Kim Dotcom’s lawyer has said that he is not concerned about a guilty plea from a former Megaupload employee. The ex-employee, Andrus Nomm, was sent to jail to a year after admitting to conspiring to commit copyright infringement whilst working for the controversial fire-sharing site founded by Mr. Dotcom.
The US is trying to extradite Mr Dotcom from New Zealand to the US so he can stand trial. Mr Dotcom denies wrongdoing, but the US Department of Justice says that Megaupload staff “operated websites that willfully reproduced and distributed infringing copies of copyrighted works” for five years, costing copyright owners over $400 million.
Nomm agreed that the rumored figure was probably correct as part of his plea. Though he had been living in the Netherlands, he travelled to Virginia to make a deal with the authorities. He also admitted to downloading copyright-infringing material himself.
Mr. Dotcom says that he spent years asking users not upload pirated material and claims that he cannot be held responsible for the material stored on his service. Mr. Dotcom’s lawyer said that Nomm’s sentence did not implicate his client. “Mr. Nomm [was] interested in just getting one year and being done with this, essentially [he] lost on procedure rather than merit,” said Ira Rothken.”It looks like a scripted guilty plea that was more of a Hollywood public relations stunt.”
Mr. Dotcom’s extradition hearing is due to take place in June. He recently claimed to be “broke” following costly legal proceedings.