back to article Dotcom owns up: my name was 'poison'

In the wake of his failure to make a dent in New Zealand politics, Kim Dotcom has said his name alone spoiled the chances for the alliance of the Internet Party and the Mana Movement. The result was truly dismal: the Internet Party failed to secure a seat, and Mana's leader Hone Harawira lost his seat, as New Zealand's …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A mea culpa and an apology?

    Pretty clear that NZ politics is no place for him...

    1. SDoradus

      Re: A mea culpa and an apology?

      Well yes. He wasn't running for office - he couldn't, being a German citizen, not NZ.

  2. Charles Manning

    This bloke is deluded

    KDC has an enormous ego and believes himself more than anyone else does.

    He paid around NZD4.5M, getting a small number of votes - around NZ$700 per vote.

    He ran a website trying to get people to pledge to vote - he got 422 pledges.

    His "party" blames him for their humiliating loss.

    His "moment of truth" email "proving" a conspiracy against him looks like the sort of fake a 10 year old might try. Even his party members think it is a fake.

    Everyone in NZ is royally tired of him and most can't wait for his next extradition hearing to roll around in Feb next year.

    1. LINCARD1000
      Stop

      Re: This bloke is deluded

      Mr. Dotcom is a very polarising figure, it's true. People seem to either like him or loathe him with very little middle-ground.

      That said I'd be wary of throwing out such rhetoric that "everyone in NZ is royally tired of him". The I.M. campaign certainly got a lot of younger potential voters engaged which has to be a good thing in anyone's eyes. It also hopefully opened a lot of people's eyes about the abuses of power going on by the Key led National government. While most on this site wouldn't be overly surprised at any of the revelations brought up by Greenwald and Snowden (or Mr. Dotcom himself), there are a lot of "average" New Zealanders who weren't aware of the pervasiveness of the surveillance going on and the corruption of our elected officials.

      NZ's media definitely has some biases and unless you read the papers (also biased but at least a little more comprehensive) you wouldn't know a lot about what's happening. Many of the average NZ'ers are too busy worrying about what's going on with '(COUNTRY)'s GOT TALENT!" or whatever the reality TV flavour of the month is.

      Yes, I think Mr. Dotcom's got a bit of an ego problem and he's almost definitely not as innocent as he would like to make out. But I still believe he's done a good thing for NZ if for no other reason than shaking up the status quo and pushing a few skeletons out of their closets. So good on him :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This bloke is deluded

        Not so sure about the "average NZers don't care" point... I have a lamentably large number of "average" New Zealanders in my social media contacts, and a depressingly overwhelming sentiment among them seemed to be that they voted for John Key because he wasn't KDC (the words "fat german computer nerd" were used fairly often, unfortunately - good on yer, New Zealand, you xenophobic, ball-obsessed pricks) - it's not so much that John Key won this election, it's that KDC /lost/ it for /everyone/ by effectively making himself a straw man for the whole center-left.

        The only upside here is, as you said, that it got the young folks thinking, and cast some light on the corruption inherent in Key's government. Shame he couldn't just blow the whistle and step back, without making it all about him.

        (AC, since someone in my workplace was fired recently for "lack of political neutrality")

      2. Charles Manning

        Re: This bloke is deluded

        " The I.M. campaign certainly got a lot of younger potential voters engaged "

        Nonsense.

        KDC's Internet party joined forces with the Mana party. They only got a 0.1% more votes than the Mana party did in 2011 even though they went from, essentialy, a Maori oriented party to a full spectrum party. They lost their existing MP.

        While the NZ media, like any media, have biasses, it is KDC's own party that has throw him under the bus fastest.

        http://tvnz.co.nz/vote-2014-news/internet-mana-made-mistake-kim-dotcom-laila-harre-6087161 Intenet party leader having a go at him

        http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Where-to-now-for-Georgina-Beyer/tabid/506/articleID/55196/Default.aspx an internet/mana candidate

        Did the youth turn out and vote? No. This election had the second lowest turn out ever.

    2. Desidero

      Re: This bloke is deluded

      If I only had a Bitcoin for every time someone complained about someone famous having an ego.

      Lessee, "Stop Making Sense" - too much of David Byrne's ego. Julian Assange & Glenn Greenwald - too much ego. Steve Jobs - too much ego. We can go on with Bono, Richard Branson, Tony Blair, Elon Musk, Obama, John McAfee, Kim Il-Jong (I,II,III...), Justin Bieber, etc.

      Space to humans: PEOPLE HAVE EGOS. OFTEN THE ONES WITH THE BIGGEST DO THE MOST HARM AND THE MOST GOOD. GET USED TO IT. Love, Ming the Merciless

      PS - didn't KDC acknowledge that the reason for the loss was him personally? Is that ego?

      PPS - are you really claiming there's no conspiracy against KDC? You keep using that word - I do not think it means what you think it means. Apologies, Inigo Montoya

    3. SDoradus

      Re: This bloke is deluded

      Typical Kiwi voters were indeed revolted by the prospect of a German, albeit a permanent resident, trying to tell them who to vote for in a particularly crass and graceless manner. However, the fact that Dotcom blamed himself for the electoral failure would tend to indicate that he is not 'deluded'. At least, not any more.

      Otherwise, most of the above is fair comment, but with these caveats:

      - That the email was a fake has not in fact been established. But it was certainly unsupported by other evidence.

      - The Internet Mana party may or may not blame him for the loss, but in the TV broadcast of his self-flagellation one could hear loud shouts of "No!" when he blamed himself.

      - It wasn't "his" party. Mana was a merger of two parties, one of which had existed long before, and the founding leader was Hone Harawira. Dotcom did however bankroll the merged entity.

      - Mana spent only $60,000 NZ dollars on the campaign. Not $4.5 million. The money Dotcom provided didn't go to election expenses. One wonders how much was actually provided, and what it was spent on.

      - The amount of money spent on the election was therefore vastly less than another unsuccessful party, the so-called "Conservatives", on the other side of the political spectrum. These are basically what a European would recognize as Christian Democrats. Their leader did bankroll their electoral effort to the tune of nearly two million NZ dollars - the second highest of any party contesting the election. (The highest spenders were the National party, which won.) In fact just after the vote the electoral commission filed a police complaint about two Conservative electoral officials for filing false expenses and spending more than was allowed during the election.

  3. Sean OConnor

    > "he originally funded with millions of his own money"

    Shouldn't that be "he originally funded with millions off the backs of the hard work of other people's original material" ?

    Yeah, yeah, flame away, but unless you've seen work you've spent years crafting stuck up on a pirate site for nothing you may not appreciate what a kick in the nuts that is.

    1. Piro Silver badge

      Please

      Google never turns up results with pirated material

      Blank vhs tapes sold purely to record home movies

      Blank cassettes were only for your dictation machine

      DVRs only 'time shift'

      Blah blah blah

      People have been money from copyright infringement for ages, in legit businesses

      1. veti Silver badge

        Re: Please

        In each of those cases, there's a legit business in selling a good/service, and what other people choose to do with that - is on them, not on the business that sold the service.

        Kim Dotcom, on the other hand, has a long and dishonourable track record of taking other people's money and using it for his own purposes. He's still doing it today.

        1. SDoradus

          Puhleeze

          Puhleeze. No Kiwi is under any illusions about Dotcom's motivations or character. It's the ghastly perversions of due process - not to mention the illegal seizure of chattels and property - which garner him sympathy, largely because if "they" can do it to him, they can do it just as easily to "us".

  4. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Kiwi complacency

    "there are a lot of "average" New Zealanders who weren't aware of the pervasiveness of the surveillance going on and the corruption of our elected officials."

    The NZ govt and police have been using high levels of surveillance on "certain elements" for years.

    The NZ Police openly describe various activists as "subversives" - which says a lot more about the police than it does about the people they're watching.

    It also says a lot about New Zealand media that the police can do this on national television without being hauled up on it by interviewers or commentators.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Kiwi complacency

      Most of the media in NZ are not just supportive of John Key, they actively promote him and denigrate most other parties.

      1. veti Silver badge

        Re: Kiwi complacency

        Never ascribe to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or in this case, rank incompetence.

        NZ's media is painfully amateurish to watch at any time. They were just as feeble in dealing with Helen Clarke as they are with Key. There's no conspiracy here, they're just idiots.

        "You cannot hope to bribe or twist/Thank God, the Kiwi journalist;

        But seeing what the fool will do/Unbribed, there's no occasion to."

        - after Humbert Wolfe

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    "my name was 'poison'"

    Ah! Now I understand why he changed it......

  6. SleepyJohn
    FAIL

    It was not just Dotcom at fault

    Internet Mana was thrown out by the electorate because it was seen clearly as a corrupt and cynical manipulation of the democratic weakness inherent in MMP, solely to give Hone Harawira a pot of money to finance his personal ambitions, and Kim Dotcom a power base from which to personally attack John Key. Harawira was just as responsible for this travesty as Dotcom, and fortunately it backfired spectacularly, giving both of them precisely what they deserved.

    'Middle NZ' supported John Key as they clearly see him, whatever his faults, as a safe pair of hands, capable of adding up 2 + 2 and getting 4.

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