Hollywood hurt itself, accused infringer says

Hollywood studios will be left behind by the likes of Netflix after failing to embrace the Internet, according to the man accused of the biggest movie copyright infringement in U.S. history.

"If Hollywood had some smart people working for them, they would probably have the biggest Internet company on the planet," Kim Dotcom, who's facing extradition from New Zealand to the United States, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in his Auckland mansion. "Instead, it's companies like Apple and Netflix that steal their thunder and this opportunity to monetize the power of the Internet. They completely missed the train."

The U.S. government accuses Dotcom of piracy, money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud through his file-sharing website Megaupload.com, which was closed after an armed police raid on his home in 2012. The German entrepreneur, who faces as long as 88 years in U.S. prison if extradited and convicted, said he did everything he could to prevent pirates using his website and shouldn't be held responsible for their actions.

The studios, who in a separate civil case allege Dotcom facilitated, encouraged and profited from widespread copyright infringement, are attacking him out of ignorance and fear of a new technology, he said. "It's like the candlestick maker that didn't like the light bulb when it came along."

Hollywood encourages piracy by releasing a film in one country and then slowly rolling it out in others over several months, Dotcom said. "Because people don't get that access, they are looking for the stuff elsewhere. So it's a problem created by the content creators, I'm not responsible for that."

If movies were available globally at a fair price on any device, "piracy would shrink into insignificance," he said. Studios would also be more profitable if they combined their catalogs and provided all their content online.

U.S. prosecutors allege that Megaupload, which once accounted for 4 percent of all Internet traffic, generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds from the exchange of pirated films, music and files.

Studios 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers are seeking more than $100 million in the civil case.

SundayMonday Business on 05/18/2015

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