Sorry, I somehow missed the emails about them actually arranging for pirated material. The worst I had known about was copying videos off youtube. But the Dexter email is valid. If illegal files find a bug you still need to fix the bug unrelated to removing the files.
A few minutes later: Okay I just skimmed through the indictment again and I can't find what you're talking about. There's points 54 and 55 about how they didn't cancel the affiliate accounts of people that had uploaded infringing files, but I can't find anything about them actually arranging pirated material, or specifically encouraging its upload. Also point 69d says out that copyright-violating uploads were disqualified for rewards, though Megaupload rarely terminated the accounts.
Ah, thanks. Well I see a lot of bad behavior, from them looking at user uploads, finding pirated files, and not removing them. But it's still unsolicited uploads. Page 33 mentions disqualification of 'very obvious' copyrighted files, but being 'rather flexible'. This is bad, but it's not going out and encouraging illegal-in-particular uploads. It's just poor policing on the affiliate program.
Page 32 is content from a discovered email in which a Megaupload employee calculates the affiliate bonus due to a user based on the value of the copyrighted files that user uploaded.
This isn't reading-between-the-lines stuff. It's there in black and white.
Right, it's black and white that they ignored copyright violations on a bunch of files. But that is not the same as encouraging infringing files over non-infringing files, or asking people to upload infringing files.
If you uploaded a popular infringing file, you might get $100, or you might get disqualified.
If you uploaded a popular non-infringing file, you would definitely get $100.
Megaupload knew about some of the piracy. That does not mean they arranged it. They treated it like any other file.
Also keep in mind that an indictment is designed to make the indicted party look as unsympathetic as possible. There may be additional context given which turns those e-mails from "smoking gun with Dotcom's demonic fingerprints" to just "Viacom vs. YouTube-esque questionable behavior" if that case ever goes to court.
A few minutes later: Okay I just skimmed through the indictment again and I can't find what you're talking about. There's points 54 and 55 about how they didn't cancel the affiliate accounts of people that had uploaded infringing files, but I can't find anything about them actually arranging pirated material, or specifically encouraging its upload. Also point 69d says out that copyright-violating uploads were disqualified for rewards, though Megaupload rarely terminated the accounts.