Usually when the US government/entertainment complex wants to take down a major figure in filesharing and make an example of him, they try to get him arrested in a country that is US-friendly (or at least, US-indebtted) that will arrest a person at the request of US agencies, usually the FBI.

Example: Artem Vaulin, founder of KickAss Torrents, decided to travel to Iceland for a tourist holiday, but his flight stopped over in Poland. The FBI arranged for Polish police to arrest him:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15681160/kickasstorrents-founder-artem-vaulin-interview-bittorrent

Poland is a very US-supporting place right now

The FBI also worked behind the scenes with Thai police to get PirateBay co-founder Fredrik Neij arrested in Thailand, and got the Thai government to ship him to Sweden, where a court had previousy sentenced him to jail.

Hint: if you're involved in copyright violation, or anything else the US doesn't like, don't go on holiday to Thailand. Thailand has a huge military cooperation agreement with the US that basically provides for it to be able to afford operating its army. When the US says "jump" Thailand says "how high?" People from all over the world have been nabbed when they go on vacation in Thailand, at the request of the US.

OK, so we've established that the US usually tries to get their hands on copyright pirates by using intel to find out when and where they're traveling, then uses a country that cooperates with "arrest & extradite" rendition to grab them.

So why did the FBI, the CIA and New Zealand's GCSB spy agency start monitoring all of Dotcom's communications? And then why did these agencies set up a joint FBI, NZ Police SWAT raid on Dotcom? And why did they grab every piece of electronics when the NZ Police knew their siezure was illegal?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jun/28/kim-dotcom-judge-raid-illegal

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/mega-victory-kim-dotcom-search-warrants-invalid-mansion-raid-illegal/

Now it was never clear that Dotcom's Megaupload operation actually violated US copyright laws, and Dotcom had some technologies that could have been helpful to the movie industry, and was in negotiations with some studios to set up joint movie distribution ventures!

Does that sound like the "worst copyright pirate in the world" image the US tries to convey now?

What caused the US government propoganda machine to swing into overdrive, portraying former internet distribution genius Dotcom as an evil, job-destroying villain?

Well, the only believable explanation is the fact that the surveillance started shortly after Dotcom donated 20,000 Euros to Wkileaks.

20,000 Euros may not sound like much, but Wikileaks relies almost exclusively on small donations from regular people to operate, and Dotcom's donation was one of the largest Wikileaks had ever received up to that time.

So now, in light of the fact that they were willing to kill Seth Rich over his Wikileaks activity, that they've "heart attacked" several Wikileaks founders and legal advisors, does the SWAT raid that was clearly designed to intimidate Dotcom make sense now?

And does the "grab all his electronics, and let the courts make us hand them back" sound like they were wanting to comb though all his equipment for whatever they could find out on Wikileaks?

More info here:

https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-links-e20000-wikileaks-donation-to-megaupload-raid-131124/

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2308919/kim-dotcom-traces-megaupload-raid-to-wikileaks-donation

And as usual, the deep state is selling its intelligence agency background machinations to the public as BS about "movie piracy"