Fresh lawsuits hit MegaUpload as labels eye frozen assets

Fresh lawsuits hit MegaUpload as labels eye frozen assets

Can you get money out of a dead company? You certainly can if said company saw the majority of its assets frozen.

That’s the case with MegaUpload, the company has been shut for some time but it assets are still very much there having been frozen during the 2012 shutdown by US officials.

This week the company sat first fresh lawsuits coordinated by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) whilst on Thursday - Billboard reports - a suit was filed by Sony Music, Capitol Records, Universal Music and Warner Music against the three original founders of the company: Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk.

The majors claim that the three funders played an active role in ensuring that the content on MegaUpload was widely disseminated online to ensure maximum access. Of course much of that content was copyrighted, and the companies listed copyrighted works by the likes of Beyonce, Britney Spears, Kesha and Katy Perry as being infringed upon.

Legally the proceedings are set to be a real headache for all involved. None of the founders are currently in the United States for obvious reasons, and the questionable legality of the FBI’s raid to Dotcom’s New Zealand home has killed any chance of the US successfully requesting extradition.