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Beshara said she was ordered to pay back to copyright holders $210,000 but she saw just $100,000. She was comfortable, she said, from Ninja although she had a second job as an office manager until six months before the raid. “I never considered what I made to be a kind of theft, as Ninja consumed every waking second of life for so long.”

And, she said, she could have made the same money if she’d chased jobs with more enthusiasm after graduation.

And the best part? “Getting to see the world some. I backpacked Europe for three weeks while staying in hostels and wearing the same socks for days on end. Sexy and smelly times.”

From her jail cell, before her release on parole in April 2013, Beshara, for all the grief and pain she endured, remained belligerent about the internet and the place copyrighted content holds.

“I love the internet. I love the free flow of information. And quite frankly, I love piracy and the world of Ninja. I believe that people should have equal access to art, education, entertainment, news. I respect the notion of intellectual property and copyright but I feel that the reality of it is a complete joke.”

DOTCOM SAYS IT was obvious, in hindsight, and it was Hollywood he blamed. There was also the recording industry, but mainly it was Hollywood. It was “one interest group that pays the most when it comes to lobbying, and far ‘outpays’ any technology company”. “They have done it over decades and they are so used to it. It is their way to get things done, basically bribing politicians. In the tech world where you deal with nerds like me — why would I lobby? I don’t want to get involved in politics. It is all messy — why would I do that?”

Dotcom’s views on his own political involvement would change, but in 2010 the links between Hollywood and the White House became stronger, and action by the government in support of the copyright industry became increasingly aggressive. New legislation was devised. First, there was the Combating Online Infringements and Piracy Act (COICA), introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy. A huge fan of the comic book legend, Leahy was Hollywood-friendly enough to have cameos in three Batman movies. The COICA legislation sought to empower the US to take down domain names carrying infringing material.

The proposal reached beyond the DMCA provisions, which required only that those abusing copyright take down the infringing material. Although supported by the MPAA, COICA was opposed by the digital rights lobby, academics, lawyers (as anti-constitutional) and Tim

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