> Domestically, Dotcom has caused carnage. A government minister has resigned and is facing charges of not declaring political donations made by Dotcom. Prime minister John Key has had to apologise because an intelligence agency for which he was personally responsible was exposed as illegally spying on Dotcom. The police were embarrassed when it emerged their raid, using an anti-terrorist strike force, was carried out unlawfully
It would be great to see these kinds of repercussions in America when the government oversteps it's bounds.
Sort of, yes. He incentivized users to upload popular content for credit on their service knowing full well that the popular content was generally copyrighted. There is a legal difference between letting users upload files for storage, or files they own for sharing, then trying to squash the copyrighted material you do get, vs actively incentivizing users to upload infringing material and then taking it down while you pay the next guy to upload it again.
Not really. MegaUpload's ToS said that they wouldn't pay out rewards to people who uploaded pirated content, and they actually enforced it - probably because it cut their costs by quite a bit, but they did enforce it. This was, from what I recall, fairly well known at the time amongst people who'd have otherwise considered uploading pirated content for profit.
It would be great to see these kinds of repercussions in America when the government oversteps it's bounds.