NZ High Court rules US can extradite Kim Dotcom after all The businessman otherwise known as Kim Schmitz, aka "Kimble", aka "Kim Dotcom", has lost his High Court appeal in New Zealand to be extradited to the USA. In January 2012, Schmitz's mansion and property were confiscated in raids relating to an investigation of his Megaupload.com website, a file-sharing site that is accused of …
While the extradition hearings are grinding forward there is one issue not being addressed: how did Dotcom violate US law when there was no US office, he and his co-defendants never step foot in the US, and had limited if any dealings with any US companies. Maybe some US shysters in the D of Injustice should watch the movie Boomerang which closely follows an actual case from 1924 in Bridgeport, CT. More to the point they should look Homer Cummings in Wikipedia for more details.
The way the media in New Zealand are reporting this, the court has agreed that Kim Dotcom cannot be extradited on Copyright Infringment grounds, but there is an element of fraud involved.
Also, in my view one of the reasons the Internet-Mana Party did so poorly was that they roped in Laila Harré who has been in every left leaning political party in the country and is so desperate to get back into parliament I can smell it from here.
That's the point, isn't it? He can't be extradited for the copyright offence, but he could be extradited on a fraud charge. That's a win for Kim since the original extradition request, warrent, police raid, etc were for a non-extraditable offence. So it seems he will now claim that the whole process started by that extradition request is null and void. The alleged fraud would need a whole new process.
"Oh how I wish that we could be rid of this publicity whore for good."
I'm guessing that your high court feels the same way.
I was thinking. It's going to take a B-52 and a shitload of fuel to get his fat ass into the air and over to his new home here in the Colonies. And he looks like his breath stinks, which can only add to the final cost.
Under Trump's "We Want It, You Pay For It" concept, would you Kiwis be willing to go halfsies on the total cost of the extradition? I mean, things didn't go over so well with asking Mexico to pay for a border wall between our two countries. In fact, the former Mexican president Vincente Fox had this to say in Her Majesty's English:
"I'm not going to pay for that fucking wall! He should pay for it. He's got the money,"
Huffy little thing, but, okay, I get it. We should maybe start small and work up to the bigger things over time.
While Kim is certainly no angel (far from it) this case gets more confusing every year.
I visited Megaupload when it was around and did not notice Kim actually selling anything other than storage.
I maybe wrong and if anyone has more details, please share.
Kim has always claimed Megaupload was just a storage place. If this is strictly true, than many other cloud storage place are also guilty as hell.
Again, I am NOT defending Kim, just trying to figure out why he was chosen and not certain other storage sites, ALTHOUGH I do know SOME other storage sites were shut down as well.
Copyrighted infringing material wasn't proactively removed, whereas other hosting sites provide relatively straightforward ways to report copyright infringement, act on such reports and make some efforts to try and pinpoint copyright infringement.
Add to that, there were site policies and incentives in place that actively encouraged the uploading of infringing material. This is where Kim comes unstuck, as there is a paper trail that suggests quite clearly he and others at the company were hoping to become an alternative to the likes of torrent trackers with actual hosting of infringing material. The plan appears to be that people would pay smallish sums (way less than the cost of legally accessing the material) to host and access other uploads. Scale this up and ... profit!
As an aside, Kim tries to muddy the waters by claiming his site fell under "safe harbour" rules for an ISP. His site wasn't an ISP.
Yup, if you and one or more buddies get together to infringe copyright, it's Conspiracy to Defraud.
Who woudda thought!?
KD's only hope is to persuade a US jury that he was doing his best to respect copyright. His chances are slightly better than a guy with a Muslim name.
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