Authorities raided Mr Dotcom’s Auckland home in 2012 and shut down his site Megaupload, which had millions of users downloading films and songs and storing files. As well as the US government, six major US film studios filed a civil suit against him in 2014 for alleged copyright infringements. The suit claims that the website made about US$150 million in subscriptions and another $25 million from advertisements on Megaupload and associated websites.

Innovator or pirate?

Mr Dotcom maintains that he was running a cloud storage firm like any other and has attempted to remove infringing content. Ahead of today’s hearings, he wrote on Twitter: ‘I am going to court today. The question is innovator or pirate. The answer will be Internet freedom or censorship.’ Sources: BBC News; Computerworld