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"The US government&amp;#039;s Department of Justice has published evidence suggesting that Megaupload knowingly engaged in copyright infringement. A 191-page report shows alleged email excerpts from Kim Dotcom&amp;#039;s team detailing the nature and conduct of the former file sharing service.  One internal email exchange shows a member of staff saying: &amp;quot;We do have legit users,&amp;quot; leading another to respond, &amp;quot;Yes, but that&amp;#039;s not what we make $ with :)&amp;quot;.  Dotcom is said to have received more than 280,000 emails requesting the removal of movies, TV, music and other media thought to have infringed copyright from around June 2007 to December 2011. Meanwhile, the DOJ claims that 43% of views on megavideo.com - around 15 billion streams - related to content that had been issued with a taken-down notice. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was also cited in removal requests for 12.8% of viewed videos.  Under the act, Dotcom and his co-defendants would be able to protect themselves with &amp;quot;safe harbor&amp;quot;, but they must be able to prove they were not aware of the copyright infringement - which the DOJ claims they were.  Dubbed the &amp;#039;Mega Conspiracy&amp;#039;, Dotcom&amp;#039;s group are said to have made over $150 million in revenues from premium membership sign-ups, as well as $25 million in advertising revenues.  The report claims: &amp;quot;At all times relevant to the charges presented in the Superseding Indictment, the defendants and other members of the Mega Conspiracy knew that they did not have license, permission, authorisation, or other authority from owners of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works to reproduce and distribute those works, including making them available over the Internet.&amp;quot;  Dotcom&amp;#039;s lawyer Ira Rothken responded to the claims, telling Variety that the report contained nothing but &amp;quot;meritless criminal allegations&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;The allegations seem to revolve around Megaupload&amp;#039;s discussed policies related to user infringements, take-downs and things like reward programs,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;All those things are civil in nature and can never be considered criminal in the United States.&amp;quot; Dotcom currently resides in New Zealand and is fighting extradition to the US. Megaupload was closed down in January 2012, leading to the launch of new cloud-storage service Mega a year later. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/internet/news/a540163/megaupload-received-take-down-notices-for-128-of-viewed-videos/>