Megaupload's assertion that foreign corporations cannot be prosecuted for violations of U.S. law runs counter to more than eight decades of U.S. court rulings, the DOJ said in its response to the motion to dismiss, released Tuesday.

"This line of reasoning leads to the incredible conclusion that a foreign corporation can commit crimes in the United States and secure what amounts to complete immunity from prosecution, simply by ensuring that it has no address or principal place of business here," the DOJ's lawyers wrote.

The DOJ shut down the file sharing site on Jan. 19 after it filed criminal copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering charges against it, sister company Vestor Limited, and founder Kim Dotcom. In May, Megaupload lawyers filed a the charges against the company, arguing that the U.S. lacks jurisdiction to prosecute the Hong Kong-based company and has not served the company with the charging documents.

The DOJ, in its response to the motion to dismiss, argued that "Megaupload's business took place in, profited from, and injured copyright holders" in the U.S. for more than six years. The company had more than 500 servers located in Virginia, where the charges originated, and the company filed a civil lawsuit against a record label in California court in December 2011, the DOJ said.

"To dismiss the Superseding Indictment against Defendant Megaupload -- whose business model is not based on traditional goods and services delivered through brick-and-mortar stores but instead on online intellectual property piracy -- because the company has purposefully avoided establishing an office in the United States would be unprecedented and unjust," the DOJ's lawyers wrote. "It would also reward Defendant Megaupload, whose business was dedicated to criminal copyright violations, ... for having consistently taken steps to evade detection in the United States."