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Kim Dotcom Offers $5 Million Bounty To Defeat Extradition

heretic108 (454817) writes "Internet mega-entrepreneur, uber-gamer and now NZ political corruption-buster Kim DotCom has posted a bounty of $5 million to anyone who can dig up any dirt which saves him from extradition to the U.S.. This bounty would be payable not only to government employees, but also to anyone who can retrieve documents clearly proving corruption in the whole prosecution process. 'We are asking for information that proves unlawful or corrupt conduct by the US government, the New Zealand government, spy agencies, law enforcement and Hollywood', Dotcom told website Torrentfreak.com."

44 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cell by Iamthecheese · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Snowden did it to keep his oath and he's still getting prosecuted. Anyone doing it for money would have no leg to stand on in the view of the people who would go after them. Corruption in the US judiciary system is a very real problem and people who expose it are heroes but this reward is the worst possible way to get people to come forward.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  2. Cartels by Wowsers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about the film industry creating a cartel and using laws to enforce it, stuff like region coding DVD's and BluRay's, encryption, or adding unskippable bs like copyright notices on LEGIT bought products. The "pirates" are obviously giving consumers a better product, but corrupt governments side on the media cartels who refuse to update their business models to the current real world - they are stuck in the last century.

    The law has been bought and paid for by the corrupt media cartels. The law is a disgrace, as are our bought corrupt politicians.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
    1. Re:Cartels by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A democracy *can't* function that way. The laws aren't supported by the people; they're put there when 98% of the population has no idea what they are, what they mean, what they do, or that those things are actually wrong in some way.

    2. Re:Cartels by CreatureComfort · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The "pirates" are obviously giving consumers a better product

      "Giving consumers a better product" would be going out and making their own movies that are better than Hollywood's. No laws against that anywhere. It's also not what they're doing. What they're doing would be more akin to me walking into your place of work and offering to do the work you did for the past month, for $50. You've already done the work, you just don't get paid, and I get $50. That's just giving your employer a better product, right? These tired old excuses for piracy are, ironically, from the last century, and I didn't realize people still talked like this in 2014.

      To stretch your analogy:
      Well, except that, if my employer wanted a copy of the work I've done for the last month, which, BTW, I was already paid for, I wouldn't expect him to pay me my full salary to have it done all over again. Not when he can, and does, have the minimum wage secretary make a Xerox for nothing more than the cost of her time, a little electricity, ink, and paper.

      Just because the industry wants to exploit their rape of popular culture and turn every thought or utterance into a money stream for themselves, and has the money and position to get the elected officials to pass laws that are diametrically opposed to the wishes of the electorate that voted them into office, doesn't make it right.

      --
      "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
      Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
    3. Re:Cartels by jeIlomizer · · Score: 2

      Yeah and the product in question was also created by these "cartels."

      So, are you saying it is okay for these companies to bribe legislators to create draconian laws?

      Don't like it? Feel free to create your own DRM free content and let everyone have the fruits of your labor. Nothing is stopping you but you and your selfish entitle ideology.

      I'd say it's significantly more selfish and entitled to hinder the free market, free speech rights, and private property rights by telling people they can't copy & transmit certain information to others with their own equipment.

      For all the screaming and crying that happens, you accomplish a whole lot of nothing. You've effectively lost this battle already, because you have no effective means of actually stopping people from transmitting the information. And even if you did have some draconian solution, it would just cause people to despise you.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    4. Re:Cartels by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Then you should stop putting deliberate bugs into your code. Why should I buy it from you when I can get a bug free version cheaper?

      And please, don't come with legality. There's no logic in laws concerning sex, drugs and copyright, basing an argument on that is like arguing on religious grounds.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    5. Re:Cartels by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Laws MUST be supported by the general population if they are supposed to be upheld. Laws OPPOSED by the majority of people are actually a threat to the legal system itself.

      If there is laws that most people oppose (like, say, a lot of laws in former communist states), they will break it, or at the very least, they will not report it if they know someone else breaks it. Be honest: Imagine your best friend kills someone in cold blood, would you tell on him? I'd say the chance that you do is at the very least a LOT higher than you ratting him out for downloading some blockbuster movie. Why? Because your support for the law against murder is (at least if you're a somewhat normal human being) a lot stronger than your support for copyright. If the latter exists at all.

      Copyright is a law that is enforced by and for a minority. While at the same time opposed or ignored by a majority. The danger here is now that this not only means that copyright becomes a hollow shell of a law, it means that laws are questioned entirely. Allow me an example.

      I remember an experiment where a "no littering" sign was put up prominently on a corner of the street. And no littering happened. The place was clean. Then, after a week IIRC, they dumped some litter on the spot and it didn't take long for the litter to grow and multiply. When people see a law being ignored with impunity, they will follow suit.

      The problematic thing here is that copyright is one thing. What's next? When you can break copyright laws, why not other laws? We identify copyright laws as unjust and wrong, so what about the others? Are the other laws right? Or should we take them into question as well? Why not break other laws? Once you broke one, breaking another one gets a lot easier.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:Cartels by bzipitidoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If a law is so easy to casually disregard, and violating it provides a clear benefit to the violators and the harm it causes is theoretical, that's a sign the law itself is bad. Eating at Burger King should not be thought such a harm to McDonalds that it should be outlawed.

      We ought to have digital public libraries by now. Such a thing is a clear benefit to society. Searchable works of art! No more archaic card catalogs. No more denying a patron because all the copies are currently checked out. No more losses from patrons being careless with the physical media and damaging it. Far less storage space needed, space which can be used to hold more works, or repurposed. No more late fees and returns. No more having to physically travel to the library, twice, spending time and most likely gas. Did you see the article some days ago about streaming saving society lots of money compared to fooling around with DVDs? We could have all of this, now, if not for copyright law.

      Everyone should be willing to practice civil disobedience of bad laws. Be like Rosa Parks and don't meekly go along with racist seating arrangements. If US citizens are no longer willing to do that, maybe we ought to petition the British Monarchy to let us back in the fold, and we'll all issue a national apology to George III.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    7. Re:Cartels by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's not even a requirement.

      People follow the law out of, well, custom. People actually like living in a predictable environment, and it's predictable to live in a world that has laws you can rely on. Do this and you're a good citizen, do that and you're not. That's something that is generally very well liked among humans. Most people like a predictable life.

      And as long as this predictable environment does not conflict too much with their own version of morality and legality, they will support it. They might not support all laws, they may even not care about most of them, and they will probably not understand the reasoning behind some, but, and that's the important part, they don't openly oppose them.

      And as long as this is the case, a country is stable and will be supported by its citizens. Only if you start ruling against your population, you will need more and more rigid and oppressive structures to keep up the status quo. And if history has shown us anything, then that such a situation is not sustainable in the long run because you need to waste resources to prop the system up against the own population, which not only costs you resources you could spend elsewhere, it also means that your population will only offer you the bare minimum of support needed. And you will need to watch them closely to ensure that they actually do it, there's no "voluntary" work you can depend on.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    8. Re:Cartels by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nope.

      Basically nope. I mean, sure, you can make stuff up about me if it makes you feel better. If you look at my wall full of DVDs and don't even consider the ones I've given away to charity shops, you'd be hard pressed to claim I'm a freeloader.

      I still use TPB. Heck, I even download Agents of Shield from TPB despite it being 100% legal for me to watch it either broadcast or online.

      Why do you think I do that?

      It's because the service offered by TPB and the resulting product is indisputably etter than what you can get elsewhere. The advantages of TPB are:

      * Variety of size / quality options available.
      * Everything available in one place.
      * Great search engine.
      * No "streaming" crap, you just get a file.
      * No DRM: you can watch the file anywhere.
      * No ads.
      * No unskippable "content".
      * Works in my favourite media player.
      * Works on my phone.
      * Even my in-law's TV can play the files natively.
      * Some very old, obscure stuff available.
      * Good download clients where you can prioritise stuff you want now, versus stuff you want later.

      The disadvantages:
      * No obvious way to compensate people for their work.
      * I do not actually believe that impossibly proportioned women would like to date my testicles.

      A better product is more than just the film itself. If someone jabs you with a sharp stick for the entire duration of the film as a condition of you watching it, then that, too is part of the product.

      TPB removes the bit where they jab you with sticks. People like that, free or not.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Re:How about a Kickstarter... by mellon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hundreds of millions of people _do_ do copyright infringement, because there are typically no adverse consequences.

    FTFY.

  4. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by mellon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If simply being an asshole was just cause to terminate your civil rights, we'd all be behind bars.

  5. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yea, you should definitely defend the fraudster by claiming it was US government corruption that put him where he is.

    He should be let off because his corruption was okay, because someone else was doing it too ... right?

    If I had to choose between a sleazy fraudster going to jail, and the uncovering (and correction) of government corruption, I'd choose the latter. Government corruption, at least in this particular case, is far scarier to me.

  6. Re:How about Kindergarten? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it's not yours, don't take it without permission.

    If it's not just yours, pay a corrupt legislature to make it exclusively yours, and to make anyone else using it a criminal offense, enforced by the threat of violence.

    Fixed that for you.

  7. Re:How about a Kickstarter... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    And why does he need to be extradited in the first place? The poor kiwis don't have any courts of their own?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  8. with 5 million bucks by FudRucker · · Score: 3, Funny

    buy a nice boat an disappear and dont forget plenty of fishing gear and a shortwave radio-receiver, go find some abandoned Polynesian island with a fresh water source and just retire and forget modern civilization

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:with 5 million bucks by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      I think I saw a professor build one with coconuts somewhere.

  9. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The US Government is corrupt in the same way that 1 + 1 = 2. You needn't prove it to know it is true.

    That's true of all government.

  10. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by BitZtream · · Score: 2

    ... Do you know absolutely ANYTHING about kim dot com? If he were JUST an asshole, I'd agree with you.

    Let me guess, you know nothing about his history and you think megaupload was a legitimate file sharing site?

    Being an asshole is one of his better traits.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  11. Why doesn't he leave by rossdee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why doesn't he just go to some other country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the USA

    EG North Korea, he'd fit right in with all the other Kim's there

  12. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    Because our justice system is based upon the notion of due process. We've let murderers go because cops bungled far smaller things.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  13. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by ganjadude · · Score: 2

    i wouldnt call it being corrupt, hes not asking people to make stuff up, he is asking for people to expose corruptness, and putting a reward for doing so. is it wrong? probably but i wouldnt call it corrupt

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  14. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For anyone who doesn't know, Kim Schmitz aka Kimble aka Kim Dotcom has a history of electronic theft, theft of trade secrets, insider trading, fraud, and has narrowly avoided prison in Germany a handful of times. He's was doing it before his "career" took off, hacking into banks from as early as 1995.

    Go look into Kimvestor, a shoddy investment firm, and Data Protect. He made his "fortune" selling the latter off at the peak of the dot com bubble. Later he straight up pump-and-dump'd Letsbuyit.com, netting over â1.5m in profit.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  15. Given his record... by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...I wouldn't count on him actually planning to pay a cent.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  16. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by butalearner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is illegal to expose illegalities performed by US officials, so Kim Dotcom performing a corrupt action in hopes that someone involved in the process is corrupt enough to expose the corruption.

    He's going about bribery all wrong though; it's not illegal if you call it "campaign donations."

  17. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by DrLang21 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wait what? It's corrupt to expose illegal activities commited by US officials and being hidden by the US government?

    --
    I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
  18. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is your point? That he was guilty then, so whatever charges the government brings against him now are valid, and no matter how much the government violates standard procedures and illegally obtains evidence, it should be ignored?

  19. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by ganjadude · · Score: 2

    well im sure they think as much, i mean look at how they are railroading snowden for doing so

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  20. Cartels by CodeBuster · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's really only true in the United States and somewhat less so in Europe. In most of the rest of the world they don't really give a damn about copyright, at least in practice. Oh sure, foreign governments will sign the copyright conventions or promise to enforce local laws, but in practice they turn a blind eye.

    First, film and music piracy is largely considered to be an American problem and it's hard to get people to care much about rich foreigners being less rich (and all Americans are rich by their standards). Second, in Mexico, Brazil and other South or Latin American countries, media piracy is looked upon with about the same seriousness as jaywalking if it's looked upon as a crime at all, which it's often not. The police down there largely couldn't care less and they look the other way in return for modest bribes. Third, in societies such as Mexico and Brazil, which are very unequal in terms of wealth and income, pirated or knock off goods are the only way that most people have any access to consumer items. Without pirated media and knock off goods, they largely wouldn't be able to afford any foreign things like DVDs, name brand fashions, music, video games and the like.

    Lastly, the copyright business in Mexico especially is frequently under the control of the cartels (the drug cartels not the American media cartels). The two biggest are Los Zetas (who based their logo on the title card of The Godfather) and La Familia Michoacana. The pirated DVD business doesn't bring in as much scratch as drugs, but it does provide walking around money to pay cartel foot soldiers and helps the cartels maintain presence and better control territories in Mexico. Of course, it goes without saying that they're not very concerned about copyright laws being that they torture and kill as a matter of doing business. The Mexican government itself already doesn't have a large enough budget for their own internal needs, never mind enforcing foreign copyrights. So you see, copyright is essentially de-facto meaningless outside the United States and Europe.

  21. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by Rei · · Score: 2

    All these people complaiing about how "horribly corrupt" the US government are are just playing a huge round of "First World Problems". The US is #19 on the Transparency International list. That's not superb, but it's out of 177 countries... I mean, for crying out loud, Yanukovych in Ukraine had a personal zoo at his house - tens of billions of dolllars stolen from a country whose per-capita income is less than that of Mongolia's. And that sort of stuff is hardly unusual in the world. Have any of you complaining about evil "US corruption" ever lived in a country with *real* corruption, at all levels?

    #FirstWorldProblems

    --
    Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
  22. Re:How about Kindergarten? by mellon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you can make an exact duplicate of my car and drive it away, leaving my car behind, the only thing I'm going to ask is that you burn your duplicate copy of the registration and insurance info, and get your own plates, at your earliest convenience. Why should I care that you have an exact copy of my car? Your analogy, the carjacking, is nothing like copying. First of all, there's the threat of violence. Then there's the time between when you take it and when you return it that I don't have it.

    So if you want to fallaciously argue by analogy, at least use a better analogy.

  23. Re:How about Kindergarten? by mellon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh, and please don't copy the car while I'm in it. That could get confusing, and my duplicate self will probably be just as attached to the duplicate car as I am to the original.

  24. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For anyone who doesn't know... Kim Dotcom [is a massive asshat]

    Sure, he is. What's truly incredible is that a piece of lowlife scum such as that can come out looking like the good guy. He's small-time scum, but he's being pursued heavily buy much worse, scummier big-time scum.

    He might be bad, but the people pursuing him are much worse. The fact that they're doing it using your taxes and claims of legality makes it vastly worse still.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  25. slashvertisement by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Internet mega-entrepreneur, uber-gamer and now NZ political corruption-buster Kim DotCom

    Which PR agency do you work for that Kimble has contracted to polish up his image?

    When will the /. crowd understand that the guy is mostly a career criminal and he's the exact kind of person who will feed you to the sharks if he's your boss? His goal in life is winning and living large, and he doesn't give a fuck about politics, inventions, freedom, Internet or any of the other tools he uses to accomplish his goals.

    Suckers, all of you.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  26. Re:How about a Kickstarter... by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    Someone being raped is a consequence. It doesn't necessarily have a large consequence for the rapist, but there are consequences.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  27. It's amazing how corrupt Hollywood is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > It's amazing how corrupt Hollywood is, they went back to 1787 to bribe the founding fathers to include copyright in the constitution [...]

    How long was copyright protection then? How long is it today? Was infringement a criminal offence then? Today?

    Ah, and BTW: it is actually amazing how much corruption Hollywood can get away with. And deepressing.

  28. Re:How about a Kickstarter... by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    I think you misunderstand. Rape, murder, and theft all cause a harm which can be clearly defined. Causing harm is a consequence of an action. I'm saying that they inherently have consequences to society, unlike copyright infringement, which doesn't cause harm in the traditional sense, since there's no rival good involved (one's body would be a rival good in this context).

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  29. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

    OF all the countries in the world, the US should be #1, because of things like the DoI, and Constitution. Our history and the stories we tell, are all about "Give me Liberty or Give Me Death" type liberty, and yet, here we are talking about how corrupt our government is and how it acts illegally, from Snowden to Dotcom..

    The problem is that we have too much power accumulated in too few hands, because we don't like the decentralized form of government because it doesn't offer the support for Government Criminality that we desire.

    Remember, we keep voting for the same set of people expecting different results. IF you vote (D) or (R), you ARE the problem you hate.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  30. re: Dotcom's history by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, I'm aware of most of that. Still, I'm not sure how relevant some of that is?

    Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak used to defraud telephone companies with custom made electronic boxes that let people cheat the established system, making long distance calls for free. That was before their careers took off, building and selling computers. Please elaborate on how that activity done as teenagers for kicks invalidates Apple as a legitimate business today?

  31. Re:How about a Kickstarter... by Tom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is bullshit fear mongering.

    Statistics about rape vary widely, mostly because "rape" is not clearly defined. People with an agenda to push use "rape" as a term because our mental image is that of someone brutally abusing his (generally) victim, forcing sexual intercourse against physical resistance, with screams and blood and violence.

    But to arrive at that 30% number, you need to include every outlandish definition of "rape", which includes statutory rape (boyfriend who is age-of-consent +1 day having consensual sex with his girlfriend who is age-of-consent -1 day), date-rape (aka you were drunk and regretted your decision when you sobered up) and various other kinds of so-called "rape" that include all the shades of grey you can imagine.

    The whole topic is so emotionally charged and confusiong that it has its own Wikipedia article, and if you follow that, you get some enlightenment:


            Junk statistics from advocacy groups are slung around and become common knowledge, such as the incredible factoid that one in four university students has been raped. (The claim was based on a commodious definition of rape that the alleged victims themselves never accepted; it included, for example, any incident in which a woman consented to sex after having had too much to drink and regretted it afterward.)

    The National Crime Victimization Survey, which uses a narrower definitions, found that only 0.5% of women and 0.06% of men, age 12 or older, were victims of rape or sexual assault in 1995. (The NCVS groups together rape and sexual assault.) By 2010, these numbers had decreased to 0.2% of women and 0.01% of men.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  32. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by dotancohen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kim Dotcom steals from the rich? Kim Dotcom facilitates acquisition of 'protected' material to the poor? Sounds like my kind of scum.

    The fact that he's taking on government corruption is a nice bonus.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  33. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by subanark · · Score: 2

    The proof is all about connecting things. It is like trying to prove that humans can walk on two legs using the general theory of relativity. You have models that work on the small scale, and those that work on a bigger scale. Proving even the simplest things that are normally done on the large scale is a quite difficult exercise, but it helps to add validity to the small scale model.

    Attitudes like, "it's obvious" is what led to beliefs that the world is flat. And I'm pretty sure I can find some government of a primitive tribe that rules over less than 50 people that isn't "corrupt".

  34. Re:You can't enjoy five million dollars from a cel by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    Irrelevant. His rights are immutable.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  35. Re:US Government is Corrupt by Inspection by schnell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is illegal to expose illegalities performed by US officials

    No. No it is not. You may wish to read up on something called Watergate, for example, and recall that no reporters were ever charged with a crime for exposing it. Or the Iran-Contra Affair. In fact, the exposure of illegal and unethical government activities by journalists, police and whistleblowers goes on at a brisk pace every day. It is not illegal.

    What is illegal is sharing classified materials without authorization from the government to do so. cf The Pentagon Papers. Those by the way weren't even exposing illegal acts, they were exposing incompetence and poor decision-making. But Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted because he didn't have the legal right to share them with newspapers and by extension the public.

    I'm not espousing a stance on Snowden either way. I'm just saying it's important to distinguish which activities are illegal and which are not. It is fair to say that it is illegal to expose any kind of classified information - relating to anything, legal or not - without explicit authorization from the government. But exposing corruption and illegal activities by the US government is definitely not illegal in and of itself.

    --
    "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin