Tag: Kim Dotcom

I'm sending good thoughts to Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload partners by playing this catchy tune today as they face their final showdown in the New Zealand Supreme Court which will decide once and for all whether the entrepreneurs can be extradited to the U.S. on charges of copyright violation.

This was the status last July when they lost in the Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court has provided a handy and fairly concise explanation of the case to date and issues here. [More...]

Kim Dotcom lost a big case today in the New Zealand Court of Appeals. The court ruled that "all pathways" of the U.S. for his extradition are open. Here is the court's press release, the summary of the judgment and the 120 page decision is here.

The Court confirmed that the principle of dual criminality is alive and well -- but that didn't save Dotcom, even though New Zealand doesn't have a specific law criminalizing copyright infringement.

Legislative history, English and Canadian authority and principles of extradition law all suggest that the conduct with which a person is charged must be criminal under both United States and New Zealand law before they can be extradited.

In making that finding, the court overuled a Canadian case, Cullinane v United States of America [2003] 2 NZLR 1 (CA) is overruled.

So on what grounds did they authorize the extradition?

Update: 8/30/16, 9:15 pm MT: Live stream started 1/2 hour ago here.

A New Zealand appeals court today began hearing the appeal of Kim Dotcom against extradition to the U.S. The hearing is expected to take six to eight weeks. Kim Dotcom has been requesting the hearing be live-streamed. Today, the court granted his request and live streaming begins tomorrow.

Justice Murray Gilbert granted the application, subject to agreement from Mr Dotcom and the other men that the case would only be livestreamed and any footage would be removed as soon as the six-week hearing was over. The footage would also be streamed with a 20 minute delay, to allow the court to prevent any suppressed material from being published.

Check Kim Dotcom's twitter feed, @kimdotcom, for the live stream link. Also check out Torrent Freak, which has been doing a good job of following the case all these years. [More...]

Update: My thoughts: The U.S. just got handed a price tag of $120,000. a year to warehouse these four men should they be convicted. (Per Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, June 16, 2015, the annual cost of housing a prisoner at a Bureau of Prisons facility is $30,621.00.) For what? Creating and running the most successful file uploading and sharing business ever? Yes, some people, including Dotcom and his partners, may have improperly allowed site users to share copyrighted material, for which Hollywood is owed money. So sue them. Prison is not the answer to every conceivable economic and social ill.

Update: Summing up:Kim Dotcom can be extradited. The court decision must be approved by Justice Minister Amy Adams (requirement of the Extradition Act.) Once the decision is signed off on, Kim Dotcom and the others have 15 days to appeal. {More...]

Update 12/22: Judge approves extradition. Bail continued. Appeals next.

The New Zealand courts tweeted a few hours ago that the decision on Kim Dotcom's extradition will be released tomorrow afternoon. More from the New Zealand Herald here.

I'm sending good thoughts his way. [More...]

Kim Dotcom's extradition hearing has begun in New Zealand. It is expected to take 4 weeks. It's being heard together with the extradition requests for his MegaUpload partners, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann, and Bram van der Kolk. [More...]

Despite a ruling by a federal judge in Virginia several months ago holding that Kim Dotcom cannot defend against the forfeiture of his assets because of the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, a New Zealand Court this week has granted DotCom's request for an Order prohibiting the Crown in New Zealand from proceeding to register the subsequent U.S. default forfeiture judgments against the assets in NZ. The opinion is here.

It's all pretty complicated, but in a nutshell: [More...]

Kim Dotcom has had a few setbacks in U.S. and New Zealand courts recently. Today he won a round in New Zealand. The court released funds from his frozen assets to pay his legal fees and living expenses.

His legal fees are around $4 million. $12 million in assets were seized during the 2012 raid. No news articles yet for details, I'll update when they are available.

It's been a while since I checked on Kim Dotcom. There is some big news. At the request of the U.S., New Zealand prosecutors tried to revoke his bond. A three day hearing was held. Yesterday, the New Zealand court ruled he did not violate his bail conditions. A New Zealand Herald report is here.

Kim Dotcom's legal bills are in excess of $10 million. That situation has recently become very complicated and his New Zealand lawyers withdrew from his case. His U.S. lawyers have set up a website seeking additional lawyers.

We are looking for lawyers in New Zealand and the United States who are interested in joining the Megaupload and Kim Dotcom legal defense and who have a passion for internet public interest law.

[More...]

The Department of Justice, at the direction of the Judge presiding over the MegaUpload/Kim Dotcom criminal case in Virginia, has published a 191 page report outlining the evidence it claims supports the charges. The DOJ webpage with documents is here.

Kim Dotcom's reaction:

The 191 page report is available here. The Superseding Indictment is here. [More...]

Here is Kim Dotcom's lawyers' new White paper on why the charges against him are untenable:

The U.S. government’s case against Megaupload is grounded in a theory of criminal secondary copyright infringement. In other words, the prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users.

The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States. The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so.

[More...]

The New Zealand prosecutor's office has spent almost 10,000 hours battling Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, either on behalf of the U.S. or defending against NZ's actions in providing assistance to the FBI.

The latest figures show 9688 hours worked on the case since July 15, 2011 - the date the Crown Law Office opened its file on the American request. The estimate of $2 million is based on rates usually paid for counsel hired to work for the Crown. In this case, additional legal work for the Crown had been done by Christine Gordon QC, Kirsty McDonald QC and Mike Ruffin, adding about 200 hours.

...Some of that work is on behalf of the United States but most has been damage control around the mess which came with helping the FBI shut down Mr Dotcom's Megaupload.

It's not just a drain of money. It's also a drain on prosecutorial and court resources that could be better spent on other matters, such as crime in New Zealand.

As to why you should care, it's because the same waste of money and resources is occurring with DOJ's prosecution of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload in Virginia.[More....]