AC

He looked like a character Hollywood might produce: a giant, swashbuckling, black-suited jet-setter, bikinied babes on his arm, yachts, planes and exotic cars at his disposal. He displayed a villainous visage and a shotgun in his publicity photos, and his fleet boasted "GOD" and "EVIL" on license tags. But the story of Kim Dotcom, 38, a German born as Kim Schmitz who liked to call himself King Kimble, reaches far beyond a cartoonish persona, self-promotion and a criminal record of pump-and-dump stock fraud. The former computer hacker is the principle figure behind Megaupload, which U.S. prosecutors charge was a global empire that reaped a mega-fortune from illegal digital distribution of movies, songs and other copyright works. In a New Zealand jail awaiting extradition to the USA on charges of racketeering, money-laundering and copyright crimes, Dotcom has found himself at the center of a high-stakes battle over Internet freedom vs. copyright protection. It is a fight touching...