Megaupload Faces Additional Copyright, Wire-Fraud Charges

U.S. prosecutors have added more charges against file-sharing Web site Megaupload and its executives, with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud.

The founder, Kim Dotcom, and six others employed by the site were originally charged with five counts of conspiracy and copyright infringement.

The U.S. Justice Department on Friday released more details about the operations of Megaupload as officials filed a 90-page superseding indictment against the company. According to the accusation, the conspiracy was led by Dotcom, a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany, who founded Megaupload Ltd.

Dotcom is currently imprisoned in New Zealand, and some of the company's servers were located in Virginia, allowing the U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, Dotcom has denied the charges and has said he would fight an extradition application by the U.S.

The additional charges against Dotcom and other Megaupload execs stem from efforts to reproduce copyrighted material from third-party Web sites like YouTube and make them available on Megavideo.com.

The new wire-fraud charges are based on communications from the company to copyright holders. In those emails, defendants falsely represented that infringing content had been removed when it had not been removed, Justice Department officials said.

It is also argued in the indictment contend that the site did not have as many registered users as they claimed, and that of the 66 million registered accounts, only 5.4 million had ever uploaded a file to the service. It stated that 90 percent of those who used the site did so to download files rather than store items in the cloud.