back to article More of Kim Dotcom's booty released by court

The New Zealand High Court has unleashed some of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's considerable assets in order to help the contentious entrepreneur cover his legal fees in New Zealand. The @KimDotcom Twitter account modestly told the world: “BREAKING NEWS: The High Court just ruled the release of restrained assets to cover our …

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  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    Hmmm

    Non US eh? I wonder if this is the beginning (or at least an indicator) of US tech isolation from the rest of the world.

    1. Kevin Johnston

      Re: Hmmm

      Not sure if it is an urban myth or not but I recall conversations about a certain encryption company who are not based in the US getting annoyed at the rules on encryption key length the US wanted to impose and so offering the rest of the world a higher level than they could sell in the US.

      Wanting to control the world is one thing, making the rest of the world fall into line through peaceful means is something else entirely

    2. tkioz

      Re: Hmmm

      It is interesting isn't it. Sort of like a reverse Great Firewall of China, designed not to keep people in, but to keep the Americans out. Amusing really since there is a metric crap-ton of stuff online that is geo-locked for Americans only.

    3. Danny 14

      Re: Hmmm

      non-US but I bet he starts a VPN service too.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: VPN

        No, he may allow US customers, but not US hosting. As that's what got his service shut down.

    4. johnB

      Re: Hmmm

      No, American technical isolation began when they stuck to the imperial system of measurements.

  2. Ole Juul

    This could be a good show

    "I am going to turn this world upside down." Dotcom says. That may sound a bit "Mega", but I hope he's right.

    1. g e

      Re: This could be a good show

      No love for the guy, but if he's a catalyst for wider action....

      1. Tapeador
        Mushroom

        Re: This could be a good show

        Wider action on what? Do you mean action against the evil that is intellectual property, and the evil money it pays evil people doing evil jobs like writing songs and making movies and hiring people to help? I completely agree - stop the evil now!

  3. g e
    Holmes

    Build a wall round 'em

    Put Apple in charge.

    Let all foreign nationals and assets out who want out.

    Leave em to it.

    I for one would like to apologise on behalf of my ancestors for Britain's contribution to the forming of the USA. It feels a bit like having an errant offspring that mugs old ladies at night and your neighbours, while polite to you know you're partly responsible.

    Flame on, merkins, I've closed the window.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: Build a wall round 'em

      "I for one would like to apologise on behalf of my ancestors for Britain's contribution to the forming of the USA."

      It's NOT Britain's fault! Blame the rabble-rousing slave-owning tax dodgers (aka 'The Founding Fathers') for the USA.

      Canada, on the other hand, turned out just fine.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: Build a wall round 'em

        Blame the rabble-rousing slave-owning tax dodgers...

        And their French supporters.

  4. El Presidente

    Build a wall round 'em ?

    Teh merkins seem to be doing it themselves.

  5. Scott Pedigo
    Holmes

    I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but...

    Didn't the guy make most of his millions by acting as a hub for distributing stolen goods?

    OK, OK, I got really, really annoyed back in the day when the original Napster got shut down.

    I didn't pay any attention to file sharing UNTIL the MIAA made Napster into a big issue and started trying to shut it down, which they eventually did. So just before it got shut down, I tried it. When I did try it, I found it to be a great way to discover new stuff, some of which I went out and then bought, because I wanted the original CD to rip, and not the mish-mash of crappy MP3 files available at the time.

    So it seems to me that the MIAA shot itself in the foot, because (1) the demise of Napster just spurred the creation of the P2P services, and clients like LimeWire, ShareBear, etc. (2) their claims of theft were greatly exaggerated because I certainly would never have risked real money by buying stuff I wasn't sure I liked until after I had downloaded it and listened to it, and (3) you could still copy or rip your friends' CDs anyway without going on-line and risking getting caught.

    Having said that, I think that when organized crime gets involved and starts trying to profit big time from other peoples' work, that you have to look at the matter differently than just some kids swapping music with each other.

    People who defend file sharing don't automatically defend, say, a company in the far east manufacturing millions of counterfeit music CDs, games, and movies. When somebody gets rich by providing a server structure specifically designed to enable widespread copying, how is that morally different?

    I am dead set against prosecuting end users for sharing files, but anyone trying to make an actual business out of piracy has to expect that the police are going to come for them.

    If you can suffer a bad analogy, its sort of like the difference between the old hippy growing a pot plant in his back yard, which one might overlook, and a drug cartel, the existence of which leads to serious problems.

    1. steward
      FAIL

      Re: I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but...

      MIAA? What's that?

      Do you mean RIAA, or MPAA? How much research did you put into your opinion when you can't even get the abbreviations correct?

      1. Scott Pedigo
        Happy

        Re: I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but...

        See, I was right. Somebody did correct me. I meant RIAA.

      2. Fatman

        Re: Do you mean RIAA, or MPAA?

        Actually, he was close.

        A commonly found term for those evil organizations is MAFIAA.aka Music And Film Industry Association of America.

        Some have suggested that the I may suggest other words, like Incompetent or Idiot; while the first A might be better expressed as Assholes.

    2. Vic

      Re: I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but...

      > Didn't the guy make most of his millions by acting as a hub for distributing stolen goods?

      No.

      Vic.

  6. No. Really!?

    It'll be interesting to see what comes from all of this.

    Often by trying to eradicate something you end up with a new harder to kill variant.

    ... that pesky law of unintended consequences and evolution can be a PITA.

  7. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Mega and piracy

    Megaupload responded quickly to all notifications of pirated material by taking them down - and somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3(*) of what was hosted there was non-infringing material.

    (*) the numbers depend on who's printing the story.

    Add to that, nothing there was publically browsable. It was/is a file locker and the only way to get files was with a login/password.

    What seems to have irked the MAFIAA most wasn't that Mega wasn't proactively scanning for infringing material (which would be illegal in a lot of places anyway, including the USA), but that they'd announced an upcoming service which would directly compete with, and undermine, the existing MAFIAA models.

    I suspect that if someone else started signing major recording artists to new contracts and planning a similar model to Mega's they'd receive similar treatment.

    Does that make Kim Dotcom a Hero? Not really. He's an ex-spammer, ex-hacker, convicted fraudster who can play the PR game well - and the USA/NZ have executed some spectacular own goals while attempting to take him down for all the wrong reasons.

    I happen to intensely dislike most of what he stands for, but I dislike what's been done to try and take out Megaupload even more, especially given the ramifications for the Internet at large should the MAFIAA ultimately suceed through illegal methods.

    1. Fatman
      WTF?

      Re: ....they'd announced an upcoming service which would directly compete

      You know that is the real reason behind the DOJ's clumsy raid on Megaupload.

      I bet the piggies at the MAFIAA member labels and film studios shit bricks at the prospect of seeing their snouts taken out of the revenue stream food chain if Megabox were actually launched.

      Shit, it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to see that if artists could completely bypass the pigs at the trough the record labels; and sell directly to consumers, who the fuck needs the labels any more???? What value do they add to the equation??? I can easily see what they subtract from the equation. Talk about a monumental shift in the game. But, the fucking labels, run by the dinosaurs that can not appreciate new technologies, are facing being left behind.

      Do I feel sorry for those bastards? Fuck NO!!!!

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