On January 20, 2012, the New Zealand police arrested German born computer programmer Kim Dotcom (previously Kim Schmitz) along with three other co-workers. At the time of the arrest he was living larger than life. He lived in a $24 million mansion just outside Auckland, New Zealand. Police seized 18 luxury vehicles and froze $9 million worth of accounts. This is not the first time that he got into trouble. In 2000 he was convicted in one of the largest insider trader scheme in Germany.
This time it is copy right infringement which earned him an estimated $175 million a year. U.S. authorities accused him and his colleagues of willfully and repeatedly violating the copyright law and request that he be extradited to U.S. for prosecution. He founded the online storage service Megaupload.
Jury is still out there. Some say this case will injure investors as well as entrepreneurs that predict a bright future for cloud computing. Some even say that the government action is over reaching which will curb the growth of an industry. The recording industry on the other hand acknowledge legitimate businesses like Dropbox and say the threat from piracy cause far more greater damage to the industry due to lost revenue.