Displaying items by tag: Kim Dotcom

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and his legal team have won a fairly significant victory in the ongoing case with the US DoJ. A New Zealand Judge has ruled that the US MUST hand over all evidence it has against Dotcom. This is something that the US has resisted since the beginning for reasons known only to them, but there is speculation that they case was founded with no evidence at all. This type of blind accusation is actually something the MPAA and RIAA are used to. If you look back at their copyright lawsuits you will find that they often submit anonymous indictments which allow them to subpoena ISPs to get information on certain IPs. It seems they like doing things that way and have tried to push this to Megaupload.

Kim Dotcom, the besieged Megaupload CEO, is taunting the MPAA and RIAA even as he waits for his extradition hearing (now slated for early 2013). Dotcom has not been one to sit back and wait as the industry tries to dismantle the company that he built and since access to the internet was returned to him by a New Zealand court (something we are sure Hollywood was not happy about) he has been engaging in a PR battle with the people he feels are responsible for his arrest.

Although not specifically related to technology we have some interesting information on the Kim Dotcom case. One of our Forum members Euonia posted a very interesting video that includes some new footage of the raid on Kim Dotcom’s home. When watching it we were more than a little shocked by the number of police vans, helicopters and other assets that were used to arrest Dotcom. Considering I can remember looking back on the raids I was on when working for DirecTV and I am shocked that they would use this level of force for a “low-level threat”

Not that long ago we told you that the MegaUpload case would be one that would have massive ramifications across the internet and also with regards to the image of the US Government and how they handle this. This image includes the current global view that the US is not run by elected officials, but by corporations especially the entertainment industry who continues to push for laws that allow them to impose their will around the globe. It is a very messy situation no matter how you look at it and as we have warned before, the US runs the risk of looking like they are not looking to uphold the law, but are acting as an extension of the Hollywood Cartels. Two days ago we learned of an excellent example of this and one that is sure to send a message to other countries and corporations that the US simply does not care about the law or fostering innovation. They are only concerned with keeping the campaign funds flowing.

The Megaupload case has become an embarrassment for the US Government, but because of their close ties to the MPAA, RIAA and the entertainment industry as a whole they are not able to bow out gracefully at this point. It also seems that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is not going to let them bow out. Instead he has launched a website that is dedicated to “the war for the Internet”. This term is one that has been used in the past to refer to laws like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP, CISPA and many, many more. It is a very interesting battle that is only in its infancy right now and unless things change quickly will only get worse.

As predicted Judge David Harvey (who called the US “The Enemy” in Copyright Law) has stepped down from presiding over the Dotcom extradition case. Yesterday we reported on Harvey’s views of the US Government’s (and entertainment industry’s) efforts to force US copyright laws on foreign countries as a requirement of trade agreements. This move, by the US, has sparked quite a bit of debate including whether the US Trade Rep has the authority to enact these deals without congressional oversight. With ACTA and TPP the USTR has had more meetings with the entertainment industry than with the congressional bodies that are supposed to handle oversight on these treaties.

We have previously reported that the US entertainment industry is trying very hard to push their version of the “law” out to the rest of the world. They have, quite literally, spent billions of dollars lobbying and campaigning to get the laws made in their favor. Now the fact that these laws include exceptionally oppressive measures, remove due process and also make even the most mundane violations into major crimes does not concern them. All they want to do is make sure that they keep control of the content and the money it brings in.

We have been following the MegaUpload case very closely since it was revealed that the FBI probably overstepped their bounds in both the requesting of search warrants for the Dotcom mansion and in taking evidence back to the US without judicial review to make sure the evidence was relevant to the case. Now there is the possibility that the MPAA and others met with Vice President Joe Biden to request he push for the MegaUpload take down. This is something that many already believe, but now it seems there might be some evidence to make this claim more credible.

As we follow the MegaUpload case and by extension the case of Kim Dotcom and six other managers in the company we are finding out more and more about the US governments case against the file sharing site. Yesterday we published a two part article about some of the tactics used in the case that has slid from being active and interesting into a long siege with the US attempting to stop access to both funds and legal representation. Now we are finding out more about the original “evidence” against the corporation and the seven individuals.

Although we have covered some of the MegaUpload case we have not really followed all of the ins and outs in the troubled and lopsided case. On the one hand almost everyone can agree that people should pay for their content, but in most cases the opinions about what has been done to the cloud storage service are against what the US DoJ has done. On the word of the MPAA and RIAA (yes it was only their accusations) the FBI and others began a costly investigation into MegaUpload and in the end came up with an indictment against a non-US based company (where the US has no jurisdiction) and seven members of its management team (most of which have never entered the US).