US Judge Say Kim Dotcom May Never Be Tried or Extradited 345
vik writes "As Megaupload's Kim Dotcom's megafarce trial continues, the New Zealand Herald reports that his alleged offense not only falls below the threshold for extradition, but also that the warrant may not be properly served. 'My understanding as to why they haven't done that is because they can't. We don't believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,' says Megaupload's lawyer Ira Rothken. Not surprisingly, Kim Dotcom has a few choice words to say about having his business trashed this way, with 220 jobs lost, and millions left without access to their legitimate data."
Re:Trial and extradition were never the goal (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, because it's ALL his fault, right? The previous guy didn't do ANYTHING wrong and was a perfect saint, a champion of personal freedoms and rights. Voting the other guy isn't going to help, as they end up serving the same masters. You want change, you need to neutralize the power of those masters, and find a way to convince people to vote for someone who won't simply bow to them.
Good luck with that.
Re:Trial and extradition were never the goal (Score:5, Informative)
The previous guy didn't do ANYTHING wrong and was a perfect saint
Actually, he didn't mention anything about the previous guy...
Re:Be thankful, Kim. (Score:2, Informative)
Two companies popped into my head:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
These companies serve as an example how US government can overthrow newly elected governments because some US corporation requests it.
Re:Seems Poetic (Score:5, Informative)
The argument will always be that he merely offered a service that was in huge demand. What the users did with it cannot be blamed on the operator. At least, not when you stick to basic common sense and not U.S. protectionist copyright laws.
Re:Millions of legitimate users? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Millions of users who used megaupload for backups, or for distributing their own material and nothing else, _and_ who have no other copy of the data? Might the submitter be just slightly exaggerating?
Unlikely. Apparently, there were 15'000 premium accounts from the US army alone. Millions of legitimate users sounds quite reasonable. Also take into account that there is only so many movies and software that can be shared and music does not take a lot of space. Compare that with the size of the Megaupload storage and it sounds quite possible that the majority of data was actually legitimate. Of course, a major part of the Megaupload profits were from copyright infringement, but that is not the fault of the legitimate users.
Re:Trial and extradition were never the goal (Score:5, Informative)
I posted this here the other day but it seems very appropriate to post again. Bookmark this link List of SOPA/PIPA Supporters [wikipedia.org].
Re:Trial and extradition were never the goal (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, they were the muscle. They should have known better.
Re:Don't feel sorry for him or his business (Score:5, Informative)
I don't feel sorry for him or his business. He was knowingly running a warez hub. On top of that, he was running it as a for-profit warez distribution website. What his external marketing showed is meaningless compared to what actually occurred behind the scenes.
I don't feel sorry for anyone who uploaded their only copy of their files to Megaupload, either. It's no one's issue but the uploader's if he was dumb enough to not have multiple physical backups of files that he definitely couldn't lose. Anyone dumb enough to also pay money to share their files on a site that is filled with ads also gets what's coming to him. There are at least 10 sites out there that provide you with a clean, easy to use and efficient service - even for free - for sharing files without any ads.
This whole situation is just children, Brazilians and the mentally challenged just whining about not being able to get their warez, or losing a couple of dollars to a company that shut down and didn't give them a refund. I didn't see any cries from the people who lost hundreds or even thousands of dollars when Etology scammed every advertiser and publisher, last summer.
This whole post is a huge straw man: the story here isn't about feelings of sorrow or otherwise. We hav a very clear (il)legal situation. Changing the topic in this fashion to raise tempers and mislead the attention of the readers - this is called trolling.