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Kim Dotcom's Assets Seizure Order Ruled "Null and Void"
thomst writes "Cnet's Greg Sandoval reports that New Zealand police filed for the wrong kind of restraining order--the kind that didn't allow for DotCom to have a court hearing prior to the seizure — and that was a mistake, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. A court has now ruled that the restraining order that enabled police to seize his assets is 'null and void,' and a review of the mistakes made will soon be conducted by New Zealand's attorney general, according to the Herald. The paper noted that there's no guarantee that DotCom will prevail. His lawyers must prove the absence of good faith when the procedural error was made."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka5oLSuiUGs
Kim Dotcom is an absolute fucking tool, and I have ZERO respect for him. That said, if the authorities screwed up, they screwed up. Return his stuff.
Gone!
If he named himself Kim Dotnz the Americans wouldn't have any jurisdiction over him.
That's what you get when you bend over and take it from america, screwed.
it's essentially impossible to prove "bad faith" on something like this without a "smoking gun" like an email mentioning how they're just going to take a shortcut or something.
IMHO, the whole concept of "it's ok to do something illegal as long as you had good intentions" is not something that should work for the law, ever. It rarely helps the citizen. ("good samaritan" laws being the only common exception)
The whole point of having legal requirements is to force them to make sure they have their ducks in a row before exercising their powers. Once you say "well it's OK if you violate someone's rights, as long as it was an honest mistake", it opens a huge barn door to abuse. Laws should always be slanted in favor of the accused, to lower the incidence of abuse and mistaken application.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
... they refile the 'proper' warrant, get a judge to sign off on it, and take his stuff again. So the cops screwed up. This is news?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Why do bad things happen to police states?
You can find all kinds of comments in a Slashdot thread - from First Piss to Last Poop
Yep. Did it last night
Years ago Hilaire Belloc made a rather good joke about many apparently worthy causes actually being the work of the "Society for the prevention of annoyances to the rich". This seems to be what is going on nowadays - the Internet is allowing (relatively) poor people to cause annoyance to the rich and they are trying to stop it. But, sadly for them, it is simply not true that there are no honest lawyers.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I don't understand why they don't have complete safe harbor under DCMA? I would think they would.. did they ignore take downs or I guess perhaps their system is distributed if they aren't hosting anything then they can't take it down. In any case, linking to a file should never the the same as file distribution. :(
Sovereign governments of the world kowtowing to the United States is on it's own an act of bad faith. Terrorism takes many forms.
As an American, I'm glad to see foreign courts aren't completely acquiescing to the same "moral imperatives" our politicians and intellectual property owners demand we submit to.
As an epileptic, I'm dreading all the "clever" headline puns describing Kim Dotcom's "seizure disorder".
As a geek, I can't wait to debate whether the it should have instead been ruled NIL, as well as NULL and VOID.
How can it be "null and void"? I though void was a type, and null its only instance. How can anything be both?
"We accidentally your rights"
(and anyone who believes it was an "accident" isn't paranoid enough)
My feeling is this... If Kim was guilty of stealing credit cards, stock scams or selling cracked games to pirate factories, he should be arrested and tried on those counts.
Instead, it looks like they decided it was far more lucrative to take down his MegaUpload site, which is relatively legitimate by comparison to ANY of those other things.
Justice shouldn't be opportunistic, waiting for the "bad guy" to build up something "really worth seizing".
There is a reason the people for Freedom of speech rallied behind smut peddler and general amoral person, Larry Flint. If you don't defend the objectionable when they come for them, nobody will object when they come for you. It doesn't work in simple movie heroics but the people at the frontlines of the battle between good and right often ain't all that nice. Many a freedom fighter is just one step away from being a criminal, even in the eyes of their own side. The non-silly part of Dad's army was hard line enemies of the state, who were trained by the state since it was reasoned they hated the nazi's even more then British government and could be counted upon to kill those of the British government who would colaborate with an occupying german force.
Keep waiting for a nice guy to rally behind and you might find that the battle has been lost before you ever got started.
Mind you, I got the strong suspicion that since you are an AC, you might well not mind all that much. 10 to 1 that you think DRM and Trusted Computing are all worth it, for your cause.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Does the local police force working under the direction and supervision of a foreign govt count as a 'procedural error' as well?
Just in the case that you're actually interested in the response, it's going to disappoint you : no. Imagine if that were true : you'd just have to cross a single jurisdiction line and you'd get away with any crime whatsoever. That doesn't quite work.
We have this thing called international treaties. These days, if you commit a crime, it doesn't really matter if the victim of said crime is in your own country or in another one. If the victim decides to sue, or a foreign state decides to sue (as in this case), they can do so (although relatively high minimum damage levels are enforced : you can't sue a foreignor for less than about $2000). With a big exception in the EU, the proceedings are executed according to local law (in civial matters), and there local laws apply (in the EU foreign treaties take precedence of local laws, even constitutions, so it's much worse there). Foreign states are special in that they can start both civil and criminal proceedings. You do need to have violated a local law : you can't sue a muslim for beating his wife nearly to death if he manages to get into Morocco was a pretty high-profile case recently (and maybe this law will change, something to do with a number of suicides in that country).
What is going on here is that the police has seized his property because they believe he has committed a criminal offence and that someone (e.g. Time Warner) will seek damages, and has a reasonable chance to get them. They believe there is a big chance that given the chance, Kim Dotcom will cut and run (apparently he's done that before in Germany), and the judge agreed with that.
One of the things any lawyer should tell you : if you violate a legal principle that applies both in your country and in a foreign country, but only has foreign "victims", you won't be protected by jurisdiction limits. So the simple thing is : in America, insult whatever political figure or religion or ideology you like, and don't worry about morons like North Korea or Saudi Arabia suing you. Don't violate American law, even if you're "only hurting" foreigners.
If you want to change copyright, by all means go ahead. However if you try to do this through the court, you will fail, and you best be prepared to be bankrupt for the rest of your life. Any real action will be played out in congress. Democracy does not mean you do what you want, rather that the majority of the country, represented by freely chosen congresscritters, has to agree you're allowed to do it. If you can't convince enough of your fellow Americans (ie. 150 million), it's not going to happen.
> Kim Dotcom's Assets Seizure Order Ruled "Null and Void"
I can also rule many things null and void, including the Moon Landings. These rulings of mine have exactly the same relevance as the NZ ruling: exactly zero. That is because NZ has the same amount of jet warplanes as I have: exactly zero. Uncle Sam has like 4000 of those, if I remember correctly and nzers are free to pelt them away by throwing stones. To summarize simply: the stronger dog gets to have sex and Kim Whoever will be the underdog / unterman this time. That's because USA said so, more precisely the wise people who govern USA from Manhattan and Hollywood.
You see, Kim choose the wrong country. NZ can brag about judical independence as much as they want, lest USA sell them, the whole island to China and they can't do a damn about it, because they do not have any jetfighters to defend themselves. Maybe if NZ has cared a little to replace their ancient A-4 Skyhawk fleet with F-16s, as planned, rather than scrapping them for even more social welfare... I have no sympathy for NZ, they are sissies, who 101% cling on to the USA for defence, yet try to defraud Hollywood at the same time... That can't be both ways, either you are faitful to the USA whole-heartedly or Manhattan will sell you to the chinese for good.
Compare that to AU, how many jet warplanes they have and how faithful they are to the USA. Never fail to buy the movie ticket to support the USA economy which sends them those F-18G Super Hornet Growlers versus China.
Read the full indictment, they back every claim up in detail.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment
They also have the companies emails, where they lay out their plans in some detail. His defense would be the DMCA but the email shows their DMCA takedown system was a sham. Taking down single links while keeping the file. The guy even orders his staff to ignore bulk takedowns from low profile countries.
So they won't lose this, and if you read the indictment in full you'll understand why.
If the law was fair and just, then you might have a justification in calling Kim a "crook" for evading it. But it's not.
If you RTFA you would notice it was not really the papers that were wrong. It was the worng procedure. In the correct procedure it would be allowed to get a hearing before all his belongings were taken.
And the difference can be enormous. By taking his belongings and the company the (rented) websites and all the data on it ceases to exist. That is mayor damage without a hearing!
Wow. It's both Null *AND* Void?? I guess they really, really, really mean it.
Seriously, though, as a lawyer, I'm frustrated by this tendency to say everything twice "Will and Testament," "Cease and Desist," "says and declares," etc.... Say it once.
The fascist pigs went after Dotcom, but they have been getting their come-uppances of late. It is good to see that even the mighty forces of the US colossus do not always prevail. Hurrah!