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Kim Dotcom Sues New Zealand For $6.8 Billion In Damages Over Erroneous Arrest (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Kim Dotcom, the founder of file-sharing site Megaupload, is suing the New Zealand government for billions of dollars in damages over his arrest in 2012. The internet entrepreneur is fighting extradition to the U.S. to stand trial for copyright infringement and fraud. Mr Dotcom says an invalid arrest warrant negated all charges against him. He is seeking damages for destruction to his business and loss of reputation. Accountants calculate that the Megaupload group of companies would be worth $10 billion today, had it not been shut down during the raid. As he was a 68% shareholder in the business, Mr Dotcom has asked for damages going up to $6.8 billion. He is also considering taking similar action against the Hong Kong government. As stated in documents filed with the High Court, Mr Dotcom is also seeking damages for: all lost business opportunities since 2012, his legal costs, loss of investments he made to the mansion he was renting, his lost opportunity to purchase the mansion, and loss of reputation.
Yeah the Police didn't have a valid warrant, spied on him illegally and chucked his MittleEurope ass in pokey.
That's all fine 'cos they were doing the bidding of The Mouse and our Govt was only too keen to dry hump the US Govt's leg.
Got one of our previous Prime Minister's a number of golf games with ex-Pres. Obama though.
However I think his chance of getting through or not being deported are slim. Although he has seen off 2 PMs thus far maybe he will see off a third?
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
I can't but wish him the best and hope he succeed. Not because of whom he is but to make sure government knows if it oversteps it's boundaries and relinquishes sovereignty to USA it would come with a high price. Hope they also jail every national traitor involved.
They should cough up. They destroyed him at the US government's whims. Now it's time to pay the piper.
They could award him 6.8 billion in Zimbabwe Dollars, pay him with a Trillion ZWD note, and tell him to keep the change. I'm sure Mr Dotcom would appreciate the irony.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Okay, so you don't like him. Neither do I, for that matter.
But is that a reason to violate his rights like that? How'd you like it to have everything taken away from you just because some jerkface government took a disliking to you?
And that really is the problem. "We don't like you" is not supposed to be a valid reason for the law. No matter how loathsome the defendant.
Isn't there an equivalent of sovereign immunity in New Zealand? If I understand correctly, the sovereign immunity doctrine at least in the US would bar such a suit against the government. Sovereign immunity is the concept that a sovereign cannot be sued for damages except in cases where it has waived the immunity (for example, by having a law stating that it is responsible for damages in certain types of cases, usually with an upper limit).
I presume no sane government would make a law that subjects the country to that large liabilities. Many countries have laws that provide for some kind of restitution from the state in the case of wrongful imprisonment, but it's hard to imagine an unlimited liability.
If the officers of the state did wrong, it may be possible to sue them for damages (also in the US), but good luck collecting billions of dollars from them...
go kim !
I think he should be able to sue the National party and all members who were involved at the time.
It was their decision to allow what happened.
The rest of the government and the taxpayers of New Zealand should have no liability.
Apart from that, I still don't understand why they haven't just pushed him onto a plane and sent him off to meet with the FBI or whoever.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
I agree with this action. As a New Zealand I am ashamed of the way he was treated, more so over how the NZ Government bowed to pressure from the USA. 6.8 billion, sure - he's gone a a silly number knowing that if it settles he might get less than 10%. I actually hope he wins.
Hard core IRS here. The U.S. is sure run by the IRS that can only pay out in damages. That dude may have to disappear. Maybe move out.
Megaupload was a service (deliberately) overflowing with cracked copies of commercial software ranging in price from a few hundred Dollars to a few tens of thousands of Dollars - high end CAD software for example. THAT is largely what attracted millions of people to Megaupload - it was an online place where Kim Dotcom gave away thousands of software companies' products for free and people and also businesses in 196 countries could just "click and download for free". If you were to add together the monetary value of the software downloaded from Megaupload over the years and the financial damage caused, you might end up with far more than the "10 Billion Dollars" Kim claims Megaupload would have been worth today. Kim tried to make himself a billionaire businessmen by nonchalantly giving away other people's property without their permission. That does not excuse the nature of the police action against him, but I suspect that a strong message was intended to be sent to hundreds of other would-be-Kim-Dotcoms who wanted to hole themselves up in poorly governed countries with lax laws and build their very own "Megaupload". Kim Dotcom probably banked on the fact that if sued for piracy, he could claim "I just provide the servers - I'm not responsible for what people upload to them or download from them", and depending on the laws in New Zealand that might actually have worked for him. Kim was in New Zealand because there was no way his native Germany would have allowed the creation of something like Megaupload in the first place - German police would have shut the site down in weeks.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Kim Dotcom is a wanker of the highest order, however having read the Statement of Claim I'd have to take his side.
Facts are facts. The guy already got a 6-figure settlement from the police for their SWAT-style raid when nobody in the house had a history of violence. The use of those tactics on a woman who was 7 months pregnant with twins has horrific optics. It's readily apparent that everyone involved acquiesced to the desires of the MPAA, legal procedures be damned.
If the US Government can go after him for piracy perpetrated by end users, could they also go after the likes of Larry Page for the same reason? (Not that they ever would, because duh)
What would a 3.5% hit to the GDP of New Zealand do to them?
I really, really hope he does win. The New Zealand Police rolled over like a pack of craven lickspittles when the US government called despite the case being terrible (as subsequent court rulings have shown).
The other thing that smells bad about the whole thing is the way they went in guns drawn as if he was some kind of threat. The police here do not routinely carry firearms, and that's the way we like it. If a couple of detectives had walked up to his front door and knocked, they would have achieved the same end.
I have often wondered why the video of the armed arrest was shown on the TV news the very night of the raid. Is it appropriate for the police to conduct trial by media?
If he has anything close to a legitimate case, won't this guarantee his extradition to the U.S.?
And one of them could probably rip you in half if you had the balls to say so to his face.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Another Kiwi here in general agreement with you.
On one hand Dotcom's last business plan was literally to steal revenue from websites like mine - the websites that feed my children. For that I wish a slow painful punishment on him.
On the other hand I love my country and seeing our government and police roll over and behave like American thug cops was very disturbing.
I honestly can't decide which is worse - Dotcom winning or the American bullies winning. It's a no-win situation from my perspective.
Which buildings/vaults did Kim break in to? Do you have security footage? How many literal dollars, Kiwi or otherwise, did he make off with? Did one of those cool exploding dye packs color him neon pink?
FOR THE ONE THOUSANDTH TIME: Copyright infringement =/= Theft.
Guns drawn and video leaked to TV news? Sounds like an FBI operation. Did they crash through his door at dawn too?
In all seriousness:
Break in and shoot the dogs, yeah real American style heros
It was the USA government which seized Megaupload's assets and shut the company down overnight. This was clearly wrong, because it was done on the basis of legal proceedings similar to issuing a search warrant. Megaupload was utterly destroyed without having any opportunity to put its side of the argument to a court. (I'm not saying Megaupload could have successfully have defended itself, but justice demands it should have had the opportunity.)
I can well believe that Dotcom has some case to make against NZ, but for the vast majority of that $6.8B claim I can't see how it can be laid at the door of the NZ government.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
He's a big shithead, but government is an even bigger septic tank full of little shitheads.
I don't think many people got the rhyming slang.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
toss flashbangs into the children's room.
It happened in the days the wider world foolishly had some respect for Mericanos.
Megacar
Something happened that he needs publicity again, or just his narcissistic ego playing up?
It's a bullshit lawsuit, of course, and will be laughed out of court, but look there, headline! Omg, can you possibly be more transparent in your actions?
Why is /. promoting career criminals narcissism? He bought ads on here recently or what?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Finally someone gets it.
Just because a career criminal is in conflict with the US government he doesn't suddenly become a saint. When two bullies fight, the proper thing to do is not to root for one of them to win, but to hope they beat each other up badly. There can be two wrong sides to an argument.
You don't need to decide which is worse - they are both terrible assholes.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Could you elaborate on what crimes he supposedly committed?
I read precisely in his interview here that he had no more contact with the last version of Mega. I found this kind of curious, did some quick research, saw that the company was offering a quite good free package and opened an account which I have been using since then as secondary backup for a project which regularly generates an important amount of information. My experience so far has been quite good: simple Linux-/Windows-supported application, quickly and easily performing any sync (well... it has problems to properly recognise different disks on Linux, but the workaround is quite straightforward), no spam or any other kind of nagging, no privacy problems I am aware of, on-time alerts when getting out of free space (what happens every few weeks; as said, lots of info is being generated), etc.
What I have found kind of curious when doing some research about this company is that there isn't much information about it; basically, being included in some cloud rankings/reviews and new and Kim Dotcom. Is anyone else using mega.nz services or has any opinion/information to share? Also does anyone know how that Kim-Dotcom-out-of-the-company happened? How did this new version start anyway? Was he just giving the name and a visible face to an otherwise-unrelated-to-him company or had an active involvement in its creation?
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
If you ever saw him and know about his past (as a rat), this makes perfect sense.
----
* 'Kimme' - GERMan slang: "crack that divides your two cheeks"
Considering his only reputation was that he's a fraud, an inside trader and generally an asshole that would throw his partners under a bus for shits and giggles (and getting a get-out-of-jail card for it) numerous times, he should rather be PAYING anyone that manages to make him shed his reputation!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Considering that the New Zealand authorities are the ONLY thing that keeps you from getting thrown to the wolves the US are...
A mouse was fleeing from the cat and came to a cow. The mouse begged "hide me!", which prompted the cow to drop a huge, smelly big cow pat onto the mouse, covering it fully. The cat came along and didn't see the mouse, the mouse on the other hand squeaked and squeaked, happy to be safe from the cat.
The cat heard the squeaking and picked up the mouse on its tail, cleaned the mouse of the manure and ate it.
Moral of the story: Not everyone that shits on you is your enemy. Not everyone that pulls you out of the shit is your friend. And when you're up past your neck in manure, shut the fuck up!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Facilitating copyright infringement. Specifically, providing means to perform copyright infringement in a way that makes finding the infringers exceptionally difficult.
Boils down to accessory to a crime.
He took sufficient precautions to create a solid plausible deniability defense - solid enough that the case against him simply cannot be won. Everyone knows he's guilty, but he made damn sure there would be no solid proof of that - there's only a glaringly specific set of circumstances surrounding the inexplicable absence or invalidity of proofs. It's just like everyone *knows* Al Capone was a gangster, but to this day there are no legally valid proofs of that, despite nobody disputing that fact.
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So, is copyright infringement victimless? That seems to be what you're implying...
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Dotcom winning is better. Because than you can solve the problems that he caused. If the bully wins, you will be the bitch forever and for other things as well. Do you want to be a master over your own destiny or a slave to somebody elses?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Extending copyright to ridiculous lengths and all the corporate repression that it results into is certainly not victimless.
Sounds like a civil case then, not a criminal one. OK, I know the US legislators have bowed down to their mickey mouse masters and made such things criminal, but they had been civil matters before.
I honestly can't decide which is worse - Dotcom winning or the American bullies winning. It's a no-win situation from my perspective.
This isn't even in the same book. Kim should definitely win. The rule of law was abused and that should be corrected above all, even if a sleazebag like Kim walks away with lots of money. He'll lose it elsewhere soon enough or actually do something illegal, and then you can use rule of law as justified.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I honestly can't decide which is worse - Dotcom winning or the American bullies winning. It's a no-win situation from my perspective.
How about: the Rule of Law winning? Documented norms that apply to everyone from the bum on the street corner to Bill Gates are a win for everyone.[1]
In this particular case, it means that New Zealand should have followed its own laws, procedures and the treaties to which it is signatory without regard to political pressure brought by the United States. If those laws indicated that Dotcom should be arrested and extradited, well and good. If, as appears to be the case, New Zealand authorities violated their own laws, then Dotcom deserves compensation. I seriously doubt that he deserves 6.8B NZD. In an ideal outcome he ends up exactly where he would have without the illegal police action, which isn't "winning" it's "not losing".
[1] Yeah, everyone knows that the bum on the street corner and Bill Gates do not get treated the same way, but that just means it's an aspirational goal toward which we should work, not something we should cynically laugh off. The further we are from it, the more seriously we need to take it and the more strongly we need to react when our appointed representatives fail to execute it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes, of course, Big Al was just an innocent used furniture salesman, and he missed the date on his taxes.
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I think Kim Dotcom did have a point when he pointed out that youtube allows people to access tons of copyrighted material (you can listen to practically any song that you want). So why aren't google execs being arrested?
Think about it....those billions of dollars have to come from somewhere if the government has to pay up....and where does the government get their money from?
Punish the majority for the actions of the few. For someone who wants to stay in New Zealand, effectively suing the citizens of the country you want to stay in for billions of dollars seems a bit counterproductive.
Facilitating copyright infringement. Specifically, providing means to perform copyright infringement in a way that makes finding the infringers exceptionally difficult.
Citation needed.
What trial convicted him of that crime? Oh... it's just your uninformed opinion then? Nothing to see then... moving along...
Citation.
This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime.
The post you are replying to is talking about the crimes he was alleged to have done. Nobody is saying that he did them, but what he is charged with.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Well, GWH is a war criminal by any unbiased standard , so what exactly is the argument? That he wasn't brought to court? Well, that's due to a technicality called immunity, not because the case is weak.
Kimble, on the other hand, provably is a criminal, and has been convicted before.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We live in a society where we have decided upon something called the monopoly on violence.
I don't agree with everything they do with that monopoly, but the fact is that our basic fundamental laws specifically establish the government as the only legitimate entity allowed to use violence to achieve its goals.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org