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Kim Dotcom Demands Access To Seized Property To Defend Himself
redletterdave writes "On Wednesday, Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz and his legal team visited the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, to demand access to the data stored on his computers and hard drives that were confiscated during the police raid, and also requested a judicial review of the general legality of the search warrants police used to raid his mansion. Dotcom's lawyer, Paul Davison, argued that his client needs the data for a few reasons: To mount a 'proper defense' case, to fight possibly being extradited to the U.S., and also to show that 'excessive police action' was used during the raid. Dotcom could prove this in court because the entire raid was recorded by CCTV data, which is stored on Dotcom's confiscated computers. Even though the FBI demanded Dotcom turn over the passwords for Megaupload's encrypted data, he refuses to give up any passwords until he can regain access to his seized property."
What's the German word for "the boner you get from too much Schadenfreude"? Speaking as an American expat living in NZ: fuck the US government and its thuggish international corporate rent-a-cop policies.
The US government has illegally copied his data, in the hope of extraditing him of charges of illegally copying other peoples data.
It was on the local news last night. The FBI are confirmed to now have a copy of the personal HDDs.
It's causing a bit of a stink as it looks like the Police have done it illegally given they had previously agreed to return them first.
... he's guilty as hell of violating US law. Writing as a non-American living outside US territory who has never set foot inside US territory, I hope that Kim Dotcom succeeds in stopping the US extradition request. Extradition should be reserved for those who committed crimes in the country that is requesting extradition or for war criminals. A case might be made for "hackers" (security breakers) that plant malware that destroys another country's computer systems, but not for people whose crime involves not destruction but the "creation" of more data.
One of the principles to come out of the Steve Jackson Games case is that the accused can't be deprived of their computer equipment and data. Law enforcement may only make copies of data.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Seriously go read the indictment, it has money laundering, it has fraudulent take down procedures, it have fictitious users. Copyright infringement was just an underlying thing, they have him banged to rights which is why he's trying for the "excessive force" side defense.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment
Hahaha. Did you actually read this whole document? You really should.
It also has child pornography, terrorism propaganda, and many other neat things.
It also has things taken out of context, examples of Kim uploading his legally purchased songs to his private account on Megaupload (which is perfectly legal, but presented as if he was distributing the music by uploading 2 songs to his own account).
It has many many assumptions. Assumptions that Megaupload was a 'personal cyberlocker service', then 2 paragraphs later DoJ complains that Megaupload did not have a search function - therefore, they were up to something.
No, you really should read the document. It is not an indictment, it is a propaganda document.
No, you need to read it again. Megaupload said that they can hash cp images and automatically block them from being uploaded again. They flip this claim against them for none CP files.
Read item 24 carefully.
"Members of the Conspiracy have indicated to each other that they can automatically identify and delete such materials on all of their servers by calculating MD5 hash values of known child pornography or other illicit content, searching the system for these values, and eliminating them; in fact, such files with matching hash values have been deleted from the Mega Conspiracyâ(TM)s servers. Members of the Mega Conspiracy have failed to implement a similarprogram to actually delete or terminate access to copyright infringing content."
How can you be so stupid?
I am pretty sure that it is illegal in all jurisdictions to even store child pornography. Preventing it from being uploaded is a no-brainer, since there are no cases where it could be legal.
However, it not illegal for me to upload a copy of an album that I own, to my private Megaupload account.
Why should Megaupload automatically prevent me from uploading a backup of a song (or album) that I legally purchased, and which shares MD5 hash with the exact same copy which someone else uploaded and shared with others?
You seem to think that you are not able to make a copy of purchased song/album onto external hard disk (which is what Megaupload really is).
That is really sad.