Prosecutors in the Megaupload case have added more charges and widened their case against the defendants, including founder Kim Dotcom, according to media reports.
The indictment, which was obtained by CNN on Friday, said Megaupload and its executives stole copyrighted content from sites like YouTube for its own service. Dotcom and the other executives were charged with eight more charges of copyright infringement and wire fraud.
“In contrast to legitimate Internet distributors of copyrighted content, Megaupload.com does not make any significant payments to the copyright owners of the many thousands of works that are willfully reproduced and distributed on the Mega sites each and every day,” reads the indictment, which was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, according to CNN.
In January, federal authorities shut the site down and arrested several executives for costing more than $500 million to copyright holders. Dotcom is being held in New Zealand and was denied bail.
The indictment, according to the Washington Post, also showed that Megaupload also had only 66 million users rather than 180 million, which the website claimed.
