
Why don't you come? We're having a weekend in Monaco,
Formula One race weekend. Why don't you come?
I invite you and your girlfriend,
"and let's have a party, and I can meet you."
He likes the music we do with the band,
and me as a character,
and I said, "That's interesting," and he got me there.
[car engine running]
♪ Yeah, pump Pump, pump a little ♪
♪ Pump, pump Pump, pump a little ♪
[man speaking German]
♪ Pump, pump Pump a little ♪
[singing in a foreign language]
[continue speaking German]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Michael] He uses all these status symbols,
cars, girls and being together with celebrities like myself,
but he is not. He himself doesn't really act like that.
Everybody is having champagne.
"Hey, have champagne," and all the girls,
but there is no girl on his lap,
and he doesn't drink alcohol.
And he probably feels that it makes himself likable
when he's in this picture 'cause people like girls and champagne and stars.
[speaking German]
[man speaking German]
[Dotcom] I was a complicated child.
My mum and I went through hard times
with my father, who was an alcoholic.
This guy broke my mother's bones
and hit me many times and was just evil
when he was drinking.
He's the reason why I've never drank any alcohol
'cause I saw firsthand what that stuff can do to you.
[ship horn blowing]
[fishing cord whirring]
[Dotcom] After the divorce, my mum, even though times were tough,
she tried to find ways to get me my first computer.
Once I had my computer,
for me, school was a waste of time.
I wanna learn about computers.
I wanna learn about the future.
[Fisher] LetsBuylt.com is an online marketplace,
very early version of Amazon, if you will.
Dotcom had talked of his plans
to invest a large amount of money into LetsBuylt.
When he said he was going to do that,
the share price took off.
It was ramped massively,
and then he sold his shares.
[indistinct voice over PA]
[Dotcom] I was in Thailand because I was on a holiday...
[camera shutter clicks]
And it didn't take long for some people
that didn't like my attitude, my lifestyle,
to make allegations that there's something fishy here,
and then the government started an investigation around insider trading.
And they arrested me,
and they took me to a Thai prison,
the worst living conditions that I have ever experienced in my life.
And the embassy people arrive,
"and they say," Look, if you want to leave,
we can give you a travel document.
"You can fly back to Germany."
[indistinct murmuring]
And of course I agreed.
[murmuring]
[camera shutters clicking]
[Fisher] The way that German authorities recast it,
they had to go to Thailand to drag him back.
Dotcom would have it that he came back willingly
to face the charges.
[murmuring]
[Dotcom] In the end, I agreed to a plea bargain.
[people speaking German]
[Dotcom] I simply didn't want to deal with it anymore.
I wanted to leave Germany behind
and start a new life somewhere else.
[Sean] If there is any place in the world
that is left as sort of the edge of business,
of finance, of legality...
It's a wild west sort of town.
Hong Kong is all about capitalism.
Companies start there daily and disappear the next day.
It was both at the center of the world
and on its edge.
He felt it was really easy to restart
what he was trying to do in Germany, there, without much oversight.
[robotic voice] Welcome to the Kimpire.
Using a PC to download music
is one of the hottest of today's computer trends,
and that has the recording companies up in arms
and heading to court.
Members of the entertainment industry
are fighting new websites like Napster
which allow you to download music
off of the Internet free of charge.
[man] It's a surprisingly simple idea
known as file-sharing.
Napster is providing a service that give people
the opportunity to steal our music.
[Greg] It started with the music industry.
They were no longer in charge
of how they distributed their wares
because we had Napster.
If it was digitized,
then you could copy it and send it across the globe.
Any one person could do that.
When I wanted something special, a certain song,
I couldn't find it. I couldn't buy it in a record store,
and I couldn't order it.
I just went online and got it from Napster
or from some other dark corner in the Internet.
It was a little en vogue.
It was a little radical.
Everybody did this in this transition times
when the legal market,
legal online market, started to establish.
In that time, everybody did this.
[Moby] Every aspect of music has changed,
how it's consumed, how it's disseminated,
how it's marketed.
It's this shifting climate,
and the old guard's trying to hold on
and penalize anyone who impedes their revenue streams.
So they had these crazy lawsuits
against suburban housewives
who had downloaded illegally 20 songs,
you know, trying to like sue them for millions of dollars.
Well, I don't think this is about record companies.
I think this is about whether or not people
who create music, and invest in music,
have a right to get paid.
The record companies never gave a damn
about the artist anyway.
95% of them have problems retrieving their money
from the major corporations anyway.
Four major corporations, four of them,
and Hilary is fighting to protect them.
[man] Ms. Rosen, isn't this strictly about your profits and your money?
[Hilary] Well, it's about everybody's profits and money.
[siren ringing]
[Lawrence] Originally the film industry was quite naive
in believing that they were immune
because they thought, you know,
we've got two gigabyte, three gigabyte files,
and if you're sharing those, you know, on dial-up modems,
it would take days to download.
But, of course, in the current state,
it's trivial to download that kind of content.
And so that industry is threatened as well,
and the business model of that industry
is very different from music.
You know, when you get access to music,
you want a song that if you like it,
you're gonna listen to it a thousand times.
If you watch a movie,
it's not likely you're gonna watch it two or three times.
So they had a stronger reason to be anxious
that people not get access to their movie
and to bleed the potential revenue.
You can copy on a digital format 10,000 copies,
and the ten thousandth copy is as pure and pristine
as the original.
If you allow that, you don't have copyright
to protect you on the Internet,
we're dead.
[Greg] They had no understanding.
The music industry had been decimated.
The film industry had the same problem.
They didn't understand what was coming
until things had already gotten out of hand.
[yelling]
As you can see, 250,
this is the Gumball speed, ladies and gentlemen.
[car engines running]
[Fisher] Gumball Rally is where the richest car nuts in the world
get together to cover thousands of miles across Europe.
Dotcom treated it like it was a race
because he likes to win everything.
This is the winner.
I've been a hacker in my early years,
and then I started...
[Dotcom voiceover] You know, always when I was there,
there were videos made about it,
and I wanted to share them with my friends.
And I could not because the files were too big
to send via email.
And I was like, well, let's create a site
where you can upload a file,
and then instead of emailing the file,
you just email the link.
And no matter how large the file is,
people can download it, and problem solved.
That's how it started.
[camera shutter clicks]
At the time Megaupload really took off,
we were a relatively small team of developers.
There are not many people that I know
that I can call a genius, but Mathias is.
He was the brains behind the code.
He is really a genius.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Finn] Bram was kind of a fan of Kim
because of his Gumball racing,
and I think that way they met
because he said, "You know, I can... I'm a coder too."
Can I do something for you?"
I was not part of the founding members.
I met him at a club in Munich.
[camera shutter clicks]
Kim got in touch with me because Megaupload grew,
and there was a need for marketing and advertising.
So because we knew each other, and he trusted me.
[Aram] There was this boom in remote storage locker services
that people were using for both infringing
and non-infringing purposes
to store information in what we now call the cloud.
I guess you could really say
that Megaupload was among the innovators
of consumer cloud services.
Certainly the interface design was dead simple.
[Julie] As we talk about Megaupload,
we're gonna be talking a lot about music and films,
but it's not just that.
Academic research, data sets...
This is the promise of the Internet, right?
That across the globe we can share access to all of this stuff,
and build upon it and share it,
and that's really, really amazing.
And that's the underlying technology
of cloud computing that Megaupload used
that's really so exciting.
[Finn] There was a high demand.
We had crazy rates of growth.
Say you have a million visitors on your website,
and every user that came to our website
is potentially advertising income.
[Dotcom] It doubled in size almost every month,
and we needed to get new servers,
more bandwidth, new servers, more bandwidth.
I was surprised.
I was so surprised that something simple
would grow into such proportions,
but I also immediately understood its potential.
Now, whether Dotcom ever envisioned what it was gonna turn into,
I don't know, but users did.
Once users could see
the latest Hollywood movies on Megaupload,
the use of the site exploded.
[Jonathan] They would Google a movie they wanted to see
or a song they wanted to hear.
It would be one of the top hits.
They'd click on the link,
and, oh yeah, I guess I'm at Megaupload,
and by the way, if you want it to go faster, pay here.
Then they would pay there,
and get a premium account and have it go faster.
So it actually, it was very well designed
to attract people who weren't even thinking
one way or the other about legal, illegal.
They just wanted to see the movie
and were happy to pay somebody for the privilege,
and a company like Kim Dotcom's was cashing the checks.
[keyboard keys clacking]
A girlfriend, I saw her watching Mad Men on her computer,
and I'm like, "Where did you get that?"
And she's all like, "Megaupload," and I'm like, "What is that?"
And she told me that Megaupload was the in place
at the University of Kansas,
where she had just graduated earlier,
to find free movies.
How did you hear about it?
She said her 63-year-old professor
at the University of Kansas turned her on to Megaupload.
And then I was like, this is big.
They're essentially streaming to you,
and it was easy.
If they make this this simple to do,
this means it could go mainstream.
[Dotcom] I was traveling a lot in Asia,
and I was in the Philippines at a disco,
and I saw Mona dancing on the dance floor.
And she immediately caught my eye
because she is so incredibly beautiful.
I was a bit shy, so I sent my PA to go to Mona
and ask her if she wants to join us.
He was just this guy sitting alone in the corner.
So it's like, why is no one talking to him?
I thought we really connected.
We both grew up in a tough life,
but, yeah, we were just friends.
[Dotcom] I just knew that I wanted to be with her.
Look at me. [Laughing]
I'm not a supermodel, right?
And now we are going to the Tower de Eiffel.
So I have to spend extra time and extra work
to get someone to fall for me,
but she ultimately did,
and we were really happy together.
[birds chirping]
We went on a holiday to New Zealand,
and we just fell in love with the place.
Run for your lives.
[indistinct murmuring]
[child] Bye bye.
[man] What's happening?
OK, we are up here on the hill at Coatesville.
This is our house.
We found that house in Coatesville
and we just made that our second home.
Yeah.
[Fisher] Megaupload was huge,
and there were tens of millions of dollars coming in.
At that time, he was largely unknown in New Zealand.
He was a reclusive, wealthy foreigner who was living
in the grandest house in the land.
[helicopter engine running]
[man] Now for the biggest fireworks display
ever seen in New Zealand,
a gift from Mr. Kim Dotcom
as he hovers up here over our beautiful harbor.
Happy New Year, Auckland.
Happy New Year.
[rockets whistling]
[Fisher] Dotcom had a very slow entry
into New Zealand life,
but then, he spent about a half million dollars
on that fireworks display.
[cheering]
That was a celebration of getting his residency.
[cheering]
[newsreader] These thieves are now migrating offshore,
locating themselves in places
that're beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
And so we need to come up with a mechanism
to protect our jobs
and protect the intellectual property
by going after those sites
or those search engines
that allow these illegal criminal foreign sites to exist.
[birds chirping]
[Fisher] Dotcom had a plan to list Megaupload.
He wanted to float the company,
and he reckoned it was worth about two billion dollars.
This is next level stuff.
[Dotcom] We wanted to launch several new sites.
One of them was Megamovies,
which was a Netflix competitor,
and the aim was to license content
from the big studios.
We have Megabox.
It would give the artist 90% of the earnings.
It would give them an online platform
where they can sell directly to their fan base.
Because we were thinking about how can we reinvent this whole copyright model?
How can we make it work
for the artists and creators directly?
[man] Kim was definitely talking about new business models
that he was working on and new services that he was working on.
And you got this idea that
like many other platforms that started out
as being very focused on kind of infringing uses,
a legitimate and authorized business model
might actually come out of it.
[man] This technology is live and in place now, correct?
[Dotcom] Yes, that's correct.
[man] I will happily do a deal with you guys,
not an issue.
[Dotcom] Amazing, great, I'm happy to hear that.
We have gotten a lot of fire from everyone,
you know, in the content industry for,
you know, Megaupload.
[man] There are certain people I can have conversations with
where you'll be moved onto a different list
- as opposed to a bad list. - [Dotcom laughing]
If it would be from evil to neutral,
and then later from neutral to good,
I think that would be fair.
- [man] That, we can do that. - [Dotcom] OK, good.
[Masnick] One of the things that I thought was,
maybe this was the sign that Megaupload was making
that sort of shift to a legitimate platform.
The movie industry did not react that way.
I think they sort of freaked out.
They don't go past this whole, "There's infringement.
It's bad. End it."
[Steve] Megaupload was effectively a copy cat
of some pirate services that already existed at the time,
so there was no creative innovation in what they did.
They just did it better in the sense
that they bested their pirate competitors
in terms of growing.
So the entire business model was based
on distributing content that Megaupload didn't own.
This guy is becoming a multi, multi millionaire,
and dual use, this is not people sharing their vacation photos
and then others paying a premium
to download them a little faster.
This is just movie after movie after movie.
[Robert] Kim Dotcom made a lot of money for himself.
Did he make a lot of money to fund all of the art
that he was distributing for free?
No way.
Also remember that like creators have rights.
I mean, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which was signed by the UN, not the MPAA,
you know, you have the right
to moral and material interests of your work.
That's a big deal.
You wanna give it away for free? Give it away for free.
You wanna stream it? Stream it.
You wanna put it on LaserDisc,
beam it into space, show it on airplanes?
That's your choice.
But Kim was violating the rights of a lot of people.
[cheering]
[Taplin] When someone like Kim Dotcom put up a site,
and he collects millions of dollars
of advertising income off that site
to pay for his yachts, his mansions,
and his private jets,
that's, to me, parasitical.
He is a parasite,
and he is sucking the blood out of the artist's corporate body.
[man] Just one more time, are you ready?
[cheering]
[Jonathan] So he's a criminal, and it's just that simple.
You know, he deserved, he should be in jail.
♪ I'm not done ♪
♪ I've just begun ♪
♪ Kim Dotcom ♪
♪ I'm not done ♪
♪ I've just begun ♪
♪ Kim Dotcom ♪
That wasn't right. Let's do it again.
[man murmuring]
And then the other one.
[Dotcom] I was working on a music site called Megabox.
Megabox was actually a real threat
to the music labels because it empowered the artists,
and cut out the middlemen,
these monopolist labels that are just stealing money from them,
and the artists loved that.
Hey, we have our hit, man.
And they were all excited.
They wanted to be a part of that,
and that's why they decided to promote Megaupload
in the way they have done.
♪ And when I gotta send files Across the globe ♪
♪ I use Megaupload ♪
[voice whispering] ♪ Mega Megaupload ♪
♪ And when I gotta send files Across the globe ♪
♪ I use Megaupload ♪
♪ Mega Megaupload ♪
I use Megauploads, man.
I like to use Megaupload.
I like Megaupload.
I love Megaupload.
[Fisher] A whole bunch of A-listers, well-known faces
singing a Megaupload jingle,
suggest that I might be.
I mean, that was really sticking his fingers
up the noses of the record companies and Hollywood.
♪ Send me a file ♪
♪ Megaupload ♪
But it was surprising because I'm sure
that many of the labels that represent these celebrities
were incredibly unhappy to see
that promo because their message was one
that does not align very easily
with the copyright industry's message,
that any kind of copyright infringement hurts them, not helps them.
[Greg] Like, what is this?
Here are the artists backing Kim Dotcom
and Megaupload at a crucial time.
Listen, Kim Dotcom is a PR genius.
He knows what really makes impact.
He knows what people wanna see.
He knows what's gonna affect them.
The guy's a genius when it comes to that,
and Hollywood had no idea that he'd be able to do this kinda thing.
That came out of nowhere.
Hey, I'm Alicia Keys, and I use Megaupload.
Hi, I'm Naomi Campbell.
What up, doe? Megaupload.
I am Demi Moore.
Hey, what's up? It's Kim Kardashian,
and I love Megaupload.
These people are whores.
They're... they're, you know,
wave a little check in front of them.
They'll show up anywhere,
and that's what's so sad, you know.
I mean, the music business didn't use to be that way,
but now whether it's brands or Kim Dotcom,
people are so anxious to get some cash
that they'll do anything.
[Greg] He seemed to them
he was rubbing their nose,
that he was living in this huge mansion
with all these cars, living this high life,
and to them, he was doing that with their money.
It was like, he had to go.
So he kinda, in a way, he invited some of this.
[Glenn] He has long been viewed
as an adversary of the film and entertainment industry in Hollywood,
and that industry wield
enormous political power inside the United States,
and therefore it wields great influence
within the halls of power of Washington.
[reporter] Top lobbyist for Hollywood told FOX
his industry is threatening to cut off money to the President.
Don't make the false assumption this year
that because we did it in the years past
we're gonna do it this year.
This industry is watching very carefully
who's going to stand up for them
when their job is at stake.
[Lawrence] Chris Dodd, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America,
the most powerful lobbying group for Hollywood in America,
was very explicit about the fact
that if you're not gonna give us what we want,
we're not gonna give you what you want when it comes around time
for you to raise money to fund your campaigns.
Now that was more explicit than he should have been
'cause it just sounded so grotesque,
but what he was saying was understood by everybody to be true.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Greg] I've heard a lot of suspicion
about whether Hollywood really did put pressure
on the President to take down a site
that they believed was pirating music and films.
And I would say, "Yeah, absolutely."
That's what we do. He shouldn't be surprised by that.
That's what happens.
You get in between America and its money,
and you're gonna have big problems.
[indistinct announcements]
[police officers speaking indistinctly]
[computer keys clacking]
[security camera whirring]
[sparrows chirping]
[cackling]
[helicopter engine running]
[police officers talking]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[dog barking]
[security camera whirring]
[computer keys clacking]
[Grant] They've been arrested on warrants relating
to breach of copyright offenses in the United States,
money laundering and racketeering.
Within New Zealand,
we have seized an excess of six million dollars worth
of top-end motor vehicles and over $10 million in cash
from several New Zealand finance companies.
[man] More details of Kim Dotcom's actions during the raid have emerged.
Police say when they arrived in two helicopters,
Dotcom retreated into an electronically locked panic room.
[man 2] They found him clutching a sawed-off shotgun,
and they had to cut him out of the room.
The firearm that was found, sir, was illegal.
Here's a photo of it,
and it was loaded.
[speaking indistinctly]
[woman] The FBI claims that Kim Dotcom made $175 million
in criminal proceedings
and that Megaupload cost half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners.
[Steve] He was put into the criminal category
because he was a criminal,
and he is a criminal,
and he was a pretty significant criminal.
Just because he is not violent
doesn't mean his conduct isn't criminal.
People go to jail for securities fraud every day
without ever having taken a bat to the side of someone's head.
So the harm that Kim Dotcom causes
really does affect real people.
It affects those 1.9 million people that go to work every day
trying to earn a living in the film and television industry.
It affects the small businesses
that are trying to start up new legitimate online platforms
and that are playing by the rules.
So the conduct that Kim Dotcom engaged in
was criminal, and it had real victims.
- [woman] Hi, Kim. - Hello.
[indistinct murmuring]
Well, I'm relieved to go home to see my family,
my three little kids and my pregnant wife,
and I hope you understand
that that's all I want to say right now.
[woman] How have you been treated?
I just want to go home, and see my family.
Gentlemen, just... Excuse me.
[woman] What about the extradition hearing?
You will obviously be fighting that one?
Yes, I will be fighting that.
[newsreader] And in New Zealand, Megaupload tycoon Kim Dotcom
was released on bail today after 31 days in prison.
A hearing will be held shortly
to determine whether the Megaupload co-accused
will be sent to Washington to stand trial.
If found guilty, the men could face
up to 80 years in prison.
Hi!
[woman] Yeah, but they didn't say no.
[screaming and laughing]
[speaking indistinctly]
[Dotcom] We were living in this happy bubble, ya know?
Everything was perfect...
until the raid.
Yay...
it's happening.
Oh, I'm scared.
Oh, what's that?
Oops.
- [baby crying] - [man] Hello.
[indistinct murmuring]
[Dotcom] Number one is out, baby...
- [Doctor] Number two. - [Dotcom] ...and number two.
- Babies are super pretty. - Super healthy?
Super good, baby, don't worry, all good.
Today I'm a daddy again.
Two more kids, two tiny girls,
two beautiful little pirates.
That was really good that I was able
to be outside to watch the twins get born.
[camera shutters clicking]
You know, that gave me a lot of energy.
It reminded me that I really need to fight for them.
I knew we were innocent.
I knew these allegations were wrong.
I actually read the indictment on the day we got arrested,
and I had to laugh.
I said to my co-defense,
this will be over really quick.
This is such a nonsense.
It will be so easy to discredit
and show that they got it all wrong, you know?
While I was remanded,
I got all these press clippings,
and they were saying that I was found
with a sawn-off shotgun,
you know, that they had to use this kind of force
because I had weapons in the house
and, you know, the whole description of the case,
and who I am was just completely unrealistic and not true.
- Speak with... [indistinct] - Mm-hmm.
So I decided that I want to set the record straight.
Of course, everybody knows
that the Internet is being used
for legitimate and illegitimate uses,
and I think every online service provider
has the same challenges that we had.
YouTube, Google, everybody is in the same boat,
and our legal advisers have always told us that we are secure
and that we are protected by the DMCA
which is a law in the U.S.
that is protecting online service providers
of liability for the actions of their users.
[Cyrus] Kim's legal team would argue that they're no different
than any other cloud storage service.
They are not responsible for what the users do.
They have no liability.
End of story as far as they're concerned.
What the government alleges, what the entertainment industry alleges
is that, well, no, the website was set up to give incentives
for people to upload valuable material,
meaning, you know, newly released films,
newly released music, things like that.
[indistinct murmuring]
[Dotcom] That's also very important to mention.
I shouldn't ever have been in a situation
to defend myself against extradition
because there is simply no basis in law
in New Zealand to extradite me.
[Greg] They have to prove to a New Zealand court
that the treaty between the United States
and New Zealand, extradition treaty, covers copyright.
And from what I've seen,
there's nothing in there about copyright.
[Dr. Ira] They're concocted,
and they're piling them on to figure out a way
to make out a case where none should exist.
But like a house, you know, like dominoes,
if there is no criminal copyright infringement,
all the others will fall.
[keyboard keys clacking]
The whole Dotcom Megaupload process
turned out to be
far more than New Zealand ever bargained for.
Anything that we could get wrong, we got wrong.
The New Zealand authorities managed to pretty much screw up every step
of the process along the way.
The search warrant that was used to execute the raid,
it has to be directed towards
whatever the alleged criminal enterprise is.
This document didn't do that.
It was an incredibly vague document.
The authorities in New Zealand cloned Dotcom's laptops,
which had been seized during the raid.
The court had effectively said
this evidence remains in New Zealand.
The FBI took the clones
and sent them back to the United States.
It's extraordinary.
Dotcom's rights, the process of law had been thwarted,
and there needed to be some sort of redress for that.
[woman] The Internet millionaire has been back in court
for a three-day hearing.
Police were quizzed about what level of threat he posed
and whether the elite special tactics group
was needed to execute the search warrants in January.
[man] The police are not every day
going into domestic houses
armed to the teeth with automatic weapons,
bashing down doors,
quartering the household in a paramilitary fashion,
shouting orders at one another.
That's not ordinary police practice in New Zealand, is it?
Or have I missed something?
I think you've missed something.
If the risk assessment is that there are firearms in the property,
the police will not execute that search warrant
without armed police.
[Andrew] When one reads the indictment of Megaupload,
I notice that there were references
to child pornography and terrorism.
They do not have any relevance
to a claim of copyright infringement,
but that is part of the effort
to paint the defendants as extremely dangerous
and ugly and nasty persons.
And that, Your Honors, one that I referred to.
[Greg] They had a message.
The guy is dangerous.
He has weapons,
and so everybody thought this Kim Dotcom guy
is not just into piracy.
They gave the impression that he was much more dangerous
and there were other things that he might be into,
and of course, that turned out to be a lie.
[Dotcom] One was taken at a resort
called Cape Kidnappers in Napier,
and I was there with my family for holiday,
and we had an afternoon where we had clay shooting,
and the other event was a similar occasion
in Ireland over 10 years ago.
[Mona] I was almost seven months pregnant.
I was having contractions, but that was not my focus.
I just thought to myself,
"Oh, my God, the kids,"
'cause I could see the guys with their weapons,
with their guns.
How silly is that?
So I was just like, "Can you please let me go to my kids?"
They're like, "No, you just have to stand there."
You have to stand there."
I'm like, "I need to go to my kids."
I need to see my kids.
"Those are my kids in there."
It's 'cause I was just worried that, you know,
they're gonna come in their room with their guns.
[man] So you were relying upon
the intelligence information
which the FBI were providing to you?
- Is that right? - Yes.
[Ron] The FBI and the Department of Justice
were involved from the very outset,
and that's perhaps not surprising.
What's surprising is how keen
the New Zealand authorities were
just to adopt what we assume to be
the recommendations from the FBI.
[Fisher] When they went in fast and hard,
it was because the police were under the impression
that there was this Doomsday device
that was in the mansion somewhere that would,
if activated, destroy evidence
of wrongdoing anywhere in the world.
[man] What destruction devices?
Well, the laptop and the iPhone
or the PDA, whatever it was that was found.
[man] They were not destruction devices, were they?
What do you expect? A box with a red button on it?
[dog barking]
[Dotcom] The mission was to arrest me
as quickly as possible
so that I could not use any Doomsday device.
In actuality, it took them 15 minutes
to find me in my own house.
There's never been any such device, and it was never found.
It was all bullshit.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[man] I think that the rationale is clear.
It was meant to send a message around the world.
Don't mess with the United States on copyright issues.
The only other raid that I can think of
that sounds similar was the raid on Osama Bin Laden,
and these are vastly different levels of importance.
[Jimmy] You know, it sort of looked like
you were taking down a South American dictator.
[dog barking]
I thought it was bizarre,
and I thought it was also quite symptomatic
of how we've gotten into such an extreme position
around some of these issues.
Things that I might not even agree with
that Megaupload was doing,
I think warrant proper address in court and so forth.
It doesn't mean you need to send helicopters
and masses of teams with machine guns and so on.
[Dotcom] That's it.
You just made history, man.
It's fucking huge, man!
[cheering]
Later.
[indistinct murmuring]
OK, bye.
Oh man, this is good shit.
[man] They fucked up!
They fucked up.
They fucked up. They fucked up.
First tonight, a ruling in the past hour
on the Kim Dotcom case
as he fights FBI attempts to extradite him to the United States.
[woman] A high court judge says search warrants
for the Internet entrepreneur's Auckland mansion were illegal.
[man] Justice Helen Winkleman has decided
the warrants used were invalid.
New Zealand police seized bank accounts
on behalf of the FBI
and took away property worth millions.
Now they may have to give it all back.
It's a damning judgment, illegal,
unlawful, invalid.
Justice Winkleman doesn't hold back.
[man] Embarrassed about this? I am, a wee bit.
[woman] Ah, absolutely.
[man] That we appear to almost be puppets of the FBI.
[Fisher] There was a feeling that the machinery of state
had been exercised against Dotcom
in a way that was unjust or unfair.
[Bryce] Suddenly, New Zealanders saw
that there was two sides to the story...
[man] I love you, Com!
[Bryce] ...and maybe this was the U.S. state bullying someone
that was a spanner in the works of Hollywood productions.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Bryce] Suddenly, people wanted to fight against injustice.
Suddenly, he became a cause celeb.
The war for the Internet has begun.
Hollywood is in control of politics.
[Gabriella] There is huge contradictions in Kim Dotcom.
Even in the face of these huge legal battles he faces,
he seems to have a huge sense of humor
and likes to taunt the U.S. government.
♪ What about free speech, Mr. President ♪
Say hello to my little friend.
[people screaming]
[Gabriella] I think that playful attitude is one reason
that a lot of people who might otherwise be
really skeptical of what he's done,
knowing that, you know, the primary driving force
behind many of these companies is to make money,
nevertheless, kind of, can appreciate him.
♪ We will make history ♪
♪ It starts with you ♪
[Dotcom] It's quite interesting that a lobby group
around entertainment content
can get the White House to move against
an Internet nerd with military force.
I mean, think about that for a moment.
Isn't that... It's funny.
And none of it will change anything.
None of what they have done has changed anything
to alter the way the Internet works
or the levels of piracy.
When Megaupload shut down,
in the 18 weeks following that shutdown,
sales through legitimate outlets went up six to 10%,
and that's just one site.
It was one of the major sites at the time,
but that's just one site,
and you saw an uptake of use of legitimate sites
by an amount of six to 10%.
So that's a really significant amount
of impact on the legitimate market.
[Jimmy] You can't really trust the industry numbers
on that problem,
and you certainly can't trust
the industry's analysis and understanding
of the operation of the Internet.
One of the strongest drivers for piracy
is when people are hearing all this buzz
about something that really is fantastic,
but they can't get it legally in their country,
and then they turn illegally to download it.
Well, we may disapprove of that behavior,
but we can't stop that behavior,
and there's actually a very simple solution
that doesn't involve sending out S.W.A.T. teams.
It involves, "Hey, change your business policy."
Everything that you are selling in one country,
sell it in every country,
and if you don't, don't be surprised if people are pirating it.
[guns firing]
[Dotcom] I'm an avid gamer.
I play Modern Warfare on Xbox,
and I noticed that my speed, my Internet speed,
went down by about 20, 30 milliseconds.
[laughing]
And a normal Internet user
would never ever identify that,
but me being a competitive gamer, I noticed it,
and only after the raid did I figure out what happened.
They rerouted all my traffic
in a way that they could capture all my data
that went through my connection.
[man] During the high court hearings,
Grant Wormed was being cross examined,
and he was being asked about his notebook,
and he looked extremely awkward.
On the 14th of December, 2011,
was there a further meeting
that you attended to plan this operation
where there was a range of people there?
Someone from the Justice Department, was it?
[Grant] Yes.
[Paul] And was there another group of people
represented as well at the meeting?
[Grant] Yes, there was.
What field of activity were they involved with?
They worked for the government.
Right.
Are you not able to tell us who they were?
I'd rather not.
[Paul] Reason?
Just because of the nature of the organization.
[indistinct murmuring]
[Fisher] It was clear that something
had gone horribly, horribly awry.
The intelligence agencies had somehow become involved
in the Megaupload case.
The GCSB, the Government Communication Security Bureau,
New Zealand's equivalent to the National Security Agency,
was spying on Dotcom.
It's also a part of the what's called
the Five Eyes arrangement.
The five eyes between them spy on the world.
The power that they have is immense.
[Glenn] Once Kim Dotcom was in New Zealand,
the U.S. began exploiting the relationship that they had
with the GCSB and the New Zealand Government
to ensure that getting Kim Dotcom
became one of their principal priorities
to the point where they engaged
in illegal surveillance to do so.
The GCSB is controlled by quite specific legislation
that says you're not allowed to spy
on New Zealand residents or citizens.
[Dotcom] There's something I'd really like to point out that is important for me.
When they tapped into my iPhone.
Because if that happens to you,
it alters the way you think completely.
You realize that it wasn't just my emails that they read.
They were there when I was private with my wife.
They were right there.
They have no business doing that, to anybody, at all.
[Sean] I find that more than a little bit disturbing.
[bleating]
Is that a way the government is supposed to act
with communications monitoring?
Are you supposed to be turning the antennas
that are meant to protect your country from outside threats
back on yourself for the prosecution
of what I'm not even sure in New Zealand
is necessarily a criminal act?
[man] Tonight, the Kim Dotcom affair
is leaving John Key's government increasingly red-faced.
[woman] The boss of the Intelligence Bureau, Prime Minister John Key,
has ordered a probe into illegal bugging of the Internet millionaire.
Of course, I apologize to Mr. Dotcom.
I apologize to New Zealanders
because every New Zealander that sits within
the category of holding a permanent residency
or a New Zealand citizen is entitled to be protected from the law.
This is really a matter of mistake and human error,
not one of a great conspiracy.
[Dotcom] ♪ I wish you A Mega Christmas ♪
♪ I wish you A Mega Christmas ♪
♪ From Santa Dotcom ♪
Shutting down the Internet.
[distorted male voice] Truth...
integrity...
knowledge...
independence.
[helicopter engine running]
[officer] This is a crime scene, an illegal gathering.
- [sirens wailing] - You are all being detained.
Nobody move.
The four Megaupload accused did a remarkable thing
in the year after they were arrested.
They built a business called Mega.
[Dotcom] It is the launch of Mega.
- [audience applauding] - You are all upgraded.
[Dotcom laughing]
[Fisher] Dotcom says that he was motivated
by a desire to create an encrypted cloud storage site
so that nobody could be spied on
in the way that he had been spied on.
The U.S. government is investing billions
into massive spy-clouds
to capture all your data and communication.
By using Mega, you say no to governments
that want to spy on you.
[Fisher] Lord knows what's on there.
It could be copyrighted files.
It could be ISIS planning documents. It could be child porn.
It could be whatever it might be.
They've built it so that nobody can see inside.
[Dotcom] That, by the way, is also what's going to beat the surveillance state.
I will be one person that will be remembered
as somebody who has fought mass surveillance
with technology that gives you your freedom back.
[woman] The innermost workings of our top spy agency
have been exposed in a damning report.
Police have found the GCSB breaks a law
by spying on Kim Dotcom and 85 other New Zealanders.
[woman] Prime Minister Key's solution to the debacle
is to change the law, giving more power
to our top intelligence agency.
If passed, the law will permit the GCSB
to now spy on all New Zealand citizens.
[people shouting] Kill the bill.
[crowd chanting] Kill the bill...
Thank you all for coming today.
[murmuring]
The U.S. government is the most power-hungry government out there,
and GCSB is one of the puppets
on the strings of the U.S. government,
and the biggest puppet of them all is John Key,
your Prime Minister...
[crowd cheering]
And I will never settle my case.
I will fight until we know the truth,
until we know every single detail.
[crowd cheering]
[man] There were fireworks today at Parliament
as the Prime Minister John Key went head to head with Kim Dotcom.
The Internet tycoon was making a public submission
on the proposed changes to the country's spy laws.
[man] You feel that the... or do you know or believe
that the Prime Minister was aware
of what you were doing before the raid took place?
He knew about me before the raid.
I know about that.
[Prime Minister Key] I didn't, no.
[camera shutters clicking]
You know I know.
I know you don't know.
I know you don't know, actually, but that's fine.
Why are you turning red, Prime Minister?
I'm not. Why are you sweating?
- [Dotcom] It's hot. - Oh, OK.
- [people laughing] - I have a scarf.
The question was if the Prime Minister knew about me before the raid,
and answer to that is yes.
[camera shutters clicking]
They gave me residency in New Zealand
for the purpose of extradition.
Warner Brothers was already in talks
with the New Zealand government
to shoot the Hobbit films here,
and we're talking about you know, triple digit million dollar budgets,
lots of opportunity for New Zealand.
So the Prime Minister has seen this as a double strike opportunity.
Number one, we can make these Hollywood studios happy
so they will shoot more movies here,
and on top of that,
we can please the White House,
because on the highest levels, they wanted me shut down.
[Bryce] Certainly, there's a lot of evidence
that suggests that that conspiracy theory is true.
He was allowed to stay in the country
despite having a criminal past
which would normally preclude him from getting residency.
[camera shutters clicking]
This occurred at the same time
that the New Zealand Prime Minister John Key
was meeting with Hollywood officials.
[interviewer] Can I go through the list of people we believe
- knew about Kim Dotcom? - Yeah, sure.
- Simon Power and some officials. - Yep.
Jonathan Coleman and some officials,
the Solicitor General's office,
Crown Law, New Zealand Police, the Attorney General,
the Organized and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand,
Nigel Bickle and an unknown number of people under him
at Immigration New Zealand, your electorate office,
Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Department of Justice,
the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General's office,
senior members of the U.S. police force, but not you.
Correct. I mean, look, I hate to tell you the bad news.
There's no great conspiracy.
The facts of life are that Dotcom
is someone the United States thinks had broken the law.
He's somebody that they're trying
to extradite to the United States.
That's where it starts and finishes.
[man] Kim Dotcom has failed in a last ditch attempt
to have the 2012 raid
on his Coatesville mansion ruled invalid.
The Supreme Court's found the search warrants were legal.
[man] The police won't be charging anyone
at the GCSB in relation to a complaint
about spying on Kim Dotcom.
[Dotcom] Every time we win, they appeal.
It's a default.
We win. They appeal.
And, you know, every time they appeal, they win.
It's all very political.
[birds chirping]
[indistinct murmuring]
Hello, good morning.
Thank you all for coming.
Today is a big day.
We're launching the Internet Party.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Fisher] I couldn't believe it.
"I said to Dotcom," Are you really gonna do it, then?
Are you gonna go into politics?"
And he said, "Yeah."
And I thought, "God, you've lost it.
That's completely mad."
[Dotcom] I couldn't care less about politics. Are you kidding me?
Why would I get involved, you know?
And then I found out all these things.
Firsthand, being abused,
being subject to the abuse of power.
Yeah, of course. I wanted to replace the government.
Why else would I do it, you know?
[Fisher] For Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk,
Finn Batato, I think that Dotcom's involvement
in politics was a sideshow and a distraction.
They struggled to see how it was going to stop
an extradition process that was under way,
how it was going to change the charges
that they might face in the United States.
[indistinct chatter]
We are a part of this Five Eyes global spy network.
Thank you, guys.
[Mona] Kim is always the super confident,
and I'm always the one worrying.
But still, I'm a woman. I would worry, of course.
That's my thing. I'm a worry wart.
[indistinct chatter]
[Mona] You're still kinda, like, left hanging.
Like, I don't even know what's gonna happen six months from now.
Like, Kim's hearing is still going on.
I just don't know.
I think the whole stress really got to me,
and, you know, the raid, of course, was part of it.
We were really happy before, you know. Yeah.
[Dotcom] Mona had great difficulty dealing with the raid.
She struggled with it,
and it affected our relationship.
That's probably the most regrettable outcome
of this whole case against me,
that our relationship fell apart.
She was the love of my life.
[Bryce] It became apparent as the election year of 2014
was rolling on that the Internet party was not going to succeed,
so Dotcom started to look around for alliances.
The party that was willing to work with him
was the Mana party,
which had a more left wing and activist base.
[woman] Kim Dotcom has told One News
he's now forked out a whopping $4 million
for the deal with the Mana party.
Kim Dotcom has a particular legal interest
in not being sent back to justice elsewhere.
[Prime Minister Key] Everybody knows that Kim Dotcom
is putting money behind the political party
to try and stop himself from being extradited.
[child] Is Kim Dotcom that big fellow?
[Fisher] It was important for the Mana party
to be able to introduce its new political partner
to its constituency.
[speaking in foreign language]
[Fisher] Town by town...
[yelling]
Marae by marae,
they would go down the country.
[crowd cheering]
[Bryce] Everyone was quite surprised at how successful they were.
People took them seriously and wondered whether they would play
an important part in a new government.
And the media reported everything they did.
I'm not sure that Internet Mana handled that scrutiny very well.
You work in news.
You puffed-up little [bleep]
You're a thief!
You're a thief, John Key.
[yelling]
[Fisher] The Internet Mana road show had aspects
that appeared to be targeting John Key personally.
Are you ready for a revolution?
[crowd cheering]
Are you ready to extradite John Key?
[crowd cheering]
[all chanting] Fuck John Key.
Fuck John Key.
[man] Attacks on John Key have hit new heights this campaign...
[crowd cheering]
This effigy burning the latest online outrage.
[man] Fuck John Key.
[Fisher] It was probably the nastiest election
that New Zealand has seen if not for many, many decades, then forever.
[man] Fuck John Key!
[man] Kim Dotcom has promised to drop a number of bombshells
that could topple the Prime Minister John Key
at an upcoming event billed "The Moment of Truth."
[Fisher] The day that the Moment of Truth was to be held,
I'd received an email
which purported to show
that everything Dotcom had said about the conspiracy was true,
that New Zealand served him up on a plate.
So I rang Dotcom, and I said,
"Is this what you're gonna be pulling out at the Moment of Truth tonight?"
And he said, "Yes, it is."
[man] So what kind of impact could there be from all this tonight?
[man 2] Well, it is... these are extraordinary revelations
to be laid out five days before a campaign.
John Key is fighting really for his political life.
Remember, he has said he would resign
if there was any evidence to show mass surveillance,
and of course we also have this email on the Hollywood links.
[indistinct] Come on, give him a kiss, ladies.
[Fisher] The Moment of Truth for John Key
would've been a high risk scenario
because the two things that Dotcom had promised to produce
were things that he said he was gonna resign
if they turned out to be the case.
[Dotcom laughing]
[woman] Tonight, we welcome the world
and to extend the welcome of Aotearoa
to Glenn Greenwald...
[crowd cheering]
Julian Assange.
[crowd cheering]
Welcome, Edward Snowden.
[crowd cheering]
[Snowden] Hello, New Zealand.
[Fisher] The U.S. has this war for control of the Internet,
and it is a war.
They don't feel that there should be an organization like Wikileaks.
They believe that the spying that they do should be kept secret.
They believe that when it comes to copyright,
the approach that they have
should radiate out across the world.
What we saw there in that town hall,
that was the resistance.
[Snowden] You've got this network of sensors around the world,
so I can see everything.
I can see what book you looked at at Amazon.com.
I can see who you talk to.
I can see who your friends on Facebook are.
I can see the text messages you sent.
I can read the emails you wrote, and I can set up things
[Glenn] ...exactly the kind of mass surveillance
that Prime Minister Key not only vehemently denied was being done,
but which he promised he would resign
if it were determined his government were actually engaged with.
[Julian] Further, intelligence agencies
by definition are designed to operate
outside the law,
and so they cannot be trusted.
[Fisher] No matter what Assange or Snowden were gonna say,
Dotcom was still the emperor with new clothes.
He hadn't produced the thing that he had pledged that he would,
that he had been talking about for ever so long...
and that was a real problem for Dotcom
and for pretty much anybody
that had backed him up until that point.
[man] What people have been waiting for tonight
is when Kim Dotcom came to the parliament
and said that he would prove that John Key was a liar,
- tonight, we're, excuse me... - [man 2] Which he did.
[Dotcom] Which I did, absolutely...
No, about knowing about you before the raid.
And let me just reply to this, OK?
I think, and I want to address all media here tonight.
You have an obligation
after what you have learned tonight
to take the information that you were told here
by Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden
to the Prime Minister and this government
and hold them accountable.
We have focused on the much bigger lie,
which is not about my case,
which is about every single New Zealander
who is subjected to mass surveillance.
That is the story that you should focus on.
Get your priorities right.
[Patrick] We will. We will...
I hope you will,
because in the past, Patrick,
you have let New Zealanders down.
I don't understand how you let the Prime Minister
get away time and time again
with his lies and his spin.
You need to do your job,
and everyone here needs to do their job.
[Patrick] I'm doing my job by asking you.
Kim Dotcom, what's gone wrong? Kim Dotcom, what's gone wrong?
Why couldn't you front the evidence tonight?
- What's gone wrong? - I think that's it.
Thank you, thank you very much.
[indistinct murmuring]
[Dotcom] That email, I know it comes from hacker circles.
You know about the famous Sony hack.
The same people who were responsible for that
were responsible for this hack.
I was assured that that email would contain headers,
which is what allows you to identify all the details.
You know, what mail server was used,
the date stamps that would have allowed anyone
to verify the contents,
but unfortunately the email was not leaked
with that information, so it became useless for me. Yeah.
And I regret that I could not use it in the event.
[man] [murmuring] and welcome to Decision '14.
The campaign is over.
The voting is over, and the counting has begun.
Now, politics is very serious business.
This has been a fairly serious,
and at times thoroughly unpleasant, campaign.
[indistinct chatter]
Now will be hoping that they've got something to celebrate tonight.
[crowd cheering]
[Bryce] Right at the start,
there was quite a swelling of support for Dotcom
because they saw him as someone that had been the victim
of the big Goliaths of the U.S., FBI,
the New Zealand Police, but suddenly he was seen
as a more aggressive player,
and it was John Key that was the underdog.
[man] The Internet Mana party is in trouble.
[woman] Oh, my goodness, in the last 20 minutes,
it's all completely changed out here.
[man] This is phenomenal. What we are seeing here is the Internet Mana alliance
is not in Parliament,
and Kim Dotcom's millions and millions of dollars goes down the drain.
[camera shutters clicking]
[crowd whistling]
[cheering and clapping]
Good evening, everybody.
We lost tonight because of me.
[crowd] No. No! No.
I take... I have to say this.
I have to say it. I am sorry.
[woman] It's how the media portrayed you!
I'm... I'm really sorry I have to say this.
I take full responsibility
for this loss tonight
because the brand... the brand Kim Dotcom was poison
for what we were trying to achieve,
and I did not see that before,
and it only became apparent to me in the last couple of weeks.
So to all of you who have worked so hard,
I say, thank you very much.
[crowd cheering and clapping]
[man] Three more years.
[crowd cheering]
[bird chirping]
[fluttering]
[machine whirring]
[Dotcom] The day after the election,
the Solicitor General of New Zealand
has approached my lawyers and asking
if I was willing to leave New Zealand,
the case would be resolved.
There wouldn't have to be an extradition,
and this whole thing could go away.
You don't do a raid like this
and destroy a man's family and his business
and cause so much pain
and get away with it with some piece of paper
that says, "Yeah, I've done something wrong",
but now I am free. Thank you very much."
Well, fuck them.
[metal clattering]
[reporter] After four and a half years of delays,
the extradition hearing
against Kim Dotcom and the Megaupload co-accused
starts in Auckland, New Zealand today.
The Judge will determine whether the four men will be free
to remain in New Zealand
or whether they will be sent to the U.S.,
where they could face decades in prison.
This is cited as the largest copyright case
that our world has ever seen.
We still think we should win, and we are hopeful that we will.
We are.
Are you worried about what the decision might be?
Please don't fall, OK? Be careful there.
[Dotcom] I am very confident in my legal team.
All our submissions are excellent.
Any unbiased legal mind is going to see
what has happened here.
[Ron] The case is really important
because it raises important legal issues
in relation to the extradition process,
but first, they've got to show that the conduct they complain of
is, in fact, a crime.
We say, look, what you allege on the facts is not a crime.
And Your Honor will see that there is a specific piece of legislation
called the Copyright Act,
and it provides protection for Internet Service Providers.
Simply providing that technology
to its users does not expose a company
to civil or criminal liability.
[Greg] They seem very confident.
They always point to the same things.
There's nothing in New Zealand-U.S. treaty that covers copyright,
and they think that they're gonna win.
OK. Miss Gordon.
The dishonesty at the core of Megaupload's operations
may be expressed in straightforward terms.
The evidence boils down to a simple scheme of fraud,
not a passive dumb pipe service provider,
but a massive hard drive of infringing material.
[Greg] Christine Gordon represents the United States of America.
She has to be, I'm sure, tutored by the DOJ,
and the United States has gotten
every ounce of effort out of her.
We have some good glimpses of how the respondents
thought and acted behind the scenes.
We have some highly revealing communications between them.
As Mr. Ortmann privately put it,
copyright owners would find,
and these are his words that now follow.
"We are not the dumb pipe we claim to be."
Bram van der Kolk marveled at the position they had attained,
and these are his words:
"If copyright holders would really know how big our business is,"
they would surely try to do something against it.
They have no idea that we are making millions
"in profit each month."
Ortmann told van der Kolk,
and these are Mr. Ortmann's words:
"We did some things right.
We allowed fraud for a long time, fueling our growth."
[Greg] I was startled.
I mean, the whole court shuts up.
Everybody stops because they're startling.
[Christine] On or about August 16, 2010, via Skype,
Dotcom told Ortmann in German, Mr. Dotcom's words:
"At some point, a judge will be convinced about how evil we are,
and then we're in trouble."
[man] Objectively translated, it should read,
"Because at some stage,"
a judge will be talked into how bad we allegedly are,
"and then it will be a mess."
The United States had the ability to select
what evidence it wanted to present,
and we sat and cherry-picked it.
It was very selective and biased
about the evidence it picked and placed before our court,
and a lot of the conversations were also in a foreign language.
They were in German,
and as a result, the United States relied on translations
which we were able to show were incorrect and, in fact, misleading.
Your Honor should also have received this morning
a bundle that looks like this.
Part of section 101(B) is set out in the submissions at page 65.
[man] It's the 21 October red bundle, sir.
[Dotcom] And you need to understand that this judge was spammed
with thousands of pages of submissions
by the U.S. government.
They basically drowned him in material,
and I knew he didn't understand anything about the case.
He had no clue about the Internet, about copyright.
At one point in one hearing,
he asked if Mega was cow storage?
Not cloud storage, cow storage.
[Ron] It was a pretty frustrating hearing.
We had prepared over many hours,
and we had committed significant human and financial resources
into mounting what we thought was
a very credible defense to extradition,
and most of our arguments were marginalized
or not even considered by the court.
[Judge] The overwhelming preponderance of evidence
produced by the applicant
in the Record of Case and its supplements
establishes a prima facie case
to answer for all respondents on each of the counts.
The decision has found that all four respondents
are all eligible for extradition.
Therefore, the sentence... [indistinct]
[man] Time has passed by Megaupload.
There's always gonna be people who wanna pirate,
and there's always gonna be these services,
but are they gonna be mainstream?
I would argue no.
Piracy is in decline.
But, they told us all along, the tech side said,
"Hey, if you make it easy"
to get our hands on at a cheap price,
it's easily accessible,
"there's not gonna be any piracy," and that's what they did.
They've gotten the message.
[Greg] What good is it to throw him in jail now?
Find out what the guy knows.
Make a partnership with him.
You got his money,
and I'd say the smart move is, right, like the godfather.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
They should be doing that.
While we have perfectly good reason
to want to prevent piracy of content
and allow artists and the companies that support them
that make a profit off of what they do,
the mechanisms that we're using
to try and enforce these things
are also mechanisms for censorship
and for oppression of freedom of thought,
and it's a slippery slope.
That's a dangerous thing.
[seagulls squawking]
[Dotcom] It's not about what's right any more.
It's about winning at all cost.
They wanna drag me down.
To win, that's all that matters to them,
but they picked the wrong guy
because you can't drag me down,
and I will win.
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ I know you don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so cruel ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so cruel ♪
♪ Treat me like A lowdown stupid fool ♪
♪ Was letting go ♪
♪ Just sing a song ♪
♪ And now it's over ♪
♪ Call off the line ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so bad ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so bad ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever had ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever had ♪
♪ I'm so alone ♪
♪ Like I'm gonna die ♪
♪ Just so sad ♪
♪ I cry ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Oh sweetness ♪
♪ My love and more ♪
♪ Please don't go ♪
♪ Oh please don't go ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ I know you don't love me ♪
♪ Well you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have to be so mean ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ Treat me like ♪
♪ The worst thing You ever seen ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have to be so mean ♪
♪ I know you don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know you don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪
♪ I know You don't love me ♪
♪ But you don't have To be so mean ♪