On January 20, 2012, dozens of armed police officers raided the home of Kim Dotcom.
He was arrested along with his three Megupload co-founders. Dotcom was held in prison for a month.
Six months after the arrests, the case is precedent-setting in so many ways.
Kim Dotcom's new song 'Mr President'
From the way the raid was conducted, to the implications for the future of copyrighted material on the internet, to how to preserve big-budget content producers like Hollywood in an age in which people want material fast, cheap and now.
Three-and-a-half decades ago, when none of this seemed possible, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne founded a computer company called Apple – changing the way we connect with each other forever.
Wozniak was in New Zealand recently and met Dotcom, the so-called internet pirate with one of the most influential figures of the internet age.
So what does Wozniak make of the Megaupload affair?
John Campbell’s speaks to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. (Full transcript below)
SW: “I had not really known or followed Megaupload in my life before I meet Kim Dotcom at his house, I went to meet him because he was unable to come to see speak there because of a house arrest and I thought that would be a fair kind of exchange, a nice thing to do for him. And I went in just not knowing how he was going to appear, what kind of person he was, was he a criminal.
Copyrights need to be protected. We have gone through music, and we are struggling a bit. The music studios have got used to the new ways. But basically a lot of performers in music who used to get very good royalty cheques for huge hits of the past see their royalty cheques cut into a10th now, but that is the modern age, distribution is just so easy and free.
Well it is going to hit the movie industry, well it started a long time actually, but movies is a bigger deal maybe because there is so much more money in involved in making a lot of movies and now people can download them for free.
I am totally against people trying to get things for free that were created by creative people. I have close connections in the music industry, most of my best friends have some connection to the music industry. I am involved with film, I am involved with television. Basically their material should not be stolen.
The problem is you have to go after the people that are stealing it. If someone commits a crime shipping drugs on the sea, you don't drain the sea and say the sea is the problem. If they are mailing drugs through the post office you don't shut the post office down you try to get the people who are doing the wrong steps.
In this case I think instead of the studios going after Kim Dotcom who was running a service that was very hugely popular in the world and used by a lot of the people to basically steal movies and the like, instead of going after him they should have probably gone and arrested all the Church leaders that never gave people all the right morals.”
JC: “I want to go back to the post office analogy; you don’t shut down a whole post office if someone sends drugs through the mail. It is also illuminating if there are lots of post offices and only one is closed. So, where Megaupload users doing anything that the users of countless other file sharing sites weren’t doing? Were they more predisposed to piracy? And was it, as is being alleged, a site that explicitly encouraged it?”
SW:“That is a good question that gets to the heart of the matter. I think that MegaUpload, well from what I heard it was doing the normal things that other file sharing sites use. I have Dropbox which I have used many a time, I have Apple iDisk that I have used many a time. I don't use it to purloin movies and send movies for free.
If I hear a song or something I might even send it to my son very quickly on the fly so he can get it in time, for free. But what I do I go back and I go buy a copy of the song or copy of the CD. Just to make myself super legal so I can talk about these things and not be on the other side.
If MegaUpload, and I don't know too much about it, was really telling people you know, "here is a way to steal your movies" that is bad and that is wrong, and I would really be against it. But I don't know that it is as much of a crime for a huge raid, shutting down a man's a life, his business, destroying his family, you know hurting his wife and kid and leaving him in limbo, you know sometimes you look for which side is being the most truthful, when I sat down with Kim at his table, he was open, sharing everything, answered every question and I was asking the devil's advocate questions.
I was not coming across like, "yeah yeah yeah like gung ho I am on your side", because I really wanted to know the issues and he was just so open.
And I look at the Government and their phony charges, the fact that they won't let him use his assets to pay his lawyers. They give him a cost of living but not the cost of his legal defence. That is just totally unfair, you want an unfair advantage. You only want an unfair advantage when you know already you are in the right, when you know deep in your heart. You are in the WRONG I mean. That is when you seek the unfair advantage cause you think you need it.
They will probably offer him some plead guilty to a little plea bargain type arrangement in the end and that is just another form of torture, plea bargaining, you can avoid something very horrible going through with us we will actually let you off the hook and let you out now if you just sign this thing saying you are guilty even though you are not.”
JC: That is a uniquely American way of doing business I think. I just want to pick up on a phrase there; ‘phony charges’, ‘The government’s phony charges’ – that’s strong language from a man who could certainly stay well out of this and sit on the sidelines and enjoy all the benefits of being a founder of Apple. Why are you speaking out?
SW: “I am very thankful when well know people speak out on issues, like the early classic rock groups, a lot of them would speak out against the Vietnam war, on issues that matter to a lot to us that are life and death. I personally grew up shy and I do not speak out, I never call the press, I never try make a point about something, but I grew up too honest and I will answer questions when they come my way and I will not lie.
So, it's just that the charges are so weak, I try to come down with... if I could find something really bad or criminal in there boy I would be speaking out that Kim Dotcom should be paying for his crime but I'm just finding like minor things like he parked too long.”