Megaupload Wins Evidence Disclosure Battle

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Megaupload Wins Evidence Disclosure Battle


Lawyers for Megaupload have filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. government's case against it.

Things are looking up a bit for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, following a ruling by a New Zealand court that the U.S. government must turn over the evidence it has against the company so he can properly defend himself against its extradition request. The U.S. had previously refused to turn over the evidence, saying that disclosure rules don't apply to extradition procedures, but the judge disagreed, ruling that making the process an "administrative" one rather than judicial could violate the rights of the accused.

"In my view there must be fairness at the hearing and balance must be struck, otherwise the record of case becomes dominant virtually to the exclusion of everything else and places the extradition process in danger of becoming an administrative one rather than judicial," Judge David Harvey wrote in his ruling.

The matter is further complicated because the U.S. government is "attempting to utilize concepts from the civil copyright context as a basis for the application of criminal copyright liability," he continued, noting that "the existence of criminal copyright charges is a keystone to providing the unlawful conduct element of the racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud charges" Dotcom faces.

The judge ordered that all documents specified in his ruling be turned over to Megaupload attorneys within 21 days.

In the U.S., meanwhile, lawyers for Megaupload filed a motion to dismiss the criminal case, arguing that the company's right to due process was violated when U.S. authorities seized "domain names, servers and personal belongings," effectively destroying the business without properly serving a summons.

"As a result of the Government's inability to properly serve the summons on Megaupload, this Court lacks jurisdiction over the company. In the absence of effective service of process, criminal proceedings against Megaupload cannot commence, and as the Court has aptly noted, we 'frankly don't know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter'," the filing states. "Megaupload is thus deprived of any procedure to clear its name or recoup its property, in clear violation of its due process rights."

Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken noted that the failure to serve was not an oversight but due to the fact that companies outside of U.S. jurisdiction cannot be served. According to TorrentFreak [http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-asks-court-to-dismiss-the-criminal-case-120530], if the motion is granted it will mean the end of the case against Dotcom and Megaupload.

Source: TorrentFreak [http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-wins-crucial-evidence-disclosure-battle-with-us-govt-120529]


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Ickorus

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Mar 9, 2009
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This is some very good news, the way the US government is handling the Megaupload case is disgusting.
 

draythefingerless

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Jul 10, 2010
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If they had handled this with more care and subtlety instead of busting in and bullying new zealand and megaupload, they could of gotten those scumbags at MegaUpload who were helping pirates.
 

SnowyGamester

Tech Head
Oct 18, 2009
938
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So they didn't want to give them access to the evidence they were using against them? How else are they supposed to know what to defend themselves against? This whole thing was dodgy enough to begin with but that is a bit much. That and the fact that this whole debacle has effectively gimped file sharing over the internet unless you want to use torrents or get your own hosting (or use email attachments, bleh). I miss Megaupload.
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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Justice is slowly being served. Hopefully soon the courts give a nice bitchslap to the US justice department for oversteppin their bounds to a disgustin degree.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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It's good to see people get bitchslapped when they fuck up. Yes, yes it is.
 

Hunter65416

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Oct 22, 2010
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"eeergh Why do people hate the U.S so much wahhh" Because its always your govournment pulling shit like this all the time..fuck sake...if any other country threw throughs their weight around like that they get punched..now that ive got that off my chest.. I had a feeling that this case wasnt going to go through from day 1..im all for dotcom sueing for damages.
 

Ickorus

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draythefingerless said:
If they had handled this with more care and subtlety instead of busting in and bullying new zealand and megaupload, they could of gotten those scumbags at MegaUpload who were helping pirates.
Megaupload did remove illegal content, they just didn't have the staff to remove it faster than it was uploaded.
 

Kieve

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Jan 4, 2011
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Ickorus said:
Megaupload did remove illegal content, they just didn't have the staff to remove it faster than it was uploaded.
Like asking one janitor to clean up after several hundred monkeys all flinging poo at the wall...

Megaupload might have a veritable infestation of pirated/illegal material, but that's on the people uploading, not the company itself. Would be nice to see the JD get a good swift slap upside the head for these shenanigans, Gibbs style.
 

s_h_a_d_o

Mr Propellerhead
Jun 15, 2010
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Andy Chalk said:
...

Things are looking up a bit for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, following a ruling by a New Zealand court that the U.S. government must turn over the evidence it has against the company so he can properly defend himself against its extradition request...


This, after the evidence had *already* been spirited away by U.S. authorities, in direct contravention of agreements made with the New Zealand court and the defendant's lawyers.
:|
 

thethird0611

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Feb 19, 2011
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Hunter65416 said:
"eeergh Why do people hate the U.S so much wahhh" Because its always your govournment pulling shit like this all the time..fuck sake...if any other country threw throughs their weight around like that they get punched..now that ive got that off my chest.. I had a feeling that this case wasnt going to go through from day 1..im all for dotcom sueing for damages.
Well, it seems not a single person said anything near that, and it seems everyone is in agreement that this was handled poorly. So... Might want to that the quote you have up there and send it back to imaginary land.

OT: Honestly, I feel that Megaupload did need to be shutdown (and I think I remember that the providers were actually encouraging pirating? Pretty sure I remember that correctly, but dont quote me), so +1 on that. The U.S. Judicial System really needs to be looked over though (like the rest of the government), and learn that the our whole system was based off of fair trials, even if the accused seems 100% guilty. Innocent until proven guilty.
 

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
5,264
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While I don't agree with MU's...practices...the way the US gov't acted like 'world police and master of the world' was REALLY rude/mean/1984.

The US is NOT the rulers of the planet, they need to stop acting like it.
 

Gamegodtre

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Aug 24, 2009
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so when this is over will all the files be available again?

on another note the US really F-ed this one up big time.
 

Sovereignty

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Jan 25, 2010
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Hunter65416 said:
"eeergh Why do people hate the U.S so much wahhh" Because its always your govournment pulling shit like this all the time..fuck sake...if any other country threw throughs their weight around like that they get punched..now that ive got that off my chest.. I had a feeling that this case wasnt going to go through from day 1..im all for dotcom sueing for damages.


First and foremost I quote you because you need a tall glass of calm the hell down. You put an odd collection of words in quotes to act like sooooo many Americans are crying foul over this when there wasn't a post I could see that had anyone defending the U.S.


OT: I hope the entertainment industry and pushed for this is going to foot the bill once the damages are assessed and expected to be paid. God knows the government can't afford it.

I'd really like to know how a judicial system as slow and complex as ours, still has loop holes where the fed can just swoop in and seize web sites.
 

NightHawk21

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Dec 8, 2010
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You know what will be hilarious. If MU wins, gets all their domains back and all their sites go live, and on top of that the US legal team gets sued for every lost penny they would've earned for all the days it was down, and if a class-action lawsuit then gets filed against them as well by all the people who were denied access to a service they paid for. I would literally probably cry from laughter.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Hmmm, well there are a number of problems here.

At it's core the US goverment does have a point. What's more where the US goverment generally has a problem in not really understanding what they are dealing with, in this case there actions are pretty much appropriate. Simply put, there is no other viable way of going after an international, telecommunications based business like Megaupload than the avenue they pursued. Megaupload is more or less hiding behind it's international status to basically argue that no goverment could viably go after them without stepping on something.

Ultimatly the treaties in force for things like extraditions exist for the specific reason of forcing criminals accused of a crime by another country to stand trial in that country. The whole point of the treaty is that it doesn't nessicarly require what someone did to be a crime in the country they are being extradited from. The agreement being that both countries will turn over criminals wanted for crimes in another country.

In this case it's pretty black and white, as I understand things New Zealand does indeed have an extradition treaty with the US (which is why they are not defending it that way), that makes this an administrative matter, not a Judicial one, because the whole idea is to bring the guy to the US to stand trial in the Judicial system to find out if he's guilty or not... and that's in keeping with the agreement. The evidence the US has is more or less irrelevent to the treaty in question, as the whole idea is that it's a simple matter of us wanting to arrest him.

From where I'm sitting, a lot of people are happy to see New Zealand sticking it to the US, and others are pretty much cheering for a file sharing site fighting against the goverment with a degree of sense. The bottom line here is that there is enough evidence to bring this to trial, whether Megaupload is guilty or not, and that's why pre-existing agreements for exradition exist. Sending the guy to the US at this point isn't convicting him, it's simply forcing him to have to face the court.

I have mixed opinions on the issue itself, but I generally come down as being just as anti-pirate as I am anti-industry.

I'll also say that thumbing your nose at the US isn't the wisest move over something like this, because when the time comes and New Zealand wants our help with a crime (and it will happen given time) we're just as likely to do the same thing now, as New Zealand isn't holding up their end of things. Fears over this "becoming an administrative matter" are ridiculous because that's what it is, there is no need to provide evidence to prove him guilty at the moment as the whole idea is to bring it to trial, he hasn't bene convicted of anything. The evidence isn't needed until the trial begins, and by definition evidence and the circulation there of is kept under wraps before a trial begins. The more that stuff is circulated, the harder it is to get untainted jurors (one way or another) and the last thing we need is New Zealand going to the press and revealing what the evidence is, knowing dang well that with the interest this case ha garnered it's going to feed back into the US media and people will hear about it.
 

Gennadios

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Aug 19, 2009
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I'm glad my government's efforts are getting shot down, honestly.

This isn't all that different from the 80's when one of the motion picture associations tried to block the production of VCRs because they were used primarily to pirate videos. The ruling in that case was that even if something is used to aid piracy more often than not, if it can be proven that the product in question has legitimate reasons for existing outside of that, it's still a legal product.

Considering that in the case of gaming, megaupload was often used to host mods and sharing save games, they can't really make the case that ALL of its use is illegitimate.

NightHawk21 said:
If MU wins, gets all their domains back and all their sites go live, and on top of that the US legal team gets sued for every lost penny they would've earned for all the days it was down, and if a class-action lawsuit then gets filed against them as well by all the people who were denied access to a service they paid for.
It's not that different from our government squandering 20m in it's legal attempt to ban violent games in my state. Wasting tax payer money on unconstitutional actions is where the US Government is a viking.

I wouldn't be too surprised, and I'll make sure to stay unemployed until then to make sure I'm not the one paying for that particular loss in taxes.