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— each spoke on the wheel being a link between Dotcom and Key. In a celebrated speech on trial tactics, Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of killer Charles Manson described circumstantial evidence as “like a rope . . . And each fact is a strand of that rope. And as the prosecution piles one fact upon another we add strands and we add strength to that rope.”

The strands which bound Key to Dotcom were many.

To track the strands of the rope and how they are connected, it will be necessary to revisit some ground already covered.

THE FBI INVESTIGATION into Megaupload began in March 2010, according to CNet. The investigation was launched after the Motion Picture Association of America lodged formal complaints against the website. Neil MacBride’s office told CNet: “In general, it is clear that the US government receives referrals from all sorts of sources in criminal cases, including victims of crime. We will investigate any referral containing significant and concrete evidence of criminal conduct. Intellectual property enforcement is no different.” CNet reporter Greg Sandoval quoted “film and music industry sources” saying the MPAA’s anti-piracy group went to the FBI with “significant evidence”.

The MPAA also complained in March 2010 about other sites, according to Federal court documents. It lodged a complaint about the BitTorrent site IMAGINE. In sentencing one of those involved, MacBride made reference to a US$450,000 MPAA investigation into the website, which organised the copying of films at cinemas and drive-in move theatres. It was a deliberate and systematic operation which saw the four men charged discussing how to make good quality sound recordings and match them with images captured on cameras smuggled into cinemas. The outlets for the movies were Megaupload and RapidShare — but MacBride said the government had chosen not to charge the defendants with any copying of movies which occurred from those sites.

The details show Megaupload was in US sights by June 2010, when the FBI reached out to the company to seek its help with an investigation into NinjaVideo, the file sharing site run by Hana Beshara and used Megaupload as storage for the movies it was making available online. Special agent William Engel sought a search warrant, stating there were 39 copied movies tracked to Megaupload and through the company to the internet addresses where they were stored. That trail of internet breadcrumbs led Engel to Megaupload’s servers at Carpathia Hosting, in Eastern Virginia. Engel described Megaupload:

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