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Obama may have talked Kim DotCom with New Zealand PM

There are conflicting reports about whether New Zealand's prime minister chatted privately with President Obama about the MegaUpload case.

Greg Sandoval Former Staff writer
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. Based in New York, Sandoval is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at @sandoCNET.
Greg Sandoval
2 min read
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New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said today he took up some issues important to his country in a private conversation with President Barack Obama and one of the topics may have been about the MegaUpload case.

The impromptu discussion occurred today prior to a meeting at the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, according to several New Zealand publications. Key confirmed that he brought up the fighting in Gaza but when asked whether he and Obama talked about MegaUpload, the cloud-storage service accused by the United States of criminal copyright violations, Key said he couldn't discuss it.

New Zealand's prime minister had no trouble revealing that the subject of MegaUpload hadn't come up at a dinner on Monday night. His unwillingness to "detail" what was said between the two leaders today prompted some in the New Zealand media to conclude that the men had indeed spoken about MegaUpload. That might be a bit of a reach.

Regardless, that New Zealand reporters are asking world leaders about MegaUpload says a great deal about just how much attention the case has received.

MegaUpload and its network of sites, which included Megavideo and Megaporn, were among the most visited video destinations on the Web before being shut down by U.S. officials in January. The U.S. government claims that MegaUpload was set up to host and store pirated movies, music, and other media and then generated $175 million from the sale of advertisements and premium services.

The ambiguity about the talk between Key and Obama didn't stop MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom from having fun with the news. He took to Twitter to tweak Obama by asking him "to give us green cards so we can come and help Hollywood to build a proper Internet business."