Kim Dotcom Dotcan remain on bail, despite Fed protests The US Feds have failed to get Kim Dotcom’s bail revoked ahead of the extradition hearing in New Zealand to decide if he will have to go stateside to face online piracy charges. The Megaupload founder has avoided awaiting the hearing in jail as an Auckland court has rejected the idea that he might be a flight risk, as well as …
>My legal team has recently resigned because I ran out of money after spending $10m to try and defend myself.
If the guy went to jail for three years he would have saved $10 Million, $3Million per year is not too shabby.
Alternatively, he could have bought a nice house in the Scottish highlands, called himself Douglas MacDougal, disappeared from public life and still had a lot of change left over.
DotCom = minus 10 Million and nothing to show for it.
The Lawyers = plus 10 Million , new Porsches or have upgraded to >20m yachts.
"nothing to show for it"
He's not picking up soap in a US penitentiary. Also, I suspect he'll be looking a serving a dime or more (I watched all of The Sopranos, you know. Boom, bad-a-bing, etc, etc). The US authorities will want serious payback after being embarressed like this. Just look at poor Bradley/Chelsea Manning :(
Icon is Kim after 6 months of prison food.
Out of interest, downvoter, how many places can you get to on a tank of fuel in a chopper from any location you care to name in NZ? Lovely country and all that, just not in the heart of things, especially in what are very versatile but rather fuel-intensive vehicles optimised for short range.
In 100 years time, this is the sort of thing people will look back on and shake their heads in wonder and disgust. That big business of another country can effectively pay for their own private government hit squad to take down a business rival and put them through a kangaroo legal system to bleed them dry, while everybody looks on as though it's acceptable behaviour.
This sounds like something that only happens to bar owners in Thailand beach resorts.
Good 'ol Uncle Sam and his boys.
"A business rival"?
The "business rival" whose business amassed $150m by ripping off the people who did their work. Kim Dotcom rewarded thieves who uploaded pirate movies or music but didn't pay a cent to people who made movies or music.
I guess you will be shedding a tear for the good ol' boys who run sweatshops or human trafficking rings.
While I have no sympathy for a supposedly "broke" person living in a huge mansion (why not just sell it?), the fact is that the totality of his "crimes" was to offer a storage service, which other people used to store allegedly "infringing" material.
So why are the MAFIAA® and its US government lackeys shooting the messenger, instead of the shooting the many respective authors of the supposedly "infringing" messages?
And why have they not similarly persecuted Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and friends for committing the same "crime"? Are we seriously expected to believe that not a single file on any of their Cloud services is in violation of copyright? That seems barely credible.
The answer, and the actual "crime" which Dotcom seems guilt of, is that he spectacularly failed to be an American corporation stuffing big wads of greasy cash into the pockets of bent politicians, a crime for which he should clearly be crucified, according to America's finest.
"While I have no sympathy for a supposedly "broke" person living in a huge mansion (why not just sell it?)"
Thought I read elsewhere that the mansion is rented (where's the dosh coming from for that?), so it looks like that avenue is closed.
Have to say I agree with others. Dotcom might be an alleged villain (for all we know) but he has been ridden over extremely rough-shod by the NZ legal system that seems to be the lackie of "Big Entertainment" in the good ol' U.S. of A. So many discrepancies in the way that things have been handled (again - allegedly) seem to point to corruption and breaking of so many legal rules that I would say that the extradition case should be thrown out.
His motto has always been: "Earn big, spend even bigger". He's been doing that for 20-odd years or so. When I started working, he had just sold his IT-security startup for a ridiculous sum (immediately before the Dot Com bubble bust). Then came a couple of other stunts, including the insider-trading gig that is the reason for his criminal record, which is AFAIK the reason he couldn't get citizenship in NZ...
Most "celebrities" are completely useless in every aspect of life except for maybe showing otherwise covered parts of their body in front of camera-lenses.
So, I actually have to give him the benefit of doubt here in that he has actually made something of his life....
>So, I actually have to give him the benefit of doubt here in that he has actually made something of his life....
Yeah you don't get to the top of the leader board of CoD wasting time, oh wait ...
He may be a fat ethically challenged slob but somehow the US government is even making him look sympathetic.
He blew about $4 million on funding a political party with the explicit goal of preventing his deportation. A bunch of left-wing political mercenaries showed up, drank all his money and didn't get elected - even in a country where you need only 5% of the vote to get elected.
More was blown on launching the lamest album of the past 20 years.
The rest of his cash is in trusts or held by his ex-wife who (conveniently) divorced him as soon as it was hinted that the government et. al. might be going after his money.
This would all have been over and done with and Dotcom in the US on trial if only our dozy police and prosecutions services had paid more attention to doing the paperwork properly and less to looking cool and using a black helicopter to do a raid and get them on TV.
Just like Assange, Dotcom is just a self-publicising waste of space. As well as the insider trading, he also crashed a car at the end of the Gumball Rally (when it finished in Beaulieu) and did a runner pretty sharpish before the police caught up with him, as I seem to recall there was another (non-rally competitor) car involved. Also like Assange, he was only trying the politics thing to try and escape potential custodial problems.
We can only dream that they both get locked up locally for a while, if only so we don't have to keep hearing them banging on that the US is out to get them. The US probably is out to get them one way or another either via dodgy extradition methods or just grinding them (and their bank accounts) down. But in both cases they've poked a nasty beast with a stick, made a song and dance about it, and then got a bit upset when said beast gives them its attention...
As for his mansion in NZ, he paid the rent up front. So he's good for a few more months.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
