Megaupload’s legal battle with labels and the DOJ: the full story

The US Department of Justice unsealed a summary of the evidence it has collected against Kim Dotcom, Megaupload, and other alleged conspirators on Friday. The 191-page document lays out details on how Megaupload and its associated sites, employees, and operations — termed the “Mega Conspiracy” — operated and, according to the DOJ, committed racketeering conspiracy, copyright infringement, and money laundering. The investigation concludes that Megaupload made over $150 million in revenues from premium memberships over the years, plus over $25 million in advertising revenues. Those revenues are said to be a direct result of Megaupload’s willful promotion of copyrighted materials.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation from the document are details on the files stored for Megaupload and its users. According to the DOJ, when it shut down the site on January 19, 2012, there were roughly 14.9 million videos on Megavideo.com. Only 8.6 million of those videos were viewed at least once, with a total of 34.9 billion views for all of the videos. The document says that roughly 12.8 percent of all viewed videos had received at least one Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down request. Additionally, the DOJ claims that 43 percent of all views on Megavideo.com — about 15 billion streams — were of content that had received a take-down notice. URLs uploaded by members with at least one take-down request against them accounted for roughly 78 percent of all streams, according to the DOJ.