Kim Dotcom Can Be Extradited, Rules A New Zealand Court (reuters.com)

Kim Dotcom -- and Megaupload's programmers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, as well as its advertising manager Finn Batato -- could soon be in a U.S. courtroom. A New Zealand judge just ruled they can all be extradited to the U.S. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: The Auckland High Court upheld the decision by a lower court in 2015 on 13 counts, including allegations of conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and wire fraud, although it described that decision as "flawed" in several areas. Dotcom's lawyer Ron Mansfield said in a statement the decision was "extremely disappointing" and that Dotcom would appeal to New Zealand's Court of Appeal.

U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material. High Court judge Murray Gilbert said that there was no crime for copyright in New Zealand law that would justify extradition but that the Megaupload-founder could be sent to the United States to face allegations of fraud.
"I'm no longer getting extradited for copyright," Dotcom commented on Twitter. "We won on that. I'm now getting extradited for a law that doesn't even apply.

Comments

Re:whose fraud???

[gl4ss]

the system, feds, mpaa and some of the new zealand officials can't just drop the case either now since they are all so deep in it that if the case gets dropped without getting him into a court in usa then they're all in deep doodoo already.

basically, what MPAA, FBI etc. want is for fatty fat pants to get dragged into a US court and make him do a plea bargain - since otherwise they're on the hook for fucking up the investigation in many shady ways from day 0. someone(mpaa?) pushed them into this years ago now and now they're already so deep in damages and questionable conduit that the real question is under what authority did they even do everything they did.

like, they don't even want the normal court proceedings - they just want some kind of a plea bargain to get them off the hook. that way it never goes to actual court.

also - how the fuck do you change the reason for extradition in the middle of extradition hearings anyways?

if they wanted just an actual court they might just as well have done that inside new zealand.

Re:Why this is wrong:

[DMJC]

We control 1/3rd of the World's Uranium supply here in Australia, with some of the largest deposits in the world in the middle of our continent. Why should we have to bend over for anybody? We are legally able to pursue a nuclear weapons program as we conducted nuclear testing in the 1950s and the NPT specifically has an exception for countries that conducted testing before the treaty was signed. Now I am definitely not saying that Australia will go down that path. But personally, if it gets us free of US overreach into our internal affairs then hell yes that's a good thing. America is probably going to get Australia dragged into a war with China over issues which most people within Australia don't/won't want to understand. Why should we bleed and die to protect American corporate profits? We should be standing on our own two feet and a nuclear shield would be an excellent way to make both China and the US take Australia more seriously. We are happy to trade peacefully with the world but we shouldn't be rushing to get involved in American follies. Iraq showed us that US leadership is capable of dangerous incompetence and Trump is hammering that home even more. A protectionist America is dangerous for the Australian economy. We are a middle power, we cannot become a protectionist nation. We must trade with the world, our needs and America's needs have begun to diverge.