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Judge Rules Kim Dotcom Can be Extradited to US to Face Charges

posted by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:50PM   
from the four-more-years dept.

Fluffeh writes in with an update in the long-running Kim Dotcom extradition saga:

Following an extradition hearing lasting 10 weeks, today New Zealand District Court Judge Nevin Dawson ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can indeed be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Dotcom confirmed that an appeal to the High Court would go ahead.

[...] In a blow to the Megaupload founder and his former colleagues, Judge Dawson ruled that the quartet can indeed be sent to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering. Judge Dawson did not determine guilt or otherwise but found that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had presented enough evidence for New Zealand to grant a request from the the United States to extradite. Dawson said that Dotcom and his colleagues had not done enough to undermine the case.

timbim adds Wired's coverage:

The defendants will be allowed to remain out on bail in the meantime. Although the judge acknowledged there was a high risk of flight, he noted that the four had all abided by the terms of their bail since they were arrested.

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• Re:Difference? Re:Difference? (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2015, @07:16PM

  by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday December 23 2015, @07:16PM (#280315) Journal

  I believe the case against Dotcom and co. is based on the staff overstepping the bounds of safe harbor by facilitating infringement.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_legal_case [wikipedia.org]

  The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides safe harbor for sites that promptly take down infringing content. Safe harbor does not exist if the site has actual knowledge and does nothing about it.[35]

  In Megaupload's case, the indictment alleges DMCA provisions were used for the appearance of legitimacy – the actual material was not removed, only some links to it were, takedowns agreement was approved based on business growth rather than infringement, and the parties themselves openly discussed their infringing activities. The indictment claims that Megaupload executives:

  "... are willfully infringing copyrights themselves on these systems; have actual knowledge that the materials on their systems are infringing (or alternatively know facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent); receive a financial benefit directly attributable to copyright-infringing activity where the provider can control that activity; and have not removed, or disabled access to, known copyright infringing material from servers they control."[36]

  The new, apparently Dotcom-unapproved [wikipedia.org] Mega has encryption baked in and makes the content much less visible to the company:

  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/17/kim-dotcom-mega-vikram-kumar-piracy [theguardian.com]

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• Re:Difference? Re:Difference? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:41PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:41PM (#280375)

  The new, apparently Dotcom-unapproved [wikipedia.org] Mega has encryption baked in and makes the content much less visible to the company:

  How is Mega "Dotcom-unapproved"?

  You appear to be approaching this from the view that the sole purpose of Megaupload was copyright infringement. As I understand the situation (note Pirate bias), Megaupload made a good-faith effort to follow the DMCA, despite not being based in the US.

  I have been told that DMCA requests are valid in Canada as well: insofar that they constitute a cease and desist request (safe-harbour and the DMCA does not apply). I assume the situation in New-Zealand is similar.

  Megaupload was not able to remove infringing material due to the technical design of their service; which leveraged deduplication. Mega client-side encrypting everything so that the server can no longer de-duplicate is a logical response to legal trouble resulting from deduplication.

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  • Re:unapproved? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:45PM (#280380)

    Found it on second reading:

    In July 2015, Dotcom said he doesn't trust Mega service in a Q&A session with tech website Slashdot, claims New Zealand government has control of the site. Dotcom encouraged readers not to use it and plans to release a detailed breakdown of Mega's status, he said in Twitter.[31][32] Mega responded that the authorities have not opposed or interefered with any of Mega’s operations.

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