Kim Dotkom: cryptocurrency and blockchain give me confidence in the fight for Internet freedom

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, founder of the now-defunct file-sharing site Megaupload, in October 2019 gave aInterview with YouTube blogger Ivan Lilekvist, founder of the Stockholm Blockchain Academy, an online blockchain academy. An adaptive translation of the conversation the other day was published on Habré.

Reference:The Megaupload file-sharing service existed from 2005 to January 2012 and at the time ofOn January 19, 2012, Kim Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand on charges of piracy, extortion, and money laundering through Megaupload.A month later, he was released on bail, after which the US authorities spent 5 yearssought his extradition.

In July 2018, Kim Dotkom lost a court in which he tried to avoid extradition to the United States.

Dotcom's arrest in 2012 served as hackers fromAnonymous groupings have led to a series of successful attacks on the sites of the NSA, the White House, the US Department of Justice, the American Recording Association and the film company association.

Kim is currently involved in the digital currency Krypton.

Ivan Lilekvist: After the sensational news of 2012-2013, little was heard about you. Tell me how everything really happened and how Megaupload started.

Kim Dotkom:I was a big fan of street racing, hanging out at all the racing events all the time, and always sharing videos of our parties with my friends.I've been emailing them records, but you know what a bummer it is to get messages that your file is too large and therefore can'tto be sent.

I thought the easiest way to get around theserestrictions - this is to create a site where you can upload a file of any size, get a unique link to download it and send it to friends by mail. From this, Megaupload grew. People saw that this is a very useful feature, which is why my file hosting has become one of the largest sites on the Internet.

Ivan Lilekvist: Journalists wrote that the cost of your site was estimated at one billion dollars. Why did such a successful project, analogues of which exist quietly in our time, fail?

Kim Dotkom:At the time, the U.S. entertainment content industry, primarily Hollywood movie studios, was putting a lot of pressure on the White House and the U.S. government to do something about the phenomenon of online piracy.All this led to the appearance of the famous SOPA bill – the Stop Online Piracy Act.However, this initiative was met with the displeasure of millions of people who appealed to Congress with written protests, and in 2012 SOPA effectively failed.

Therefore an alternative to this legislativethe decision was aggressive lawsuits against specific sites such as our file hosting service, accusing the owners of the resource of copyright infringement. These lawsuits turned criminal cases into civil cases when law enforcement officials came to your home, shut down your business, and shut down your servers.

As a result of such steps, millions of peoplelost their data, and all this because any technology can be used both for the good and to the detriment. So, some users did harm by distributing files that infringe copyright. This gave rise to the US Department of Justice to state that I am responsible for the actions of Megaupload users.

The accusation was not what I personally amthe pirate who posted illegal content on Megaupload for mass access, but that I allegedly incited people to do prohibited things by providing them with suitable technology for this.

Ivan Lilekvist: We have YouTube, Google Drive and many other platforms that provide people with a tool for sharing content. How did they manage to avoid the fate of your site?

Kim Dotkom:This is a very interesting question because my case is one of a kind.Ever since the U.S. government managed to crack down on us, it has never tried to do this again.The only reason lies in the political background of this case.

In 2012, the time has come for re-electionObama for a second presidential term. Former Senator Chris Dodd, who heads the American Film Association since 2011, threatened that they would not provide financial support for the Democrats' election campaign if they did not take drastic measures to combat Internet piracy. Thus, the senator’s personal ties with the White House and the threat of losing financial support to film moguls led to this outrageous case of aggression against our resource.

Legal conflict of this legal situationwell illustrates the example of New Zealand, which the United States was forced to follow suit. In New Zealand, online resource violations are civil cases. Despite this, the United States forced the authorities of this country to send helicopters and 72 armed special trained fighters of the anti-terrorist unit to storm my house in order to capture me.

In January 2020 marks the 8th anniversary of thoseevents. The most incredible thing is that the three New Zealand courts have recognized the legality of the US demand for my extradition, despite the existing law and the opinions of experts who claim that there is no legal basis for this.

I look forward to the decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. This is the highest court in the country in which I have a residence permit.

Note: Kim Dotkom has German citizenship by father and Finland by mother.

Ivan Lilekvist: What did you personally do to stop piracy or at least say to the government: “we tried to do everything in our power”?

Kim Dotkom:You had a button that said "Download" and you just selected a file on your computer to download.Of course, there were third-party sites that hosted links obtained from Megaupload on their pages, and these may have contained prohibited content.But our resource has never had any mechanism to find any downloaded files.

When you get about 1,500 files per minute, don'tThere is no way or enough people to try to check all of these downloads. There is no method to make a reasonable and informed decision about whether a given file violates any laws. But the most important thing here is that no law requires anything like this. The law says that if we post a link that violates someone’s rights, we must remove it from the pages of our resource after we receive a notification about it.

In this sense, Megaupload had a wonderful“Track record” - during the life of the resource, we deleted about 30 million links, that is, we met the requirements of copyright holders in 99.99% of cases, so the content we hosted met all the requirements of the law.

So our experience simply shows that even if you fully comply with the requirements of the law and comply with all the rules, you can still be destroyed for political reasons.

Ivan Lilekvist: How has your life changed? I remember that you told me that your assets were frozen in 2013, you lost your home, how did it all affect you?

Kim Dotkom:I have learned a lot over the past 7.5 years.I started getting involved in politics and founded my own party in New Zealand called the Internet Party. It was created as a movement for internet freedom and human rights not only online but around the world.

I founded a new file hosting service called Mega. Now it has more users than Megaupload once had, over 180 million. This is a very popular site.

All I wanted to do with the old site wasadd encryption, and I managed to implement this in the new file hosting with just one line of code. Now the provider, even with all the desire, will not be able to find out the contents of the file because it is encrypted.

Note: Mega's cloud-based data warehouse encrypts content directly in the browser using the symmetric AES block encryption algorithm. Users pass each other the keys for decryption according to the friend-to-friend scheme.

This solved all the problems, because the MinistryUS Justice did not attack my new site and did not even attempt to do so. The fact that a simple line of code avoids allegations of illegal activity, while everything else remains unchanged, shows how ridiculous their anti-piracy activities look.

Ivan Lilekvist: I read that Megaupload assets were estimated at more than a billion dollars. Was it cash assets and what exactly did the United States freeze - a resource or your own money?

Kim Dotkom:Absolutely all assets were frozen, includingthe company's funds, which at that time amounted to $2.5 billion, in order to complicate the possibility of legal protection and prevent me from defending my interests legally. When we applied to the US courts with a request to unfreeze at least some of the money, they answered with a categorical "no" as long as I am in New Zealand.

Interestingly, 6 months before the policemanour company began the listing process on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. But if you are in a conspiracy, or involved in crime, money laundering and other mafia cases, then you will never begin to disclose detailed information about your business to banks, lawyers, exchanges or provide public access to your financial history.

The United States knew about it and blocked ourassets after turning off the site, so as not to give us a chance to maintain an online service. They forced the data center provider to disconnect all our servers, physically pull out the plugs from the sockets and put the equipment in storage, so that we would not have any opportunity to restore Megaupload.

On the day of the assault we were actually recognizedcriminals because they immediately started the process of destroying the site. We were not given the slightest opportunity to answer the charges, there was no due process of law, no preliminary hearings of the parties were held. Anyone who is even a little versed in laws and legal procedures will be shocked by the methods of the US government.

Therefore, it was important for me as soon as possiblestand up and devote yourself to the fight. All I could do at that time was to create a new successful business that would allow me to finance legal opposition to the onslaught of the US state machine. Today I have spent more than $ 20 million to achieve the current state of affairs, and I will continue to invest and earn money to bring this matter to an end. Even if they send me to the United States, I will still continue to fight.

You know, cryptocurrency and blockchain are quiteexciting things, they give me confidence that I will be able to continue the fight. I am again innovating, creating a powerful new product that will be successful and will give me the opportunity to fight for the freedom of the Internet.

Ivan Lilekvist: You mentioned that the issue of extradition will be resolved in the near future and the Supreme Court will give an answer to the question whether they will send you from New Zealand to the USA or not. What is the specific date of this event?

Kim Dotkom:The Supreme Court of New Zealand has already heldour case is being heard and the judges are currently deciding what to do next. If the Supreme Court rules against us, we will ask the Minister of Justice to rehear the case, where we will have the opportunity to present a greater body of legal arguments in our favor.

The decision to extradite is based oncalled sufficiently serious evidence presented by the US government, but as we know, the government of this country does not need to prove anything, it is enough for him to simply charge. Although there is virtually no reasonable evidence of my guilt in the case, it is very easy to make a decision on extradition.

It's funny that we don’t even have an office in the USA, noNo staff, we are based in Hong Kong and are a foreign company. The US has filed charges based on the fact that several of our servers are located in US data centers.

In the USA I am threatened to spend 88 years behind barsjust because I gave people the opportunity to freely share their files on the Internet. This is exactly what you need to fight against. I am interested in bringing this matter to an end, because the current state of affairs cannot be right.

Ivan Lilekvist: Today, almost every global provider has servers in US data centers, such as Google, Facebook and the like. This means that the United States will be able to extend its jurisdiction to everyone who works on the World Wide Web if it triumphs in your business.

Kim Dotkom:That's why it's so important that I don't give up andkept fighting. The irony is that while calling me a pirate, the American government itself is stealing everyone's personal data. They monitor all your messages, emails, text messages. They constantly spy on communications, calling it "mass surveillance."

In fact, the US government steals dailypersonal data of people on the Internet and stores it in their huge spy cloud services and data centers, one of which is located in Utah. Any person around the world is exposed to such surveillance on their part, and at the same time they call me a pirate.

To be continued.