Two men have finally been sentenced in the once-infamous Megaupload case, Paul Ducklin reports for Sophos’ Naked Security. The file-sharing website Mega presented itself as a simple filelocker tool, not dissimilar to a cloud storage service like dropbox or google drive, but investigators in multiple countries determined that it was predominately used for – and monetized through – the trading of pirated media files.
Unlike founder Kim Dotcom, co-conspirators Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were able to avoid an extended extradition battle by agreeing to be tried and sentenced in New Zealand. Both men pleaded guilty and were convicted last summer, making an agreement with the court to pay back more than $5 million to copyright holders and work with authorities in the United States in the case against Dotcom. Last week, Ortmann and van der Kolk were sentenced to 30 and 31 months at NZ’s Mt Eden Corrections Facility respectively. Kim Dotcom is still fighting extradition to the U.S., tweeting on Thursday: “The little fireworks show that the prosecution put on yesterday means nothing. It’s a PR stunt. Bram and Mathias will make terrible witnesses for the US Govt. The fight goes on.”
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