The
Megaupload case is not the most important thing happening at the
moment but it is still big news in New Zealand
The
Case Against Kim Dotcom Is Looking Like A Complete Disaster
The
U.S. government is refusing the order of a New Zealand judge that it
turn over evidence being used in the extradition of Megaupload
founder Kim Dotcom
26
April, 2012
The
FBI believes that Dotcom should only be able to see one
file out of nearly 22 million emails seized
in the January 20 raid that was ruled
illegal because
of an invalid search warrant.
The
New Zealand prosecutor working on behalf of the U.S. argued that
there was no need for the 38-year-old
dual citizen of Germany and Finland to
have access to the information because he was not being tried in New
Zealand and the judge only has to decide if there is a case against
him in the U.S.
That
doesn't look like it's going to fly as
the judge ordered in May that the U.S. government disclose all
documents related to the alleged criminal acts held
by the FBI and other U.S. authorities.
The
charges against Dotcom include engaging in a racketeering
conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring
to commit money laundering, and two substantive counts of criminal
copyright infringement.
Before
it was shut
down in January,
Megaupload was one of the world's most popular websites where
millions of users stored data, either for free or by paying for
premium service. The site carried 4 percent of internet traffic.
The
file hosting service was disabled due to suspected copyright
infringement in a huge raid that confiscated all of its uploaded
files, personal and professional, regardless of if users were
infringing or not.
However
the case against Dotcom appears to have been on shaky ground from
the beginning,
and it seems the U.S. may have overstepped
its bounds and
is now doing everything to stifle due process.
As Masnick previously
reported, the
U.S. seems to be taking an extraordinary interpretation of copyright
infringement by using civil copyright
infringement as the basis for a criminal copyright
charge and then parlaying that criminal charge into even more
serious charges.
The distinction
between civil and criminal is
important because New
Zealand won't extradite someone if the case is really just about
civil copyright infringement.
The U.S. government must prove criminal copyright infringement as a
basis for the racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud
charges
.
The
headaches for the U.S. began when authorities filed the wrong
paperwork for the raid warrant, leading a judge to order in
March that Dotcom's cash, cars and property were seized
using a invalid court order that
was "null and void" and had "no legal effect."
Then Dotcom claimed that key pieces of evidence against him
are actually
files he legally owned,
indicating that the prosecution’s case has some serious
weaknesses.
After
that the police mysteriously
lost the video of the raid after reportedly
agreeing to let Megaupload’s IT expert download a copy of security
camera footage stored on Dotcom’s personal file server. The server
was seized by police during the raid even though it was not among
the evidence they claimed to be pursuing, and they subsequently
disassembled it for some reason.
It
was also reported that federal investigators somehow gained
access to the five years worth of online conversations between
Dotcom and his colleagues. Since Skype —
where many of the conversations took place — doesn't maintain
records for more than 30 days and was never asked by the government
to turn over transcripts, it has been speculated that the
government used spyware to
obtain the files.
The
U.S. has also argued that going through a discovery process to
share evidence with Dotcom and his lawyers would be too difficult
because there is so much evidence and it's in electronic format,
which the judge shot
down immediately.
Basically
— what a mess.
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