Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom Wins Battle in Ongoing Fight Against US Extradition (reuters.com) 98
Eccentric Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has won a major court battle today in his ongoing fight against his extradition from New Zealand to the U.S. From a report: German-born Dotcom faces extradition to the United States relating to his Megaupload site, which was shut down in 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. 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. Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, is fighting those charges and the extradition. The Human Rights Review Tribunal awarded Dotcom damages of NZ$30,000 ($21,816) for the "loss of a benefit" and NZ$60,000 for "loss of dignity and injury to feelings."
Re: (Score:1)
I remind the pussy Trumptards, AMERICA voted HILLARY
Dirt voted Trump.
Loss of dignity and injury to feelings? (Score:1)
Re: Justice (Score:2)
Ah, that grand old time when the US armed and supplied the Soviet Union.
FTFY
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Was a good deal. Saved us the 23 million lives the Russians lost saving the world
Re: Justice (Score:2)
Yep. Even better deal for the rooskies, though.
Saved us the 23 million lives the Russians lost
Well, at least like 1/100th of that, anyway. Commies don't fight so good. Waves of untrained farmers don't do so well against crack troops with machienguns and tanks.
saving their own asses
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really think it would have been nearly as easy to beat German without Soviet assistance? If most of the German Army and Air Force had been in the West? Sending weapons and stuff to the Soviet Union enabled us in the West to beat Germany relatively economically.
The Soviets built most of their own weapons anyway, and weren't going to be defeated by the Germans. (The most dangerous time for the Soviet Union was before significant help had reached the Red Army.) After that, the person who controll
Re: Justice (Score:2)
Do you really think it would have been nearly as easy to beat German without Soviet assistance?
Yes.
If most of the German Army and Air Force had been in the West?
That's a different question. They weren't in the west. Regardless of what the Russians did, Hitler - despite having a treaty with the Russians - made the idiotic mistake of splitting up his forces. As soon as he did that the Allied victory was assured. Supplying the Russians so that they could fight made sense, but even without their assistance Berlin was still doomed.
Re: (Score:1)
Looks like the "Commies" did a HELL of a job [humboldt.edu] with castoff weapons and better logistics.
Might do you some good to learn some history for once
Re: Justice (Score:2)
Well, sure thing, Ivan; when you're willing to throw away the lives of 20 million of your people in order to defeat 5 million Germans, it's no surprise that you make it to Berlin first. That doesn't make you a great general, or make your people great fighters; as your comrade Stalin once said, quantity has a quality all it's own.
Re: (Score:1)
That the MEN were willing to die in order to kill Nazis tells you much about how much more moral they were compared to those who call Nazis the equal of antifa,Though it is the fascists who murdered 17 people for political reasons JUST THIS YEAR.
Antifa have killed none.
Re: Justice (Score:2)
Ah, I see the problem here. You're a card carrying ANTIFA member which means you meet all of the requirements for membership ... the first of which a room temperature IQ.
Carry on, then.
Re: (Score:1)
Cranio-rectal intesseption getting in the way of learning is it?
So sorry for you.
Re: Justice (Score:2)
No, sweetheart, I just don't like the idea with replacing one type of mindless fanatic with another. The only difference between you and a fascist is the people and ideas which you target; your tactics and your end-goals of suppression of thought and ideological purity are otherwise identical.
Re: (Score:1)
I remind you, 100% of fascists believe in Military power first, morality second
That's your mirror calling child
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, but it happened to so many people before, so many had to suffer, why not that sleazeball?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This does not in any way mean he's won his extradition fight. If you look at the next line in TFA, it says "The Human Rights Review Tribunal’s decision might be relevant for his high-profile U.S. extradition case, which is with the Court of Appeal." So, no more than "might be relevant".
Re: (Score:2)
Home?
He can go the fuck back to Germany.
Re: (Score:2)
He is a permanent resident and has citizenship in New Zealand. He is entitled to stay here as much as any other Kiwi.
Re: (Score:2)
He's a permanent resident, not a citizen.
He also lied on his residency application about past criminal convictions.
Re: (Score:2)
He just got married though, doesn't that make him a citizen?
No. You don't get citizenship by marrying (at least in NZ).
Re: (Score:3)
I stand corrected, he is a permanent resident not a citizen.
However in his campaign to not be sent to Uncle Sam he has achieved the following:
- Had the NZ Police pay him unspecified damages for unreasonable use of force in the initial raid
- That the FBI has no right to the information handed to him by the NZ Govt
- The GCSB (local unaccountable spy agency) gave an apology for spying on him which they cannot as a NZ resident.
- Yesterday had the A-G found to be breaching his privacy.
He certainly has kept the
Re: (Score:2)
He also got Hone Harawera out of politics, which I suppose was a good thing.
How he did it, by trying to buy his way in to Parliament was not a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Dotcom never stood for Parliament, as a permanent resident he cannot, he can vote though.
Re: (Score:2)
He bank rolled the internet party and the mana party
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely, he did put his money where his mouth is, however he was never going to be an MP.
Internet/ Mana got about half as many votes as the pro-cat murderer in the last election, inconsequential figures for both parties.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how many party votes you get, if you win an electorate. That can happen with as little as 10,000 votes.
If you win your electorate, less than 1% party vote can get you an extra seat to bring in a list MP, giving you 2/121 votes. The Maori part got fewer party votes in 2014 than Internet MANA, but scored 2 seats because they won an electorate. Kim's deal with Hone meant one of his list MP's - Laila Harre - would be first in line.
Laila Harre was bought and paid for my Kim Dotcom. She refused
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and so the system works as intended. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, he was arrested in 2012. Now it's 2018 and he's still fighting against his extradition to a country that has declared him a fugitive even though has never set a foot on its soil, based on shaky evidence and illegal surveillance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:and so the system works as intended. (Score:5, Interesting)
But what TFA fails to mention is that the Attorney General appears to have withheld information that could have helped Dotcom, putting him in contempt and potentially blowing up the whole extradition case.
Of course Dotcom is still screwed, because even if he avoids extradition it will be difficult for him to travel outside New Zealand, and the US won't unfreeze any of his assets, and his business has still be destroyed with no compensation. At least he might avoid a US jail though.
Re:and so the system works as intended. (Score:4, Informative)
Then again, New Zealanders probably weren't too happy with their tax funds being used for this inanity.
I am a New Zealand taxpayer and I would much rather my tax money was spent on this sort of thing than tooling up a bunch of police (who should have known better) to kick someone's door in at dawn when two detectives could have knocked politely at a decent hour.
Now that the raid has been ruled illegal it will be hard to argue anything gained in the raid is admissible I would think.
As mentioned, Kim dotcom might be in danger if he travels overseas however, as the US has a track record of kidnapping people and torturing them.
Re:and so the system works as intended. (Score:5, Informative)
>His business model was founded on undermining the concept of intellectual property.
His business model was selling cloud storage.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes.
Re: (Score:3)
The business model of ISPs is undermining the concept of intellectual property, then. Without the internet you can't download pirated music and software.
Re: (Score:2)
No, with him it's more the "if you hold me prisoner, you have to feed me, maybe you want to reconsider after looking at me" defense.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Is he using the Asperger's defense (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, I have seen loose interpretations of the term "hacker" but I expected better on \.. What exactly is he supposed to have hacked?
This is a guy who saw an opportunity and made money, just another crooked entrepeneur. Really no different than Facebook or Google, except he took data from large corporations, while the latter take data from normal civilians.
Re: (Score:2)
Still (Score:2, Redundant)
I still think he should be sued for having such a lame last name.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am glad he used the .com tld and not the .co.nz they have in NZ for companies.
Imagine Kim DotCoDotNiZ
FBI Vast Overreach Stymied (Score:2, Insightful)
MegaUploadCost (Score:1)
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.
wow, that's almost 6 gorillion shekels.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
wow, that's almost 6 gorillion shekels.
It does seem a little low. Aren't the damages in these sorts of cases ranked in the hundreds of billions? Did a legal team sit down and decide "Five hundred billion seems too much, given the films he was supposed to be hosting."
Scorecard for March 26th (Score:3, Insightful)
US World Police: 0
Good Guys: 2
(kim.dotcom and Lauri Love won't be thrown into the dungeon of the US injustice system)
I don't condone many of the activities of either, but I don't wish the US "justice" system on anyone either nor condone judicial kidnapping by the US government.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And Miranda was a rapist. It usually requires someone to commit a crime, or an innocent person unjustly treated before laws get "corrected'.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with defending civil rights is you spend most of your time defending scoundrels and criminals.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
6 million million dollars?
20 million million dollars?
Isn't million just shortened to a single M?
Re: (Score:2)
In financial circles, 'M' is for 'mille' (French) or 'milia' (latin). Like per-cent, think of the latin language roots.
Re: (Score:2)
I've worked in the finance industry for over 20 years and nobody uses MM for millions.
Still not off the hook (Score:1)
In case it wasn't clear due to the misleading summary, Kim Dotcom is still in court trying to escape the extradition request. The only thing that happened was Kim won one part of his case claiming that some data about him had not been provided by the Attorney General.
And the files? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can i get my fucking files back now?
And in other news (Score:1)
Outsmarting Government (Score:2)
This is what happens when you try to outsmart the corporate media complex:
Kim Dotcom: I thought of a clever way to make money from copyright violations without violating copyright law myself. Aren't I smart.
Media Companies: You are guilty whether you broke the law or not because we bought government.
Kim: Oooops.
Good for him (Score:2)
The case against him is the worst case of a witchhunt since well the actual witchhunts.
Mega Upload was a filt storage locker (bitlocker). It did not encourage piracy but didn't mind taking money from the pirates of course. Using it was free but you could buy more storage space or better bandwidth.
If they did something wrong, so did every other part in the process, from network providers, hosting partners and server manufacturers to each and every users own ISPs. They are no more a part in any offenses than