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Kim Dotcom Can Be Extradited To US On Copyright Charges, New Zealand Court Rules (yahoo.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Yahoo News: Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom suffered a major setback in his epic legal battle against online piracy charges Thursday when New Zealand's Court of Appeal ruled he was eligible for extradition to the United States. The German national, who is accused of netting millions from his file sharing Megaupload empire faces charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in the U.S., carrying jail terms of up to 20 years. Dotcom had asked the court to overturn two previous rulings that the Internet mogul and his three co-accused be sent to America to face charges. Instead, a panel of three judges backed the FBI-led case, which began with a raid on Dotcom's Auckland mansion in January 2012 and has dragged on for more than six years. His lawyer tweeted he would appeal to the NZ Supreme Court.
Only sometimes, and this is one of those times.
The whole thing is a shakedown, pure and simple - the FBI-led raid had KDC's wife and children held at gunpoint because KDC "was a firearms enthusiast". Despicable that our US-Ass-Kissing Government we let ourselves get conned into this bullshit.
How can KDC and his associates are charged with "criminal copyright"... what even is that? Did anyone ever die from a movie being downloaded?
I sincerely hope our Supreme Court has the good sense to deny the extradition, then my shame might decrease.
DID MegaUpload host data in the US though?
I've seen some info about servers being transported to the US for the prosecution, which means those, at least, weren't in the US to begin with. But I didn't immediately find any info if some were already operating here.
.. because someone uploaded an mp3/movie to their friends on facebook.
In New Zealand, copyright infringement is not illegal, its a trespass on someone's rights. So even if you believe the owner of Dropbox should be responsible for content uploaded by its users its still not a crime so no extradition should occur.
The real eye opener here was the New Zealand governments zeal to break its own laws, to facilitate the extradition. In other words the New Zealand government committed crimes in order to obtain evidence to charge him with in the first place.
The case against him is honestly a bit trumped up, they are basically trying to prosecute him for offering a legitimate service a-la Google Drive, DropBox, icloud, etc and the government is going to be faced with trying to prove his service only offered infringing services (because valid uses for the service mean it's legal, just like the government can't ban ownership of crowbars). Providing he's already funded some good lawyers with prepaid retainers before he's extradited he's got pretty good odds of beating the Government in court. Hopefully he's used the delay in this extradition well.
The government case against him was always built on a quick extradition, seizure of his assets so he couldn't' retain good counsel and a quick plea deal. By delaying the extradition he put himself in position to beat this charge if he was smart and put those retainers in place ASAP. If he's got retainers in place when he's extradited I wouldn't be surprised to see the government drop the case because they know they can't beat him for offering services that hundreds of other companies offer.
This was a prosecution put forward by entertainment companies as a threat to others using federal prosecutors with connections to hollywood and the music industry, they destroyed a valid business with it and my hope is the delay in extradition allows him to stomp the prosecution then go after the return of assets the government seized, particularly the $100's of millions in dollars they siezed. Don't get me wrong, Dot-com is a dickhead grifter, but what he did didn't deserve what he got. This was a total railroading butffuck that they hoped would scare him into a plea deal by getting NZ to disregard it's own laws.
Shh, don't remind the rest of the world too much because it will pretty much gaurantee a global shrinking of copyright laws. The US has sanctioned so much it has become the norm and everyone is simply adapting to trading around them. Keep this up and it will not be all that long before the US is the one sanctioned, closer than you think. Want to be a pack of muderous cunts don't be surprised when the rest of the world start treating you like a pack of murderous cunts.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen