Last December the MPAA announced one of its biggest victories to date. The Hollywood group won its case against file-hosting site Hotfile, who agreed to a $80 million settlement. However, this figure mostly served to impress and scare the pubic, as we can now reveal that Hotfile agreed to pay 'only' $4 million. It’s been nearly a year since Hotfile was defeated by the MPAA, resulting in a hefty $80 million dollar settlement. While the public agreement left room for the file-hosting service to continue its operations by implementing a filtering mechanism, the company quickly shut down after the settlement was announced. As it now turns out, this was the plan all long. And not just that, the $80 million figure that was touted by the MPAA doesn’t come close to the real settlement Hotfile agreed to pay. Buried in one of the Sony leaks is an email conversation which confirms that the real settlement payment from Hotfile was just $4 million, just a fraction of the amount widely publicized in the press. “The studios and Hotfile have reached agreement on settlement, a week before trial was to start. Hotfile has agreed to pay us $4 million, and has entered into a stipulation to have an $80 million judgment entered and the website shut down,” the email from Sony’s SVP Legal reads. Considering the time and effort that went into the case, it would be no surprise if the movie studios actually lost money on the lawsuit. The good news for the MPAA is that the money was paid in full. There were some doubts if Hotfile would indeed pay up, but during the first weeks of December last year the $4 million was sent in three separate payments. The huge difference between the public settlement figure and the amount that was negotiated also puts previous cases in a different light. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the $110 million settlement with isoHunt and the $110 deal with TorrentSpy were just paper tigers too. Whether or not the Hotfile case resulted in a net loss is probably not that important to the MPAA though. Hollywood mostly hopes that the staggering numbers will serve as a deterrent, preventing others from operating similar sites.

Dotcom and his compatriots will have to pay $27,000 to Attorney GeneralNew Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (PDF) that warrants granted by the Court of Aukland in 2012 to search Kim Dotcom were legal. Warrants to search Dotcom compatriots Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann, and Bram van der Kolk were also upheld. Dotcom et. al were ordered to pay NZ$35,000 (about US$27,000) to New Zealand's Attorney General for legal costs.In 2012, the United States federal government accused Dotcom of racketeering, copyright infringement, and money laundering in connection with his website Megaupload, which the US contends encouraged people to share pirated copies of music and movies.The thrust of Dotcom’s argument against the search warrants was that they were overly broad and "authorized search and seizure of material likely to include that which was irrelevant and private. ” In 2012, Ars reported that "New Zealand police cut their way through locks and into Dotcom's 'panic room,' seized 18 luxury vehicles, secured NZ$11 million in cash from his bank accounts, and grabbed 150TB of data from 135 of Dotcom's digital devices.” The United States had requested the search warrants under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act.Over the last three years, the case challenging the search warrants has moved through New Zealand’s High Court to the Court of Appeal and now finally to the Supreme Court. Early after the raid on Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion, High Court Judge Helen Winkelmann ruled the raid illegal and said the warrants facilitated a “miscarriage of justice.”Those early wins for Dotcom were fleeting, however, with the Court of Appeal overturning Winkelman’s decision in February 2014.The Supreme Court agreed four to one with the Court of Appeal that, although the warrants were flawed in form, those flaws did not make the warrants invalid. While the warrants "could have been drafted rather more precisely,” the Supreme Court’s ruling reads, the criminal activity that the US accused Kim Dotcom of "is extensive and is alleged to have been carried out through what, outwardly, resembled a legitimate large-scale cloud storage facility.” The ruling continues:Through the New Zealand Police, the United States authorities sought and obtained warrants to search for and seize material, including computers, relevant to that alleged offending. The computers were plainly relevant to the offending alleged, although some of their contents were undoubtedly irrelevant. As a practical matter, the computers would have to be taken offsite to enable cloning and search for relevant material.Accordingly, we agree with the Court of Appeal that the appellants were reasonably able to understand what the warrants related to and that the police were adequately informed of what they should be looking for. Any issues relating to matters such as the way the search of the computers was conducted or the handling of irrelevant material should be addressed through other processes.Kim Dotcom’s legal battles extend across many fronts, and, taken as a whole, the proceedings constitute one of the most expensive cases in New Zealand history.Most recently, in October of this year, New Zealand’s Court of Appeals ruled that Dotcom had to reveal his financial assets to the Hollywood studios that are suing him for piracy. A month later, Dotcom told a London tech conference that he was “officially broke” after transferring his remaining assets to his wife and kids. At the same time, prosecutors asked New Zealand courts to throw Dotcom back in jail in advance of his 2015 extradition hearing, calling him a "flight risk.” That bid was thwarted in early December, and Dotcom will remain free on bail.

In a press release e-mailed to Ars, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it would be running a campaign to attract highly skilled technical employees starting today. The campaign runs until January 20. The Bureau said it will primarily be looking for scientists, engineers, and mathematicians “to work in high pressure and demanding team environments as Special Agents, Computer Scientists, Information Technology Specialists, and Engineers.” A “Cyber Internship” is also available to full-time students. The Special Agent job listing uses the word “cyber” six times in four sentences, with passages like, "With private and public sector reliance on computer technology, cyber security is becoming more and more critical... FBI Special Agents with cyber skills combat global cyber threats, partner with international law enforcement, and protect the nation's critical cyber infrastructure.” The Computer Scientist listing is a bit more descriptive, "Computer Scientists work on squads alongside Special Agents investigating the most sophisticated cyber intrusions, malware attacks, and system exploitation cases. They are routinely called upon to support major cases in other areas including terrorism, counterintelligence, white-collar crimes, bank robberies, violent crimes, and child exploitation.” The most well-compensated vacancy is for a computer scientist. It offers a starting salary at GS-13 (or General Schedule 13), a range of $71,674 to $93,175. Ars contacted the FBI for more information about how many positions the organization seeks to fill and how big the hiring budget for the bureau is. We have not yet received a response, but we will update if we do. Earlier this year, the FBI chief lamented that the bureau was having a tough time hiring cyber security experts because of its no-marijuana policy. "I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” FBI Director James Comey told a New York City Bar Association meeting in May. Comey later backtracked from the comment, which many took as evidence of wanting to soften the policies. "I am absolutely dead-set against using marijuana,” he clarified.

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