Megaupload Duo Plead Guilty in NZ to Avoid US Extradition

upstart writes:

Kim Dotcom still fighting decade-long battle to avoid being shipped to US over copyright abuse:

The decade-long legal brawl over cloud storage locker Megaupload has moved a little closer to resolution after two of the outfit's execs pled guilty to a variety of charges.

Megaupload, fronted by colorful entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, offered users the chance to upload files and store them in a cloud. Files could then be made available to other members. The outfit's heyday was the mid-2000s - a time when plenty of content was available using BitTorrent and before content streaming services offered easy and affordable access to content online.

[...] Big Content of course deluged Megaupload with copyright-related lawsuits, which have been rumbling along for over a decade as Dotcom and his associates argued they should not be held responsible for users' uploads.

US authorities and Big Content have pointed to Megaupload's payments to uploaders of stolen content as evidence the outfit intended to profit from copyright abuse. They attempted to extradite Dotcom and his associates from New Zealand to face American courts.

Yesterday, two of those associates - Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, both programmers for Megaupload - pled guilty in New Zealand's High Court.

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