1. Get bled until nobody will offer legal services to him because they know he can't pay. Get extradited with a public defendant (if he's lucky). Have a trial with a lawyer being provided by the DoJ (who happens to be the ones putting him on trial).
2. Get extradited with a team of really good lawyers who truly represent him.
There really aren't any options that don't end with him extradited. Why wouldn't he want to be extradited on his terms rather than the government's.
It also isn't rocket science that, regardless of whether the government is intentionally trying to get his legal team to desert him, delays are better for the government than they are for Dotcom.
As a US citizen, this case makes me sick to my stomach. It reeks of America strong-arming other countries to pursue an agenda that is in only its best interests. It is made worse by the high-level collusion between the government and Hollywood. It is topped off by a stinking pile that is a lack of respect for anybody's intellectual property except Hollywood's and a rotten cherry of government seizure that prevents somebody from defending themselves in court.
(I suppose there is a 3rd option where he goes completely underground, but, again, with no money, that's going to be a tough thing to do.)
The high court of NZ has ruled the search warrants used were illegal[1]. IANAL, but I would think that's grounds enough for the case to be thrown out and for NZ to never extradite him.
[1]http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-search-warrants-ruled-ill...
Best interest of the United States? What do the US gain from this other than getting votes for those elected in office and pleasing an insignificant and corrupt industry we called hollywood?
Not saying it's right from a moral perspective, but from an economic perspective I don't think there can be any doubt about that.
But freezing his assets all over the place and such, even for legal fees? In this case you actually trying to exclude him from support. If one might call this unbiased trials, ok. I don't.
What I don't like about all this is that even if you go as far away from a certain legal system as you can for whatever reason you will never escape it. I'm not talking about being criminal, just about chossing the rules you want to live under. I think certain countries and people (and I'm not going after the US or anyone in particular) should learn to accept that individuals choose for themselves.
MU was the hub of piracy on the net. And from the figures posted, netted 400 million dollars from it.
It's not something that was going to be ignored, even with a legitimate upload service being offered, because the primary monetary driver for that company was tricking and/or getting people to sign-up when visiting a page to d/l pirated content.
All the US gov will have to show is a statistical sample of 10,000 random accounts, and correlate their signup to first entry ... a page hosting pirated content... More or less.
And when that comes back to show that 99% of paid-users d/l pirated content, it's over.
Anyone with access to the Apache or nginx access logs and the hosted files could do half of that in their sleep.
What I'm sick of is there are people who choose to ignore the facts, and idolize this man who's entire history for the last two decades revolves around criminal activities and lawsuits.
But hey, this is America and you're entitled to your opinion.
Perhaps you know of a better country... http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-...
I'd like a source for that. I believe TPB is and was in that position. I also believe that rapidshare and all those other sites had a similar amount of pirated content. In general you'd have a mirror of a given file across 3 or so sites which would indicate MU wasn't that far different from those commonly used as mirrors.
>statistical sample of 10,000 random accounts, and correlate ... pirated content
Why? That shows that people downloaded pirated content (which makes the downloaders guilty, not MU). I don't see how that makes MU guilty.
>Anyone with access to the Apache or nginx access logs and the hosted files could do that in their sleep.
uhhhhhh no. Not at all. How the heck to you figure out if a file is actually legal or not? How do you tell if a downloader of a file legitimately owned that file or not? An artist once distributed his album to me via MU after I paid (I wanted it in a different format than was avaliable via automatic download). I was a legal downloader, but if I gave the link to my friend he/she would have downloaded it illegally. To do such a thing they would have to first catagorize all the content, determine the copyright holder, ask the holder if it was a legal download, wait on the copyright holder to look through his/her probably nonexistant logs, and so on. This is not easy.
> idolize this man who's entire history for the last two decades revolves around criminal activities and lawsuits.
His past doesn't matter in this regard. I don't actually see how any of what you posted matters. Sure, there's piracy on MU. That doesn't mean it was illegal since they apparently obeyed the DMCA.
>It's not something that was going to be ignored
Indeed, it looks like the US government isn't ignoring it even though it was likely legal and are using underhanded methods in order to destroy the business, probably due to the lobbying money from the entertainment industry. If the government not following the law to persecute someone who's not breaking the law, and isn't even a citizan of the united states, doesn't make you sick to your stomach then I'm not sure what our government could do to do such a thing.
That is the sort of stuff that people should be concerned about. If they were going about this in a reasonable fashion I'm sure the vast majority of us would not be concerned. Do it properly, and if he is found guilty then so be it, and if he is innocence then so be it. Just do it properly.
Providing paid access to pirated content is bad? Maybe hollywood should have taken that business model to heart.
Dotcoms laywers agreed to delaying his extradition hearing until next year because it is not possible for it to take place next month due to all of the still outstanding issues related to his mansion raid possibly being illegal. It has nothing at all to do with the DOJ trying to screw him by delaying the trial.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/megaupload-founder-ki...
> Dotcom complained about the delay in postings on Twitter today.
“Dirty delay tactics by the U.S.,” he wrote on the social media site. “They destroyed my business. Took all my assets. Time does the rest.”
The NZ prosecutor and DOJ screwed this so badly they'll need at least a year to get the same response. In the meantime, the business is still shut and no one is getting paid.
:(
Asking for special conditions that are never granted can only mean one of two things: either he is utterly ignorant of how law works or he is just trolling for more attention.
I choose to view him as non-ignorant, but since my view is not fawning, apparently I get a massive karma downgrade. I'll live.
To quote the tweet the story is based around, “Hey DOJ, we will go to the US. No need for extradition. We want bail, funds unfrozen for lawyers & living expenses,”
Now they have started to delay the extradition hearing and case from moving forward. This is, unfortunately, a common tactic of Federal prosecutors - they throw the book at defendants and if they realize they may actually lose the case, they keep delaying any trial as long as possible so the accused does not have a chance to get their money back or clear their name. Defendants are left defending themselves against charges the government won't allow to be brought to trial. See the case of Gibson Guitars as another example. They had their factory raided and property seized 3 years ago and has still not had their day in court and have not had their property returned.
Looks like his lawyers sold him out.
If the answer is that it's suspected that all the money comes from illegal activity and therefore frozen until a judge rules on whether this is the case or not what would stop the US government from prosecuting, for example, Larry Page, take all his money and shut down Google until he has been to court? Which he can't pay for because he doesn't have any money.
Can you really just indite someone and convince a judge to freeze all his accounts before there has even been a trial?
It makes sense for Kim and his team to respond "screw that we're coming over now and you hurry this shit up so we can win our case and start our business back up." His lawyers must believe without a doubt that they have this case in the bag.
It seems fairly obvious that from the beginning this case was designed to take a long time in court, in order to keep megaupload down as long as possible. By keeping their assets frozen and postponing court dates the US is continuing to "win" this battle.
Yeah. That sounds reasonable. The US is fucking this one up.
Not a single move so far has followed due process. Every move has been corrupt or illegal, ruled so by a judge. Not a single statement issued so far reassures that they will start following the rules.
I think we can safely say which side of this story is the dishonest and convicted one and it's not Dotcom.
He'll be lucky if the DOJ gives some generic statement about the quality of justice in the US, but most likely it will be ignored completely. Even acknowledging this challenge would be stepping into a minefield, and the DOJ is not that stupid.
I couls never get it to work out...
