Kim Dotcom Raid Video Goes Public

[tetron]

It says he's the megaupload founder but... wtf does this guy do that he needs a security force and a panic room ? And in New Zealand of all places. Looking at that video I'd swear they were raiding the home of some Venezuelan drug lord.

 

[Karadalis]

It says he's the megaupload founder but... wtf does this guy do that he needs a security force and a panic room ? And in New Zealand of all places. Looking at that video I'd swear they were raiding the home of some Venezuelan drug lord.

Aparantly he needs the panic room incase a special police squad kicks in the door and uses overwhelming force to aprehent a fat nerd.

 

[Alterego-X]

If that's what the copyright industry is capable of, then the only wrong Dotcom did was not hitting it hard enough, not destroying it fast enough.

 

[blipblop]

Oh lord, reading the Youtube comments I've been reminded of the only thing dumber than the people organising this raid.

Here's andycf87's thought's on politics:

"NOPE actually the left has been causing the vast majority of the problems of the last couple hundred years. Look at National Socialism in Germany.... aka NAZIS... Then there were the millions who starved to death under communist regimes (which is just advanced socialism) you are the ignorant one because the left has brainwashed you"

Yep, Hitler the communist.

hehe nothing makes you laugh like youtube comments

 

[The Great JT]

I would question why they brought such heavy arms into an engagement like this. Standard issue Glock sidearm, yeah, I see that. But an assault rifle?

 

[tavelkyosoba]

I would question why they brought such heavy arms into an engagement like this. Standard issue Glock sidearm, yeah, I see that. But an assault rifle?

small caliber rifles are actually much safer than handguns to use near bystanders because they don't over penetrate targets or walls. If you expect you may do some shooting (who knows what someone with an estate like that is capable of) then you're better off with a small caliber rifle.

Police in these parts carry M4's in their patrol cars for that very reason.

 

[Karadalis]

(who knows what someone with an estate like that is capable of)

I would take assault rifles if i was storming some ghetto building or some religious sect temple/church but not really when storming an estate owned by an internet company.

Heck tazers would have been enough... whats the worst his office workers could do? Attack you with a stapler? XD

 

[tavelkyosoba]

(who knows what someone with an estate like that is capable of) [quaote/]

I would take assault rifles if i was storming some ghetto building or some religious sect temple/church but not really when storming an estate owned by an internet company.

Heck tazers would have been enough... whats the worst his office workers could do? Attack you with a stapler? XD

The issue is...how do you know he's a harmless nerd. Maybe he's a psycho nerd with too much money and has mercenaries on staff and a helicopter waiting to whisk him off to a secret hideout. If you were going into that, would you go "oh he's harmless" or would you go "oh he's PROBABLY harmless, better safe than sorry though."

Also don't use the word "assault rifle" like it's a bad thing, the "assault" in that context means "barely adequate." They use a bullet designed for prairie dogs for crying out loud.

 

[Megacherv]

What can I say? The Somalians will tell you America takes pirates VERY seriously.
Sometimes we go a bit overboard.

Sadly, today was not the day for a pun-thread...

 

[maninahat]

I think it's an absolute shambles how such an ignoramusly huge, expensive, and ugly house got planning permission in such a beautiful area? Seriously? That had got to be a staggering volume of brown paper envelopes floating around the council offices to get that passed, it's an absolute disgrace.

This comment has made my entire evening. I was getting pretty annoyed at all the "corperation lobbyists rule the US government and the New-Zealand police force!" comments, and then when I got to yours, I suddenly felt a lot better.

Though OT: as an arm-chair police tactician with no knowledge whatsoever of New-Zealand police raid tactics, I feel my protests about this raid will be totally informed and well worth listening to. Down with the filth! record companies rule Ameri Euro New Zealand etc.

 

[thesilentman]

as much as that guy is a fucking rotten bastard seeing all the bullshit surrounding his case makes me giggle gleefully like a little girl.
it won't have any consequences at all on the activities of certain countries but hey, you take what you can get.

What the in the serious fuck? Dotcom did nothing illegal and you fucking support him being arrested by a whole fucking army. What the fuck.

yes he did
among others insider trading and embezzlement. he invested in a broken company, announced his intentions to invest 50 million and pulled all his money after a few days. The guy is a grade A dick and has always been, he is not some kind of noble misunderstood businessman who only wanted to help people distribute linux and term papers and shit, he knew there was money in it for him when turning a blind eye to piracy so he did.
and yes i totally support one fat fuck being arrested by a whole army, that's why it saddens me that the fuckups done by both US and new zealand authorities will not have any consequences on the way the US acts.

Er, it was only a website. Which other people used. Not his fault entirely. Sending a whole force? That's equivalent to someone going ahead and torturing government employees for the lulz and getting 5 years in jail. Very. Fucking. Disproportionate.

and this is why we need an irony font.
of course the whole raid was completely out of proportions and they didn't even have any legal grounds for everything and it was only about breaking the economic back of the company(btw you should read everything is prosecutor in this case is saying why they are not giving the money back, scary AND funny). doesn't change the fact that dotcom is scum.

in other news: when sunbathing in russia you may have to deal with a bunch of tanks driving across the beach

How's he scum? I feel like I'm missing something.

 

[Karadalis]

The issue is...how do you know he's a harmless nerd.

Well aparantly the police forces themselves knew allready that hes harmless because they themselve stated that they went over the top.

For all intents and purposes he was just running a business... not a drug dealer ring. There was no reason to think he or anyone working there was armed to the teeth or actually dangerous.

Dunno but usually theres some preparation time before a raid where the police forces are briefed... we are talking about business assets here not about a cache of illegal goods.. nor was dotcom a member of the mafia...

And no... hes not a james bond villain either... thought this would have made this whole thing totaly epic...

 

[crazyrabbits]

...Why?

Why so many police? The guy just made a website.

I don't think he's a mass murderer.

File sharing is worse than mass murder when your a music/movie lobbyist, and it is lobby monies that move our government anymore, the mpaa and riaa and others are dumping so much cash into the pockets of politicians its ridicilous, in turn they try each and every year to expand their control over the net, will try to censor the net given time, so yea this guy was worse than hitler to mpaa or a riaa suit, and you can bet they put all kinds of pressure to do something about all these file upload/torrent sites.

the last several years of illegal raids on sites, some even seized mistakenly, by the fbi in foreign countries is mind boggling to me, mind boggling that our own poupulatons seems not the lest bit bothered by it over here, and the fact the they can even operate over there at all.

Yeah, I agree with this.

Remember how bad the MPAA looked when they tried to take down The Pirate Bay? They went all the way to Sweden and got 65 officers to raid their offices and impound their servers, all while the MPAA issued a back-patting press release saying that had curbed the biggest provider of pirated material in history...then the site came back up two days later. The site owners were charged, but the whole thing has basically been forgotten about, seeing as they just moved their servers out-of-country (that, and Sweden's copyright laws are much less strict than the U.S.).

Even when the government steps in and takes down an illegal content provider (and in this case, they had much more justification), they still lose. They seized the Megaupload servers days before they even raided the place. It was a show of force - nothing more.

What I really want to know is whether the celebrities who supported Megaupload before its collapse (including singers like Swizz Beatz) knew that the site was a front for piracy.

 

[tavelkyosoba]

The issue is...how do you know he's a harmless nerd.

Well aparantly the police forces themselves knew allready that hes harmless because they themselve stated that they went over the top.

For all intents and purposes he was just running a business... not a drug dealer ring. There was no reason to think he or anyone working there was armed to the teeth or actually dangerous.

Dunno but usually theres some preparation time before a raid where the police forces are briefed... we are talking about business assets here not about a cache of illegal goods.. nor was dotcom a member of the mafia...

And no... hes not a james bond villain either... thought this would have made this whole thing totaly epic...

Actually, I WAS a little confused about how they knew the threat was low enough not to wear armor but high enough to bring long guns. Maybe they have an excel spreadsheet that calculates the appropriate attire for each raid.

 

[teebeeohh]

as much as that guy is a fucking rotten bastard seeing all the bullshit surrounding his case makes me giggle gleefully like a little girl.
it won't have any consequences at all on the activities of certain countries but hey, you take what you can get.

What the in the serious fuck? Dotcom did nothing illegal and you fucking support him being arrested by a whole fucking army. What the fuck.

yes he did
among others insider trading and embezzlement. he invested in a broken company, announced his intentions to invest 50 million and pulled all his money after a few days. The guy is a grade A dick and has always been, he is not some kind of noble misunderstood businessman who only wanted to help people distribute linux and term papers and shit, he knew there was money in it for him when turning a blind eye to piracy so he did.
and yes i totally support one fat fuck being arrested by a whole army, that's why it saddens me that the fuckups done by both US and new zealand authorities will not have any consequences on the way the US acts.

Er, it was only a website. Which other people used. Not his fault entirely. Sending a whole force? That's equivalent to someone going ahead and torturing government employees for the lulz and getting 5 years in jail. Very. Fucking. Disproportionate.

and this is why we need an irony font.
of course the whole raid was completely out of proportions and they didn't even have any legal grounds for everything and it was only about breaking the economic back of the company(btw you should read everything is prosecutor in this case is saying why they are not giving the money back, scary AND funny). doesn't change the fact that dotcom is scum.

in other news: when sunbathing in russia you may have to deal with a bunch of tanks driving across the beach

How's he scum? I feel like I'm missing something.

he stole money from investors, friends and german taxpayers. this was in the late 90s/early 2000s

 

[AlwaysPractical]

Why? what could he possibly do? Send them copies of Hannah Montanna films? Play Jedward Tracks?

Oh the horror, burn the mansion down

 

[Scorpid]

My guess is simple at to why there was so much force applied to what should of simply been two officers in a patrol car taking him in; the FBI didn't want Dotcom thinking to resist even for a moment saying, "wait I'll call my Lawyer". No one could of possibly expected him to come out like Scarface, they simply wanted to secure him and make a quick getaway with every piece of evidence they could. Because copyright holders like Viacom and Disney simply have that much push to get the government to act in that manner. Hollywood is Americas primary export after all.

 

[Two-A]

"So we send a full police force inside the building, equipped with assault rifles; to arrest one, possibly harmless, man."

"Should we give them full protection?"

"No, that's just ridiculous"

In all seriousness, I know he ran a webpage that was famous for it's pirated content. But this ammount of force is excessive, and it was unjustified as the man wasn't even armed