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and others, with sealed copies available for the accuseds' appearance at the North Shore District Court late that afternoon.

The indictment came after a grand jury hearing at which the FBI had made its case, just two weeks earlier, on January 5, 2012. It was the "green light" document which formed the basis, in New Zealand, of the search warrant and seizure information put before the courts.

It laid out in detail the charges against the accused, including chunks of evidence which Dotcom and others would later claim were selective misinterpretations.

There was a significant difference between what Megaupload said it was and what the FBI claimed it was. Megaupload said it was a good corporate citizen. The FBI said Megaupload was a vast criminal enterprise.

Broadly, the indictment claimed Megaupload "reproduces and distributes copies of popular copyrighted content over the internet without authorisation". The criminal activity had started in September 2005, it said, and had allowed the "Mega Conspiracy to willfully reproduce and distribute many millions of infringing copies of copyrighted works, including motion pictures, television programs, musical recordings, electronic books, images, video games, and other computer software ... Over the more than five years of its existence, the Mega Conspiracy has aggressively expanded its operations into a large number of related Internet businesses, which are connected directly to, or at least financially dependent upon, the criminal conduct associated with Megaupload.com."

The popularity and size of Megaupload was quoted, illustrating the scale of the crime alleged by the FBI. The website claimed to be the 14th most popular site visited on the internet, claimed more than one billion visitors in its history and had 180 million registered users. It carried at one stage 4 per cent of the world's internet traffic. It sold premium subscriptions from a few dollars for a day to $260 for a lifetime. In exchange for the money, Megaupload "provides the fast reproduction and distribution of infringing copies of copyrighted works from its computer servers located around the world". The FBI said the company had earned US$150 million from subscriptions in its lifetime and another US$25 million from advertising which ran on the site. It claimed the money was split in four ways — profits paid to the accused, reward payments to users who uploaded the most popular files, investment in expanding the business and maintaining the business.

The indictment also argued Megaupload's claims to be a genuine cyberlocker were false because most users would have their uploaded data destroyed. Those who were "non-members" had to have their files downloaded inside 21 days, the FBI claimed. If they did not have the files downloaded, then they would be deleted. Free users, known as

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