Kim Dotcom

Who is Kim Dotcom?

Kim Dotcom, also known as Kimble and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur, businessman, singer and hacker, currently residing in New Zealand. He is the founder of Megaupload and its associated websites, as well as Megaupload's successor site, Mega.

He rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as an alleged hacker and internet entrepreneur. He was convicted of several crimes, and received a suspended prison sentence in 1994 for computer fraud and data espionage, and another suspended prison sentence in 2003 for insider trading and embezzlement.

In January 2012, the New Zealand Police placed him in custody in response to US charges of criminal copyright infringement in relation to his Megaupload website. Dotcom was accused of costing the entertainment industry $500 million through pirated content uploaded to his file-sharing site, which had 150 million registered users. Dotcom has vigorously denied the charges, and is fighting the attempt to extradite him to the United States. Despite legal action still pending over Megaupload, Dotcom launched a new project/website named "Mega" in January 2013, opened to the public exactly one year after Megaupload was shut down. It is a cloud storage service that uses encryption to protect users from government or third party "spies" from invading users' privacy.