BAU for the US then?
Shoot first and ask questions later.
In other news, It will rain somewhere in the world today.
America’s case against Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom is looking increasingly shambolic, with a New Zealand High Court judge finding that the property seizures in January raid were illegal. Both New Zealand’s National Business Review and TVNZ are reporting that Judge Helen Winkelmann has declared the warrants used in the searches …
Shoot first, hit you allies with friendly fire, ignore their sovereignty and legal system, then ask questions later.
Corrected for you:
Shoot first, hit you allies with friendly fire, ignore their sovereignty and legal system, then ask the wrong questions (mainly about who leaked the bad news) but not necessarily on topic later.
The US didn't really give a monkey's about DotCom or his assets as such, they simply want to shut his site down for along enough for his business to collapse and stop him hosting the supposedly copyrighted stuff MegaUpload's users had posted. The "meeja" corps in the US had obviously been making a big noise to the US Gov, so the US Gov thought they'd push their luck see how much trouble they could cause DotCom. The US knew full well they were skating on thin ice, they're not stupid but they just needed enough time to allow them to keep up the pretence long enough to achieve the aim of tripping up DotCom and his mates.
If when DotCom is allowed to to go free and get on with his life, how long is it going to take for him to get his business back together, if he even bothers? It's not going to be instant is it and the threat that US Gov will find another loophole to be pain in the arse, will be at the back of his mind.
I am sure that our NZ coppers will now know what those devious yanks are really like now, and wont be so obliging in future.
The trouble is that they are now tarred with the same brush as the FBI etc. who don't give a shit about proper legal ways or the law at all.
It has been revealed that the FBI actively encourage their men (or persons) to not be concerned about how to get evidence.
This plus the law Obama has approved that allows for indefinite detention without charge or trial shows that the "Land of the Free" should used only in the past tense.
At least the Winter weather so far is not too chilly.
Peace be with all you Poms.
Just to clarify: nicking the server clones was a violation of New Zealand law.
That doesn't mean it was against US federal law, and it certainly doesn't mean the evidence can't be used in a US federal prosecution. We're talking about a jurisdiction that publicly defends kidnapping people from foreign cities in order to get them in front of its courts, if it finds that extradition is too much like hard work.
I don't expect someone to take responsibility, but the authorities might be a lot more careful next time. Will this be a big boost for file hosting in NZ in the future?
Megaupload looks like a reasonable business model now. Thanks for clarifying that, US and NZ authorities!
I wouldn't have thought so. Copyright of the individual files probably stays with the uploader. It would be surprising for Mega's T&Cs to say that copyright vests with them when you upload - it would make them more liable to the copyright claims from the film companies.
Haven't they already frozen his assets and such like though? What about those...?
Not to mention the destruction of a business with a $4 billion dollar evaluation that was just preparing to go public and enter the US stock market with a multi-billion dollar IPO. Major auditors and world investment banks were apparently looking favourably at this so there should be some good evidence for a lawsuit to recover some of that. It's a bit of an international incident if you ask me.
The UK is slightly better, at least on the door front. I heard of one bloke who had his door kicked in by police in England, just a couple of days after he had sold his car. The vehicle registration documents had not yet been processed, and the car he sold had been used in an armed robbery. It was clear fairly quickly to the officers that he did not match the description of the robbers, and they had the damage repaired.
Sometimes kicking in a door is not quick enough... there is a device that is bolted to the ground outside the door, and then uses hydraulic rams to smash the door in one go.
I second that. Back in the day (1994 or so) I lived in the middle flat of three in an old terraced house. The [redacted] on the ground floor were bad boys, and Plod came calling one Saturday afternoon. They broke the lock on the outside (shared) door, and I presume on the ground floor flat's door as well. I peered outside a moment or two later, and saw one of the bad boys' mates being led away with his hands cuffed behind his back. A phone call to Plod followed. "Where do you live, sir?" "(address)" "Ah, ok, have it repaired, and put this operation number on the bill and send it to us, we'll take care of it."
Times change, so your mileage may vary if you try this these days...
Given that the judge appears to have destroyed the whole NZ case against him, I don't see how he can be extradited and he would seem to have a great case for huge amounts of compensation. The US appears to have stitched NZ up good and proper. There can be little doubt that the NZ police will be liable for several reasons. Not least amongst these being that they obviously didn't follow the laws of NZ or their own protocol as otherwise the warrants would have been legal. Given the soon to be IPO, the compensation must run into hundreds of millions at least. What about the customers? If they were inconvenienced or they lost their data because of this, they could have a claim as well.
It all seems to me that NZ could end up with a bill for a very large sum. The US will, as usual, simply walk away. In some ways, this is fair enough. If the US hadn't provided enough information and evidence, the NZ cops should have walked away. The worst they could be accused of is playing the NZ police and national authorities for fools, which seems more than ably demonstrated.
this is probably true, eventually(except the sum offered will be tiny) and it will take years of chasing it through the NZ Establishment which hates with a passion, anybody telling them that they got it wrong, probably even more so when they were obviously wrong.
(See David Bain and Arthur Allen Thomas and they were accused of Murder) Dotcom would be better served by taking the broken fragments of his business and creating something new.
Megaupload is out of action and will remain out of action for ages... and quite a few of the other web-locker firms have become web-lockers for personal access only (ie, you have to login with the same account that uploaded the content).
Personally, I'm rather annoyed as a perfectly good method of sharing collaborative work files has been destroyed. Audio projects where each of us would add the required instrument/vocal etc. parts and then get them mixed down.
I'm not so sure that the NZ side didn't do a little 'fuck america' creative sabotage...
It's easy to envision the FBI/whomever charging in shooting their sixguns in the air but for the NZ side to screw up as well on something basic like a warrant?
Do NZ have black helicopters?