Megaupload and criminal charges

• Levin, Daniel ; Doran, Samuel ^[1] ; Maria, Leslie
  1. [1] Samuel Doran is an Associate in the Washington, DC office of White & Case LLP. Before joining the firm, Samuel clerked for the Honorable Curtis Gómez, United States District Court Judge for the District of the Virgin Islands. Samuel attended the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University.
• Localización: Revista Española de Relaciones Internacionales, ISSN-e 1989-6565, Nº. 4, 2012, págs. 23-47
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • The January 2012 arrest in New Zealand of Kim Dotcom following his indictment in an American federal court raises a number of questions about the ability of American law to reach across the internet and into other nations. Dotcom, a citizen of Germany and Finland and a permanent resident of New Zealand, was the founder of Megaupload, which ran websites that allowed users to share files such as movies and music, much of which was under American copyright. Although Dotcom and his fellow Megaupload executives had almost no personal connections to America, the United States government has alleged that Megaupload’s use of servers in America to host data is sufficient to subject Dotcom and his colleagues to the jurisdiction of American criminal law through the doctrine of extraterritorial jurisdiction. This article examines the concept and use of extraterritorial jurisdiction, looks at the process of extradition of Dotcom and his co-defendants, and discusses the impact of the Megaupload prosecution on other Internet sites.