Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web Page #3

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I was not part of

the founding members.

I met him at a club in Munich.

[camera shutter clicks]

Kim got in touch with me

because Megaupload grew,

and there was a need for

marketing and advertising.

So because we knew each

other, and he trusted me.

[Aram] There was this boom in

remote storage locker services

that people were using

for both infringing

and non-infringing purposes

to store information in

what we now call the cloud.

I guess you could really say

that Megaupload was

among the innovators

of consumer cloud services.

Certainly the interface design

was dead simple.

[Julie]

As we talk about Megaupload,

we're gonna be talking

a lot about music and films,

but it's not just that.

Academic research, data sets...

This is the promise of

the Internet, right?

That across the globe we can share

access to all of this stuff,

and build upon it and share it,

and that's really,

really amazing.

And that's

the underlying technology

of cloud computing

that Megaupload used

that's really so exciting.

[Finn] There was a high demand.

We had crazy rates of growth.

Say you have a million

visitors on your website,

and every user

that came to our website

is potentially

advertising income.

[Dotcom] It doubled in size

almost every month,

and we needed to

get new servers,

more bandwidth, new servers,

more bandwidth.

I was surprised.

I was so surprised

that something simple

would grow into

such proportions,

but I also immediately

understood its potential.

Now, whether Dotcom ever envisioned

what it was gonna turn into,

I don't know, but users did.

Once users could see

the latest Hollywood movies

on Megaupload,

the use of the site exploded.

[Jonathan] They would Google

a movie they wanted to see

or a song they wanted to hear.

It would be one of the top hits.

They'd click on the link,

and, oh yeah, I guess

I'm at Megaupload,

and by the way, if you want

it to go faster, pay here.

Then they would pay there,

and get a premium account

and have it go faster.

So it actually,

it was very well designed

to attract people who

weren't even thinking

one way or the other

about legal, illegal.

They just wanted

to see the movie

and were happy to pay

somebody for the privilege,

and a company like Kim Dotcom's

was cashing the checks.

[keyboard keys clacking]

A girlfriend, I saw her watching

Mad Men on her computer,

and I'm like,

"Where did you get that?"

And she's all like, "Megaupload,"

and I'm like, "What is that?"

And she told me that

Megaupload was the in place

at the University of Kansas,

where she had just

graduated earlier,

to find free movies.

How did you hear about it?

She said

her 63-year-old professor

at the University of Kansas

turned her on to Megaupload.

And then I was like,

this is big.

They're essentially

streaming to you,

and it was easy.

If they make this

this simple to do,

this means

it could go mainstream.

[Dotcom] I was traveling

a lot in Asia,

and I was in

the Philippines at a disco,

and I saw Mona dancing

on the dance floor.

And she immediately

caught my eye

because she is

so incredibly beautiful.

I was a bit shy,

so I sent my PA to go to Mona

and ask her if

she wants to join us.

He was just this guy

sitting alone in the corner.

So it's like, why is

no one talking to him?

I thought we really connected.

We both grew up in a tough life,

but, yeah, we were just friends.

[Dotcom] I just knew that

I wanted to be with her.

Look at me. [Laughing]

I'm not a supermodel, right?

And now we are going

to the Tower de Eiffel.

So I have to spend

extra time and extra work

to get someone to fall for me,

but she ultimately did,

and we were really

happy together.

[birds chirping]

We went on a holiday

to New Zealand,

and we just fell in love

with the place.

Run for your lives.

[indistinct murmuring]

[child] Bye bye.

[man] What's happening?

OK, we are up here

on the hill at Coatesville.

This is our house.

We found that house

in Coatesville

and we just made that

our second home.

Yeah.

[Fisher] Megaupload was huge,

and there were tens of

millions of dollars coming in.

At that time, he was largely

unknown in New Zealand.

He was a reclusive, wealthy

foreigner who was living

in the grandest house

in the land.

[helicopter engine running]

[man] Now for

the biggest fireworks display

ever seen in New Zealand,

a gift from Mr. Kim Dotcom

as he hovers up here

over our beautiful harbor.

Happy New Year, Auckland.

Happy New Year.

[rockets whistling]

[Fisher]

Dotcom had a very slow entry

into New Zealand life,

but then, he spent about

a half million dollars

on that fireworks display.

[cheering]

That was a celebration

of getting his residency.

[cheering]

[newsreader] These thieves

are now migrating offshore,

locating themselves in places

that're beyond

the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

And so we need to come up

with a mechanism

to protect our jobs

and protect

the intellectual property

by going after those sites

or those search engines

that allow these illegal

criminal foreign sites to exist.

[birds chirping]

[Fisher] Dotcom had a plan

to list Megaupload.

He wanted to float the company,

and he reckoned it was worth

about two billion dollars.

This is next level stuff.

[Dotcom] We wanted to

launch several new sites.

One of them was Megamovies,

which was a Netflix competitor,

and the aim was

to license content

from the big studios.

We have Megabox.

It would give the artist

90% of the earnings.

It would give them

an online platform

where they can sell

directly to their fan base.

Because we were thinking about how can

we reinvent this whole copyright model?

How can we make it work

for the artists

and creators directly?

[man] Kim was definitely talking

about new business models

that he was working on and new

services that he was working on.

And you got this idea that

like many other platforms

that started out

as being very focused on

kind of infringing uses,

a legitimate and authorized

business model

might actually come out of it.

[man] This technology is live

and in place now, correct?

[Dotcom] Yes, that's correct.

[man] I will happily do

a deal with you guys,

not an issue.

[Dotcom] Amazing, great,

I'm happy to hear that.

We have gotten a lot

of fire from everyone,

you know, in

the content industry for,

you know, Megaupload.

[man] There are certain people

I can have conversations with

where you'll be moved

onto a different list

- as opposed to a bad list.

- [Dotcom laughing]

If it would be

from evil to neutral,

and then later from

neutral to good,

I think that would be fair.

- [man] That, we can do that.

- [Dotcom] OK, good.

[Masnick] One of the things

that I thought was,

maybe this was the sign

that Megaupload was making

that sort of shift

to a legitimate platform.

The movie industry

did not react that way.

I think they sort

of freaked out.

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