Displaying items by tag: MegaUpload

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.

With the news that the warrants used to justify the storming of the home of MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom many are looking for reasons why this is important, unimportant and a few other things in the process. We have heard from news sites that say this is the death blow for the US case and others that claim just the opposite. But what few have mentioned is why the US tried to pull of this in the first place and why they hoped it would not be noticed by the authorities.

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.

Conflict of Interest; it is an interesting term. As an absolute definition it means; “when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.” As a legal term (as you might imagine) there are multiple meanings with enough ambiguity to keep things interesting. However, to one group of people most notably the MPAA and RIAA it is a way to support and defend their position in the world when they push their lawsuits around the globe. In part two of our look at the MegaUpload case we will dig into how the Content Industry and the DoJ have tried to deny even the right to a defense to MegaUpload.

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).

Well, we knew this would happen when we first heard about the case, but it seems that the lawyers defending MegaUpload have finally dropped the jurisdiction bomb on the US DoJ. The issue at hand is the same one that extended to the Pirate Bay when they were continually harassed by the content industry. If a corporation or individual does not commit the crime on US soil (or one of its protectorates) or have an agent that commits or assists in the commission of the crime they have no legal jurisdiction. In the case of MegaUpload they have no offices in the US and never have.

There is nothing like a little drama, just as there is nothing quite like seeing the big copyright holders having to actually prove their case. In no other recent case has this been more important than the in the criminal copyright case against MegaUpload. If you remember the Us DoJ went after the file sharing site some of their managers and the owner Kim Dotcom. Since the seizure of all of their servers property and money there have been some pretty major issues with not only actual evidence, but the warrants, seizure and more. There is even some talk that the DoJ committed some pretty bad procedural errors that might get the whole thing thrown out.

There was something of a victory for MegaUpload and in many ways supporters of a free and open internet. The judge presiding over the case has stated that the case may never actual go to trial because the FBI and those backing their actions made a tiny, little, blunder that has turned out to not be so tiny. In their effort to send a message the FBI and other agencies in the US government have taken a very firm stance on the situation a stance which could eventually come back to haunt them.