Hollywood bosses dismiss Dotcom claims

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Hollywood film industry bosses are dismissing claims they pressured the US Government to shut down Kim Dotcom's internet filesharing site Megaupload.

Publicly released White House logs show meetings between studio executives and US Vice President Joe Biden about six months before the January raids that saw Dotcom and three Megaupload colleagues arrested and facing the threat of extradition.

"I do know from a credible source that it was Joe Biden, the best friend of former Senator and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Chris Dodd, who ordered his former lawyer and now state attorney Neil MacBride to take Mega down,'' Dotcom told the TorrentFreak website.

"It is interesting that a man by the name of Mike Ellis of MPA Asia, an extradition expert and former superintendent of the Hong Kong police, was also at a meeting with Dodd, all studio bosses and Joe Biden. The same Mike Ellis met with the Minister of Justice Simon Power in New Zealand.''

However, in a statement to technology media website Cnet, the MPAA said Megaupload wasn't even discussed in the meeting.

"The purpose of this meeting with the vice president was to discuss his [then] upcoming trip to China last August and the importance of reaching a settlement, with the Chinese Government, of the United States World Trade Organisation complaint against China, which would increase the number of foreign films permitted into that country and provide a better share of box office revenues,'' the statement said.

"The eventual agreement announced in February was a major step forward in spurring the growth of U.S. exports to China and was tremendous news for the millions of American workers and businesses whose jobs depend on the entertainment industry.''

In a High Court decision released last week, Justice Helen Winkelmann found that search warrants used in the raid on Dotcom's $30 million Auckland mansion were invalid because they did not adequately describe the allegations against him.

Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were arrested after the FBI asked for help.

US officials claim the men were behind the world's biggest criminal copyright violation through Megaupload, which carried about 4 per cent of the world's internet traffic. The men deny the charges.