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Old 16-06-12, 03:16   #1
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Default New Zealand's High Court Steps Into Extradition Fight...

New Zealand's High Court Steps Into Extradition Fight Over Kim Dotcom
by Mike Masnick

As the Justice Department continues to pretend there's nothing strange at all about its highly questionable tactics in shutting down Megaupload and having its executives arrested, the courts are still struggling with the details. A few weeks back, we noted that a judge in New Zealand rejected the US's demand that New Zealand merely rubberstamp an extradition order to the US, despite there being numerous questions over the case itself and whether or not extradition is appropriate. As part of that, the judge also ordered the US Attorneys to hand over the evidence they're using to make the case against Dotcom and his colleagues, such that they can properly respond to the evidence. The US, as you might expect has gone absolutely ballistic about this, insisting that such an effort is impossible -- and that "it would take at least two months" to get the evidence together.

Of course, to some of us, that suggests that the DOJ hasn't yet looked at the evidence -- and thus it shut down the company and arrested its staff first, without even knowing if a crime had been committed.

Either way, that months-long delay presented a problem, since New Zealand had scheduled the extradition hearing for August 6th, and the Megaupload legal team deserved some time with the evidence to formulate its defense. The latest, however, is that New Zealand's High Court has agreed to an "urgent review" of the original ruling. The court also told the US to start the process of putting together the evidence to hand over to Dotcom's lawyers, but that it can wait until the High Court has reviewed the case before actually handing them over.

No matter what, this is once again showing the US's hubris in this case -- assuming it could waltz into New Zealand, with highly questionable evidence, shut down a company, and extradite the executives to the US without anyone asking questions. With each move in this case, more questions are raised about the competence of the DOJ staff who worked on this case, led by Neil MacBride -- a former "anti-piracy VP" for the copyright industries, who may have let his biases and previous (and future?) employers' interests get the best of him.


This whole thing has been a disaster for the US. From the start, the US is not supposed to go after corporate property unless the corporate officers have been served papers with the intent to do so. Since Megaupload had no corporate offices within the US, this couldn't be done and the US ignored it's own laws to do the confiscation.

New Zealand claimed it could not provide Kim Dotcom's lawyers with a copy of the evidence, claiming a lack of proper equipment to provide back ups. Yet it could provide the US with a copy of the evidence, which the US promptly had it's agents ship back to the USA, via UPS. Kim's lawyer made comment at the time, before it was known the data had already left New Zealand, despite a court order for it not to, that the New Zealand cops could afford an $800,000 helicopter to use in the raid but could not go to Best Buy and buy a couple of computers to do the job.

The idea that the US has not looked at the evidence is actually very creditable considering how it handled the Dajaz1 confiscation. After the year passed, the ICE agent applied for and got an extension on the domain, waiting around for the RIAA to give it the evidence it needed to file charges. Somehow, the RIAA could not find the evidence and would not contact the agent to supply this information. The domain and site were quietly handed back to the owner, not like the crowing it made on the bust at the start.

I would suggest that this pattern is still going on and that no one has attempted to look at the evidence here in the states. That they are again waiting on the RIAA or MPAA to provide evidence of infringement. Whether they will actually do that is questionable, they already have what they wanted which was the take down and removal of the company. The Megaupload company is now dead, it's business taken away with the shuttering, and the money Megaupload had has been confiscated. Kim's lawyer has applied to have it released to fund a defense but the US objects to that, claiming all money was stolen from the entertainment industry. Yet no proof that any of it was illegal exists and even if it did, Megaupload had enough legal business that not all of it could have been illegal.

The whole case so far reads much the same way. Charges put forward by the US, is a mishmash of civil and criminal law. You can't mix and match them. They are entirely different with different standards of proof and there is very little jail time for civil law; it's mostly monetary. Criminal law is where the jail time is but you can't come up with all the charges leveled at the officers of Megaupload by starting out with civil law as the basis to start action. Nor can you just switch from one to the other at will. They have very different standards of conviction. To say it is likely infringement happened (civil law) does not provide the beyond a shadow of a doubt (criminal law) standard. Yet the US seeks criminal infringement punitive charges and damages.

The whole thing stinks of kowtowing to industry by the government without attention to the law it is supposed to be using for the reason as action. It is a house of cards, with so many holes in it you could drive a train through it. The basic facts used to support the US's actions comes down to reading something like, "Because we said so, you should believe us." But so far, the US is long on accusation and short on legal facts.
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