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Piracy The Courts The Internet United States

Kim Dotcom In Final Bid To Halt Extradition (bbc.com) 100

Posted by BeauHD from the seven-years-later dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Controversial internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has begun a final appeal to halt his extradition from New Zealand to the U.S. on copyright-related charges. The FBI claims Mr Dotcom's Megaupload site earned millions of dollars by facilitating illegal file-sharing. But his lawyers told New Zealand's Supreme Court on Monday it was never meant to encourage copyright breaches. Mr Dotcom, who denies the charges, could face a lengthy jail term in the U.S. if extradited and found guilty.

Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batatom -- all former Megaupload executives -- stand accused of the same charges, which include conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and wire fraud. The US Department of Justice has been trying to extradite the men since 2012, and in 2015 a New Zealand district court said it would permit the move. The defendants have since lodged unsuccessful appeals at the High Court and Court of Appeal, leading to a final push this week at the Supreme Court. "In 2005 I created a website that allowed people to upload files to the cloud. At the time only small files could be attached to emails. Megaupload allowed users to email a link to a file. That's it," Dotcom wrote on Twitter yesterday. "In 2019 the NZ Supreme Court decides if I should be extradited for this 'crime.'"
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Kim Dotcom In Final Bid To Halt Extradition More

Kim Dotcom In Final Bid To Halt Extradition

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  • FBI doesn't like end-to-end encryption (Score:5, Informative)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:22PM (#58742476)
    The FBI are going after Kim Dotcom because Mega offers end-to-end encryption to all its users: All the data on Mega servers is encrypted, the users have the keys, not Mega, & so users' data can't be searched without getting a specific, i.e. legal, court order. The FBI doesn't like having to go through lawful channels to search through people's stuff.

    • Not the case with the original Megaupload site.
      That's only how mega.co.nz worked, which didn't exist until after megaupload was taken down.
      He used his "living allowances" from the seized assets to pay for it.

    • Re:FBI doesn't like end-to-end encryption (Score:5, Informative)

      by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:31PM (#58742514)

      No, what is alleged here is that Mega was actually paying kickbacks to the biggest infringers, and they continued to pay it even in cases where they knew about infringement. There are a whole bunch of specific actions that they took in order to help, many of which are alleged to show knowledge and intent to contribute to copyright infringement.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by rmdingler ( 1955220 )

        Precisely. Putting aside for a moment the philosophical tenet that copyright law itself is immoral, the argument Mega & Co. are presenting to the Supreme Court resembles that of an accomplice claiming he had no idea what his angry co-defendant would do with the weapon he introduced to the crime scene.

        • Exactly. If I was King of the World, I'd allow that behavior. I'm not. He's not.

          I really value Courts going by the Law instead of their feelings, because they used to do it the other way and it sucked really bad for the little guy.

        • It's really much more like firearms manufacturers acting surprised when military-style weapons are used to shoot humans. It works for them, why not Mega?

          • Mega. Making Emulation Great Again.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by fafalone ( 633739 )
            I hear knife and car manufacturers are aware their products are used in homicides too, while we're condemning companies for unlawful use of their product they're not rationally connected to promoting and not considering that the vast, vast majority of use is lawful.

            • Replying to undo bad mod, stupid slashdot.

            • No need to get all butt-hurt, I'm defending Mega, not attacking firearms. I am a gun owner. If firearms manufacturers make guns designed for killing humans and then sell them to anyone, and don't get held accountable, then there's no reasonable basis for holding Mega (or Kim) accountable for what people do with encryption. And before anyone suggests that there is a fundamental difference because encryption is not a munition, it totally is. We literally have categorized encryption algorithms as munitions.

          • Maybe Kim.com isn't paying top dollar to political-weasel slush funds?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        There is no such thing as intent in copyright infringement cases. Mega simply rewarded those that brought in ad traffic but it ostensibly did not know what the content was on its system.

        Mega also helped many dissidents publish documents both for allies and enemies of the US. That's what eventually irked the wrong people.

        • There is no such thing as intent in copyright infringement cases.

          1) There are a whole bunch of charges, many of which include intent, including probably all the alleged financial crimes.

          2) Less relevant to the story, but more relevant to specifically what you said: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          3) Intent can show motive, which is part of a criminal accusation, and can also be circumstantial evidence in various ways.

        • Didn't want to know and didn't care is closer to the truth.

          That's like the defense of a weapons dealer that he didn't know the guns were used to start a rebellion, as if there's some way an apiarist club needs a few thousands assault rifles.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Mega came after the charges and the illegal raid on his home. The charges are over MegaUpload, which wasn't encrypted, it was just a basic file sharing site.

      Worse than the FBI going after him, this is the copyright industry using law enforcement to protect their intellectual property rights.

  • I hope the next move is to revoke his residency, due to lying on the application.
    I don't care if he goes to USA, Hong Kong, or back to Germany, as long as he gets out of New Zealand.

    • I hope the next move is to revoke his residency, due to lying on the application.

      That sounds like Peter Theil to me. Kim Dotcom's problem is that he neglected to donate money to the National Party.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by roca ( 43122 )

        I don't think the Labour government is too concerned about his donation record with the National Party.

    • Could we get to vote on it? I vote Antarctica.

  • So why haven't they been indicted yet? Or is everything fine as long as you throw a few pennies to the MPAA? Or was it the shitload of donations they made to the politicians?

  • If DotCom is guilty, then Google is 10X as guilty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @09:19PM (#58742732)

    There is all kinds of copyrighted material on youtube. Some of it has been there for ten years, and has millions of views. Most of it has no ads.

  • There are gray areas here. An analogy I used with a non-tech friend of mine: if you're a taxi driver and once in a while you pick up someone who, it turns out, is getting a ride to do a drug deal, but you didn't know, you're not complicit. But if you're constantly giving rides to drug dealers who talk about their deals while riding with you and pay you handsomely to look the other way, then yes you are complicit. And of course there are situations in the middle where things aren't clear.

    Dotcom and his frien

    • There are gray areas here. An analogy I used with a non-tech friend of mine: if you're a taxi driver and once in a while you pick up someone who, it turns out, is getting a ride to do a drug deal, but you didn't know, you're not complicit. But if you're constantly giving rides to drug dealers who talk about their deals while riding with you and pay you handsomely to look the other way, then yes you are complicit. And of course there are situations in the middle where things aren't clear.

      Good analogy. There

  • Whatever you may think of the guy, and he's not great I know, I would argue that extradition does not make sense. He's a Finnish German national, living in New Zealand and headquartered in Hong Kong. How does he have to stand trial in the USA? He's not American, the business is not American. He doesn't live in America. If you say his customers are in America, we sure, and Ebay has customers in Saudi Arabia, and China. If you argue that he broke laws in America. Then you have to except that the head of Fac

    • Then you have to except that the head of Facebook... could have to be extradited to China or Saudi Arabia or wherever because they broke the laws there

      At least in the case of Facebook, I'm 100% okay with this.

  • This case has been dragging on for so long, I forgot it was still going on. I wonder how much Dotcom has spent on attorney fees, as it has to be a small fortune compared to what Megaupload made in its heyday.
  • Megaupload and Megavideo were not the only games in town when they were first made available. I tried Megavideo at the time and was impressed with the smooth playback and interface. It had no rival in its class. There were a plethora of services at the time, but MegaVideo gave corporate, 'Youtube' quality video to the masses and Kim Dot Com was something of a Prometheus. It is a shame they went out of business because as an independent videographer, I would have like to have used it as a platform. Right now

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