[not their victim]

Blunder may see Dotcom's assets returned
NZ Newswire
March 18, 2012, 8:42 am


Internet piracy accused Kim Dotcom could get millions of dollars worth of assets back after a legal blunder over the court order used to seize the items.

Dozens of cars and bank accounts, property, jewellery, artworks and jet skis were among the assets seized from the Megaupload website founder after he was arrested on January 20 after a police raid on his mansion.

High Court Justice Judith Potter on Friday declared the restraining order "null and void" as a result of a legal blunder by police and Crown Law, the Herald on Sunday reports.

The order had "no legal effect".

Police Commissioner Peter Marshall had applied for the incorrect restraining order, and "confused" legal moves by opting for one which did not give Dotcom a chance to mount a defence, Justice Potter said.

Crown lawyer Anne Toohey wrote to the court on January 30, outlining five errors with the initial application.

She enclosed an application for a new, retrospective restraining order, which has been granted temporarily.

However, Justice Potter said she would soon make a ruling on whether the mistake should result in Dotcom getting his assets back.

Dotcom's lawyers have challenged the error, saying the assets "must be released" because they were "unlawfully seized and restrained under the order".

Dotcom and his three co-accused, Finn Abated, 38, and Mathias Ortmann, both of Germany, and Dutch national Bram van der Calk, 29, are on bail awaiting extradition to face charges in the United States of racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering.

A provisional start date for the extradition hearing, which could take three weeks, has been set down for August 20.
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[not their victim]

I guess this chap is wealthy enough, and has some big guns unlocked from the cabinet to help him load up a case for compensation

His wife and kids must have been terrified

his wife is expecting twins (according to the media, I dont know him personally),so you can imagine the stress on her


The Bradley Manning case in the USA has unraveled as well
(the intel soldier, who released some details to wikileaks, and the prosecution decreed he had no RIGHTS, which was wrong...)

and Julian Assange has been cleared of charges in the Uk and cannot be extradited to Sweden
hes now thinking of running for Senate in Australia

ok, so whats the legislation here for acc, when they have knowingly done wrong and can put all rights into order?...

i guess our assets might have to be sold after all, to financially repair the damage that has been done to claimants...
(I dont agree with the asset sales, they are ticking away nicely at the mo generating income)

[Huggy]

Hey what do you expect when the Crown or the Police are involved.

Obviously they dont even know the laws of this country.

This article did not surprise me in anyway, its all rather deja vu for me.

[angryman]

I don't understand how Kim Dotcoms assets can be seized in the first place.

I was under the impression that in NZ you are innocent until proven guilty, (well everywhere else except acc of coarse).

Would not Mr Dotcom need to have been found guilty of a crime, before losing everything that he owns?

Maybe the FBI are just like ACC, and can do whatever they like.

[Huggy]

Yeah the US tells NZ to jump and NZ responds by asking how high.

I hope Dotcom succeeds in this and comes back and kicks some ass bigtime.

[doppelganger]

Asetts can been seased only if thay are gained by illegal means.

[angryman]

doppelganger, on 19 March 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

Asetts can been seased only if thay are gained by illegal means.

Yes that was what I was led to believe, has it been proven yet that Mr Dotcom is guilty of breaking any laws?, the only thing he is probably guilty of at this stage, would be eating too many Big Macs.

[Huggy]

But hang on you 2, remember it is US law that seems to be getting used here with this case, the NZ government is so far up the US that they will jump as high as they can go when told to do so by the US government.

So anything goes when the US controls. Well so they seem to think but at this stage are getting away with. I hope this backfires on the NZ government for being so compliant to the yanks.

[happy1]

Couldn`t believe it, when I watched the police, plundering Dotcoms property and now its been proven its and iilgal seizure... well
!

Should be used to this sort of behaviour ,after having been a client of ACC.

Seems the powers, that be, like to make up the rules as they blunder along!!

[Huggy]

Yeah just like when the boys in blue come here and raided my house with warrants that did not meet the legal standard.............say no more

[redsquare74ucys]

Dotcom hasn't technically broken any laws. Basically the US made a law and decided that US law now
applies to everyone in the world. Then they came here and used their influence to ensure his assets
were impounded before any trial even took place. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of an outcry
but suspect everyone is trying to keep their head down now the US is getting very 1984.

There is no Mega Conspiracy, just a really successful business that is now dead whether or not Dotcom
is proven innocent. The court case is just a formality, win or lose he has lost his business and the
USA has instilled a state of fear all around the world of breaching a US copyright. Pity they can't
do the same in China. I guess Dotcom should have made his home there or in Venezula where there is
no extradition treaty with the US.

There is a similar case where the US has made it's own law (under pressure from the Hollywood moguels)
where a 23 year old British Citizen has been extradited to the US to face trial. This is the same
type of law that caught Dotcom. Basically he set up a site which hosts tv shows the US says are in
breach of copyright.



FYI a great site for watching TV shows is tv-links.eu (sidereel.com used to be good but most of
their links are down now)

It's awesome because you can watch when it suits you. Surprisingly there are a few NZ shows like
Police 10/7, Outrageous Fortune, and The Almightly Johnsons too.

If you have a Windows operating system I recommend you download Freecorder. This will record
the show in the "video history" section of Freecorder even when it is streaming. (Technically
it's their in your cache anyway but Freecorder is easy as to use). This saves bandwidth when you
have multiple family members wanting to watch. It is freakin' awesome =)

Obviously if you really wanted to store massive amounts of TV shows on disk you could do that
too.

The reality is that when NZ made it's law around making it a criminal Act to download illegal stuff
they left huge gaps in the law that mean anyone with half a brain can successfully flout the law
by saving streaming video. BTW Freecorder (just one of many great pieces of software that can do
this) allows video....say from Youtube...to convert to MP3. Oh...wait...that would mean if you
can find music on YT then you would never have to buy a legit CD again! People still do though
because they want to.

IMHO the best way to combat copyright violation is to change the basic business model into something
that actually works with new technology rather than to waste millions of dollars sipping water
out of a sinking ship.

[not their victim]

Im not sure he actually broke any laws

he declared his past before he came here as a 10 million + investor

wouldnt be more to do with his upload sharefile system being used by wikileaks as Julian Assange has just been freed of his charges, and another parallel situation happened with Bradley Manning, the US soldier in Intel, who released american military atrocities to wikileaks...???

its all simple really...just my opinion

Governments dont like their dirty little secrets being aired in public!!!

they then attack your credibility....

[happy1]

not their victim, on 19 March 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

Im not sure he actually broke any laws

he declared his past before he came here as a 10 million + investor

wouldnt be more to do with his upload sharefile system being used by wikileaks as Julian Assange has just been freed of his charges, and another parallel situation happened with Bradley Manning, the US soldier in Intel, who released american military atrocities to wikileaks...???

its all simple really...just my opinion

Governments dont like their dirty little secrets being aired in public!!!

they then attack your credibility....

Its like the dog with the bone.Jonkeys greedy lot thought Kim Dotcom was going to invest heaps in NZ .

Now looks like Kim Dotcom is going to have the last huge laugh when he sues the NZ police ... and that folks is what greed does to greedy polies like Jonkey and co.!

[advocate]

Huggy, on 19 March 2012 - 04:23 PM, said:

Yeah just like when the boys in blue come here and raided my house with warrants that did not meet the legal standard.............say no more

How can a warrant not meet the legal standard? I thought that if it's a warrant, then it's a warrant? Was it a fake warrant?

[Huggy]

Where in the affidavit used to apply for a warrant false and misleading information is presented to the court in order to get the warrant approved.

And where in the warrant false and misleading crimes that have been alleged to have been committed also maked the warrant lack legal standards

[not their victim]

Extradition reform is urgently needed – the government must act now | Catherine Heard


Sheffield Hallam university student Richard O'Dwyer, 23, allegedly earned thousands of pounds through advertising on the TVShack website before it was closed down by authorities in the United States. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA



Wednesday 14 March 2012
Safeguards have to be built in to strengthen the rights of people like Richard O'Dwyer, facing extradition to the US


Three months ago, after a long and heated debate, MPs voted for government action to reform our extradition laws as a matter of urgency. The government has yet to respond, but high-profile cases have kept extradition in the spotlight.

Christopher Tappin was extradited to the US three weeks ago. Denied bail, the 65-year-old from Kent is in solitary confinement and faces a 35-year sentence if convicted of trying to sell batteries for Iranian missiles. Yesterday, Theresa May ordered Richard O'Dwyer's extradition. The 23-year-old student is accused of running a website that infringed US copyright by providing links giving online access to pirated material. He faces 10 years if convicted. The activity he is accused of occurred here in the UK and it is unclear whether it would even amount to an offence under UK law.

In contrast to these UK extraditions, the Irish supreme court recently refused to extradite Ian Bailey to France, a British man living in Ireland, because the French had not charged him and the alleged offence was committed in Ireland, not France.

In the last year, reports by parliament's joint committee on human rights and Sir Scott Baker identified clear flaws in our extradition laws. At Fair Trials International, we regularly see the devastating effect of these flaws. We are calling on the government to announce a reform bill in the Queen's speech on 9 May and have identified six simple reforms that would build vital safeguards into the system. These would strengthen the fundamental rights of people subject to extradition requests, without requiring treaty renegotiation.

Our proposed reforms include giving UK judges powers to halt extradition until they are satisfied that a case is trial-ready, and to refuse extradition on "forum" grounds, where the country seeking extradition is clearly not the appropriate place for trial.

Forum is a question that arises in the Richard O'Dwyer case, as it does in other high-profile cases, such as those of Gary McKinnon and Babar Ahmed. Clearly we cannot refuse to extradite British citizens on forum grounds in every case with a cross-border dimension. Yet, when real issues arise over the appropriate forum for prosecution, judges should have a back-stop power to refuse extradition where it would not be in the interests of justice.

Judges are well-placed to give proper weight to factors such as the defendant's country of residence (given the huge personal impact of extradition), the location of evidence and witnesses and the relative costs of extradition to, and trial in, the requesting state compared with a trial in the home state. There has been a steady increase in cases with a multijurisdictional aspect. As a result, the question of where someone should be tried for crimes with a transnational element will arise more often. We need clearer rules to deal with these cases transparently and fairly.

The UK must also now engage with the US to address the perceived imbalance in the US-UK extradition treaty. Under the treaty, any UK extradition request must be supported by information that provides a reasonable basis to believe that the person sought committed the offence (the "probable cause test"), before extradition from the US will be ordered. There is no corresponding requirement for US extradition requests, which must be accompanied by information that would justify the issue of an arrest warrant (the "reasonable suspicion test").

There may be little practical difference between the standards to be met under the two tests. But the treaty must not only be fair, but be seen to be fair. A letter of understanding between the US and the UK governments setting out two tests, with clear agreed guidelines on how they are applied in practice, would be a simple way of putting this beyond doubt.

The need for action is clear. Extradition requests under the European arrest warrant are rising year on year. Forum questions of the kind raised by many high-profile US extradition requests need to be resolved in a fairer, more transparent way. We should not be consigning unconvicted people to months or years of pre-trial detention in foreign jails, while prosecutors drag their feet. The government cannot put off vital extradition reform any longer.

[not their victim]

http://www.3news.co....92/Default.aspx

[not their victim]

Kim Dotcom looking to get back internet access
Newstalk ZB
April 1, 2012, 8:44 am


Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom is going back to court in a bid for access to the internet.

His lawyers argue he needs email access to properly prepare his defence.

Mr Dotcom is on bail after a month-long legal battle, but one of the conditions is he can't go online.

He'll challenge that in court tomorrow.

[not their victim]

Dotcom granted internet, pool and studio access
Newstalk ZB
April 2, 2012, 2:49 pm
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Success for Kim Dotcom in court today.

A judge has adjusted bail conditions for the Megaupload founder.

It means he can now have access to the internet, travel the short distance from the house he's living in to the Coatesville mansion he's renting to swim in the pool there, and to travel to a recording studio in Auckland to continue recording an album.
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[not their victim]

quote from former article

The US alleges that the group used the file-sharing site Megaupload in what US prosecutors allege was a "mega conspiracy".

is this really about what he has done

or is it that he provided a service?
this service is used by wikileaks?
wikileaks has revealed secrets the US Govt don't want the public to know?

oooh at least hes got the $$$ to persue this....

guilty or not, there are still laws that need to be obeyed for civil protection?