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Kim Dotcom Wins Case Against NZ Police To Get Seized Material Back
New submitter Mistakill writes "It seems the case against Kim Dotcom for the NZ Police isn't going well, with Kim Dotcom scoring another victory in his legal battles. Police have been told they must search everything they seized from Dotcom and hand back what is not relevant to the U.S. extradition claims. Justice Helen Winkelmann told police their complaints about the cost and time of the exercise were effectively their own fault for indiscriminately seizing material in the first place. She wrote, 'The warrants could not authorize the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance. They could not authorize the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorize keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offenses.'"
Kim Dotcom really comes across as an amazing douche.
The thing is that in this everyone else in this whole saga is SO douchey that he actually manages to come across as a sympathetic character.
It's really quite incredible if you think about it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
An overzealous police force being made to face the consequences of its own misconduct?
What a country!
If they do that, the judge will *know* they are lying, and will hit them even harder. There were *plenty* of perfectly legitimate files on those servers. People have tried suing to get access to their files. All of that is on the record.
Granted, considering the volume of information would be problematic to sift through, but is it fair to say
"since there's so much, let's just seize the lot, including every person's legitimate files stored there and keep them to ourselves"?
Like that wouldn't backfire..
They also were ordered to give Kim a copy of everything that they are keeping.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
I don't think that would fly since, as you quoted, the judge pointed out that the expenses were their own damn fault.
Now, if the citizens of NZ decided to sue their government for wasting so many resources on a personal vendetta against a single individual... THAT I can see making it to court.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Its the rights of assholes and attention whores you have to stand up for. Once those are violated, you get a precedent. Don't let it happen.
Can we have a month hiatus on Kim Dotcom stories? Please??
Never mind, make it a permanent hiatus. He's now just a grandstanding figure and I think he is beyond the "news for nerds" scope that /. was supposed to have.
Seconded. Then we can focus more on John McAfee.
Innocent motorists are routinely relieved of their cash and belongings by police, without ever being charged with a crime, and with no recourse to recover their stolen property.
They should just extradite him to the US along with all of his seized property, and then the US government can just keep it forever under its insane civil forfeiture laws.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's less about Kim and more about the elements that come into play in a seizure of tech/files. If Slashdot uses any cloud services or other tech that accesses/points to files then this is relevant to our issues. This also deals with international laws and how they are enforced between jurisdictions. Not many people like Larry Flynt but there is value in seeing how his story played out, the same goes for Kim.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Kim Dotcom sold me a 3D printed Raspberry Pi for 20 Bitcoins you insensitive clod!
I used it to program an Arduino based robot that will deliver GMO wheat to Julian Assange.
Do we really need any more info about this attention whore?
Is he the attention whore, or are the authorities? It seems to me he's just defending himself, while the Keystone Cops are going out of their way to maximize any and all bad press that can possibly be brought against them. Whether we know all the intricasies in the law is one thing, but shouldn't the cops have at least some competence in wielding it? They've apparently forgotten entire swaths of related concepts such as warrant procedure, jurisdictions, evidence handling, ... How do they retain their jobs with this level of performance?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
You want to see how it is really done check out washington d.c.
Douchery with the almost complete complicity and full support of the press.
You want to do this kind of stuff, you need the press.
No brain, no pain.
Oh do fuck off.
This is an important case for the boundaries of where the line between legitimate hosting and illegal file sharing is drawn.
It's about as important and relevant as any news you can get on Slashdot because the result of it has real repercussions - either the internet is safe from the authorities arbitrarily shutting down hosting companies because they feel like it, or the authorities win another battle to the point where state/law enforcement based censorship slips even further towards companies like Google also being guilty of supporting infringement to a legally culpable degree.
Can we have a permanent hiatus on you commenting instead?