Megaupload: A Case Based on a Law That Doesn’t Exist

And here goes an excerpt of the coverage on The Next Web.

The legal team supporting Kim Dotcom argue that Megaupload was used to share a “spectrum of content” including family photographs, academic coursework and files, including videos and music, that was purchased through legal means.

It admits that some of these files including potentially infringing material, but maintains that the case against Megaupload is “grounded in a theory of criminal secondary copyright infringement.”

“In other words, the prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users,” the team claims.

“The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States. The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the United States Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so.”