Filed by KOSU News in Business.
January 20, 2012

A judge in New Zealand today ordered that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz) and three others remain in custody at least until a bail hearing on Monday as the legal process of possibly extraditing them to the U.S. to face copyright infringement and conspiracy charges got underway.

As we reported Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department seized the popular file sharing site’s domain yesterday, charging that it has helped millions of people share and see pirated movies, music and TV programs.

Now, though it has no domain name, Megaupload appears to be trying to get back on the Web. It has one page here, with the message that “This is the NEW MEGAUPLOAD SITE! we are working to be back full again.”

Meanwhile, Thursday’s “counterstrike” by Anonymous hackers — who overwhelmed the websites of the Justice Department and some other organizations after Megaupload’s domain was seized — has once again raised the question of how such “denial of service” attacks can happen to supposedly secure federal agencies.

According to The Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog, we probably shouldn’t be that surprised:

“The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a component of [the Department of Homeland Security], is responsible for monitoring major cybersecurity threats for the federal government and the private sector, but each federal agency is responsible for its own information technology security — leading to a disparate, unorganized system of protocols and protections that costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually.”

[Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]