Andre Yoskowitz
21 Nov 2012 18:10
According to new court documents, Megaupload helped the U.S. in its investigation into NinjaVideo, which was later shut down for good.
This was all 18 months before Kim Dotcom and the company's other operators were indicted, with the popular file hosting site being taken down for good, as well.
In June 2010, the U.S. issued a warrant to search Megaupload's servers in Virginia as part of an investigation into NinjaVideo, a piracy streaming site that used Megaupload's own "Megavideo" service. The government kept it secret, telling Megaupload to do the same.
Kim Dotcom lawyer Ira Rothken said the service "responded as good corporate citizens," turning over information about the five alleged NinjaVideo operators, "as well as database information on the 39 pirated movies detailed in the warrant." The information helped lead to indictments of all five top NinjaVideo administrators.
Adds Rothken: "Megaupload complied with the warrant and cooperated with the government's request. Megaupload had gotten a number of such warrant and subpoena type requests a year and still have an expectation that as classic 'online service providers' they are immune from liability for the acts of users who are the target of such warrants and subpoenas."
Those same files were then used prosecute Dotcom when the U.S. government went after the site this year.