Key meets Obama

Obama discusses fate of Megaupload's Kim Dotcom with New Zealand prime minister

The United States remains stuck as to how to handle its perpetually collapsing copyright case against Megaupload, but the now defunct file-storage website and the New Zealand resident who ran it are still being discussed at the highest level.

RT,

21 November, 2012

According to a confirmation from New Zealand Prime Minister John Keys to NZ’s Stuff, the Kiwi commander chatted with US President Barack Obama this week about the ongoing matter of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, the German-born founder of the site who has been at the center of an international scandal ever since his Coatesville, New Zealand mansion was raided in January.

Stuff reports that Mr. Keys had a private one-on-one with Pres. Obama while the two were in Cambodia this week for the East Asia Summit, but the prime minister has refused to go into specifics about what may have been said about Dotcom.

“I’m not going to go into those details. I had a little chat to him, yep, about a whole range of issues. I have private conversations with people all the time,” Key said.

That was enough for Dotcom to intervene and ask the prime minister to put some pressure on Pres. Obama.

“@JohnKeyPM ask @BarackObama to give us green cards so we can come and help Hollywood to build a proper Internet business,” Dotcom wrote from his Twitter account, accompanied by a winking emoticon.

In a follow up plea, Dotcom tweeted, “Dear friends, please ask @BarackObama to embrace #Innovation & #InternetFreedom in his 2nd term as President.”

Dotcom has been in hot-water with the US since before the January 2012 raid and arrest that occurred along with a Justice Department seizure of Megaupload, at one time one of the ten most visited websites in the world. In the ten months since before targeted by the DoJ, though, the Obama administration has done seemingly noting to advance their case, aside from the occasional touting of the site’s shutdown as a supposed victory against copyright infringers and intellectual property thefts.

For now, Dotcom awaits a ruling expected next year that will determine if he can be extradited to the United States for prosecution, but he has already volunteered to travel to the US himself if it means he will receive a fair trial. This week, Dotcom confirmed that the Justice Department has deferred from answering his request.

“We formally offered to the DOJ that we would go to the US if they guarantee bail & unfreezing of funds for legal fees. They never replied,” he tweets.

NZ Being Caught In New Cold War - US/China Trade Deals

Prof Jane Kelsey

Scoop,

21 November, 2012

“Prime Minister John Key needs a reality check if he really believes New Zealand can remain best friends with both sides in the escalating face-off between the US and China over the ‘most significant free trade and investment deal ever’”, according to University of Auckland Professor Jane Kelsey.

“This week’s East Asia Summit in Cambodia has turned into a sparring match between the US and China, as each touts its grand plan. The US-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is pitted against the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that pivots around China as well as India.”

“The Prime Minister may not want to ‘over-emphasise’ the China-US stand-off, but that is now the dominant narrative of the TPP”, said Professor Kelsey.

“Trade Minister Groser’s bold promise that New Zealand would walk away if the TPP became an exercise in China-bashing becomes more hollow by the day”.

Professor Kelsey notes that the TPPA never had a commercial rationale, except for the gains that US corporations wouldmake if US demands prevailed.

“The TPPA has now become a geo-political pact. There is a serious risk that participating governments will sign up for strategic reasons to a text that surrenders their domestic economies and grants undue influence over their policy decisions to powerful, largely US, corporate interests.”

“The people of the participating countries will not only have no say in the process of either set of negotiations - they risk becoming collateral damage in a new version of the Cold War, as old players flex their muscles in the new arena of competing so-called free trade agreements.”