Kim Dotcom — who cost film industry $500M with illegal download site Megaupload — to be extradited to US

Kim Dotcom, the mastermind behind banned file-sharing site Megaupload, will be extradited from New Zealand to the US to face trial — as he defiantly responded, “I’m not leaving.”

The German-born New Zealand resident — who has been fighting his removal to the US since 2012 for allegedly founding the illegal download site — was ordered by Kiwi Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith to be turned over to American authorities.

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“I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving … Don’t worry I have a plan,” he wrote on X Thursday in an apparent response to Goldsmith’s order.

Goldsmith said he’s allowing Dotcom “a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision” and declined to comment further on his ruling.

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1824000525500584077

On Tuesday, the flamboyant internet tycoon posted on X: “The obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.”

US authorities shuttered Megaupload over a decade ago and hit Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, with charges of copyright infringement, conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering. Three of his former colleagues were also charged in the case.

The hugely popular site — founded by Dotcom in 2005 — raked in over $175 million, primarily from people illegally downloading songs, TV shows and movies, the feds allege. And the alleged wide-scale digital theft cost film studios and record companies some $500 million, American officials claim.

Dotcom has maintained that he shouldn’t be held responsible when others chose to use his site to break the law and that the case should have been litigated civilly — not criminally. And he’s never lived in, visited or run a business in the US, he’s claimed.

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“New Zealand copyright law (92b) makes it clear that an ISP can’t be criminally liable for actions of their users,” Dotcom said in 2017, after loosing an appellate ruling. “Unless you’re Kim Dotcom?” The high court disagreed, arguing that under New Zealand law, the conduct could be categorized as a type of fraud, opening the way to Dotcom’s extradition.

The internet entrepreneur was arrested in Auckland in 2012 during a police raid on his mansion. He was held in jail for a month before he was released on bail. He and his co-defendants have been fighting extradition since, taking their case all the way to New Zealand’s Court of Appeals.

He then relaunched the business under the name Mega in 2013 under a New Zealand domain but hasn’t been involved with it since 2015. Mega, now run by a New Zealander, rebranded itself as an “online privacy” site.

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Dotcom’s extradition was first approved by New Zealand’s high court in 2017, a decision which was upheld in 2018. The Supreme Court again reaffirmed his extradition in 2020 but allowed for additional judicial review.

Two of Dotcom’s co-defendants, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, have taken plea deals and were sentenced to jail in 2023 and avoided extradition. The third co-defendant, Finn Batato, died in New Zealand in 2022.

Doctom’s lawyer Ira Rothken said in a post on X that his team “is working on judicial review to the High Court.”

With Post wires