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Kim Dotcom wins battle in ongoing fight against U.S. extradition
- aogl 9y agoAwarded NZ$60,000 for “loss of dignity and injury to feelings” haha
- proaralyst 9y agoWhy the laugh? The State caused him injury. Would it be better to leave the injustice alone? Just say sorry? If this were a civil case he'd certainly be awarded monetary damages.
- baybal2 9y agoCompared to payouts in other common law jurisdictions, that is, indeed, laughable.
- ztoben 9y agoWhat would a typical payout be?
- balabaster 9y agoI reckon $500 million should do it :P
- baybal2 9y agoAdd two zeroes. In commom common law, defamation damages are all, but damages: they are a sum of assumed and punitive damages. If accused is a corp., already large punitive damages are scaled to its size. UK's record damages were in above GPB 2M
- bloak 9y agoPunitive damages are a daft concept and only exist in the USA, I hope. GPB must be the Guadalupe Banana, right? Perhaps they have punitive damages in Guadalupe...
- paulie_a 9y agoKim dotcom would have to have dignity first in order to lose it
- nothrabannosir 9y agoNot op, but I do agree there is something hilariously ironic about that verdict, given the circumstances. In a “haha serves you right” kind of way.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 9y agoA police raid is no laughing matter. People die all the time, so it's fortunate nobody got hurt. Ordinarily for white collar crime, you'd expect a knock on the door and to be handed a summons, not full terrorism mode. You'd also expect your government to follow its due process, again not denying rights in full terrorism mode. Oligarchy at work.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoThat's not actually what this court case is about. This case was about the government refusing to give Kim Dotcom information they held about him.
- jashmatthews 9y agoA police raid is no laughing matter. People die all the time, so it's fortunate nobody got hurt. Not in New Zealand, they don't. Although Hollywood did put pressure on the NZ government to do a full tactical raid on this guys house.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shawabawa3 9y agoThey broke into the guys house with loaded automatic weapons. That's putting everyone involved in lethal danger, no matter what country it's in
- djsumdog 9y agoAnd Many people who used Megaupload for legit data storage lost all of it after the US raids. Customer data still hasn't been recovered.
- djsumdog 9y agoNZ cops do carry guns, just typically not on their person. They're locked in the boot of their vehicles. I have seen an NZ officer with their firearm on them and it's weird enough that everyone takes notice; like seeing litter in a mall in Singapore.
- mtgx 9y agoI assume you're laughing because the sum was so small. It should have been at least 100x larger, in the millions.
- peebtkxs 9y agoAgreed. The time he’s lost through this attrition is criminal. International Government seizure is ridiculous.
- MentallyRetired 9y agoAgreed, but I will admit I chuckled when I read "loss of dignity" and "injury to feelings". They could at least call it emotional damages. I don't think he was laughing at the amount or at Kim but at the legal title of the relief.
- xtrapolate 9y agoWhy are you being down-voted? What's going on? This case has been going on for years; he has been through hell. How is this a proper reimbursement? Edit: Forgot it's yet another echo chamber community.
- Taniwha 9y agoNew Zealand doesn't do damages like that, that's an American thing
- balabaster 9y agoIronically, this whole case seems to have turned him into a modern day Robin Hood. I'd say this disaster of a situation has done far from cause him loss of dignity and injury to his feelings. I'd say it's cemented a status that many aspire to and very few ever achieve. His personality has been magnified many times more than it ever would have been by this whole debacle. So to be awarded NZ$60K for this is hilarious. Award it to him for "inconvenience to his life" or "defamation", "libel" or "slander" or whatever, but "loss of dignity and injury to feelings" is disingenuous at best. The guy's infamy has reached heroic proportions.
- slg 9y ago>this whole case seems to have turned him into a modern day Robin Hood. This dude is a professional troll and you comparing him to Robin Hood means you are falling for his schtick. The most recent example of his trolling is the fact that he has become one of the biggest public supporters of the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was behind the DNC leaks and not Russia.
- balabaster 9y agoUm... Robin Hood was a fictional character. The schtick is what makes the legend. Without the schtick, he's just some schmuck that got busted for trafficking illegal copies of files. Don't confuse "being thoroughly amused by" with "falling for."
- slg 9y agoAt the heart of the story Robin Hood is about a good person who was breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy. Kim Dotcom wants you to think he is breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy but he is actually doing it for his own personal enrichment either financially or egotistically. That it the distinction I want to make that I think was missing from your initial comment.
- balabaster 9y ago
- puppetmaster400 9y agoIf the movie studios are damaged, why is fbi the party?
- Proven 9y agoWell done Mr.com!
- ponderatul 9y agoI always wanted to know how is the damage done determined ? "U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material." Distributing copyrighted stuff is illegal, period. But the way those calculations are made worries me. Do they start from the presumption that if the movie wasn't uploaded on megaupload, some person would have bought tickets to that film ? Is that the underlying premise? I mean as a consumer I could either buy the movie, or watch an illegal upload of it. Isn't that a false dichotomy?. I could just as well not watch it, if that illegal upload didn't exist, and as such I would not have costed the company one cent.
- benchaney 9y agoThey're completely made up. There is no practical way to measure the amount of revenue lost by copyright infringement, and big numbers sound good and drive fear and outrage.
- ska 9y agoI suspect they use the same logic that police media relations tend to use in reporting "street value", etc. Something like assume the highest possible revenue outcome, then round up. If it doesn't immediately fail the giggle test, that's your number. We saw the same thing with music downloads, the assumption that every one represented the loss of a full priced album purchase or whatever.
- toyg 9y ago> Isn't that a false dichotomy? It is, and it's been pointed out from the dawn of computer piracy. But the world runs on greed, not on logic.
- DavidNielsen 9y agoRob Reid did a funny 5min TED Talk on this called the 8 Billion dollar iPod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0 He used the same premise when he wrote the comedy sci-fi book Year Zero, the story of naive aliens accidentally pirating all of Earths music and the legal consequences thereof, i.e. owning the citizens of Earth literally all the money in the universe leading to the ruination of their delightfully hedonistic utopia. A quick and hilarious read.
- ebbv 9y agoWhy is this guy's legal troubles news? Honestly. There's tons of rich jerks like him who have legal troubles that we don't hear about. But for some reason he likes to put out press releases about every step of the way and then they actually get picked up and upvoted on sites like this. Why? I really don't understand. It's not like he's some principled crusader fighting for a precedent that affects all of us. He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy, and then managed to dodge the consequences because he is rich. Whoopitee doo. Don't get me wrong I think the US copyright laws are screwed up and have been manipulated by awful corporations for decades. But his legal troubles don't really have any consequence on that front, things won't be any better because he wins (and won't be worse if he loses.) So I fail to see why anyone thinks it is interesting on any level.
- gameswithgo 9y agoYeah I agree. Kim is not the hero we need. Maybe the one we deserve though.
- chrissnell 9y agoThis is not Kim Schmitz's first involvement in illegal activities. He's no folk hero.
- Mononokay 9y ago> He's just some creep who got rich off of deliberately running a site that facilitated piracy He actually got rich off of the Dot Com bubble years before, which is why he changed his name to Kim Dotcom. He embodies a lot of the stereotypical hacker image that people have - overweight, hacked the Pentagon+NASA+Citibank before he was old enough to drink in the US, a touch dramatic, etc. It's only natural that he's given a bit of attention. Not to mention he really didn't break any law - Section 230 made site-owners not responsible for content posted to their site unless they failed to remove it, and MegaUpload complied with DMCA requests all the time.
- lawnchair_larry 9y agoHe didn’t hack anything nor get rich off of the bubble. He was always a fraud.
- balabaster 9y agoThey should make a movie about this guy :D
- anc84 9y agoOnly if it includes his illegal and disgusting previous activities, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Legal_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Legal_investigation... and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Werdegang https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Werdegang
- balabaster 9y agoLOL of course... like the whole kit and caboodle. I bet they'd make back all the money they could realistically claim to have lost by his antics. I'm just wondering who they could cast to capture his personality profile. Jack Black? :P He reminds me of an arch villain that you love to hate from some superhero movie... like The Kingpin. We need a superhero to battle him. He has comic book legend written all over him.
- zeth___ 9y agoHow bad do you have to screw up to make this guy look like the hero?
- balabaster 9y agoDid they really need to screw up? I think we're all on the same page here, it doesn't matter who you are or how much of a fuck up you are, if you're going up against the MAFIAA, pretty much everyone's on your side :P
- sonar_un 9y agoLike this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L87D4_uc2Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L87D4_uc2Oc
- phixiuz 9y agoA documentary was made about him last year: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3640710/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3640710/
- baldfat 9y agoThis is attempting to fix something that is already fixed. Morally I want to pay for everything I use. I music production I own a license for everything I use or demo. It is very simple to pirate plugins (Kayne West pirated DeadMau5's Serum plugin) https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/dance/6897291/deadmau5-kanye-west-pirate-bay https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/dance/6897291/deadma... In the past it was impossible to pay for content and the only place it was available was on torrents. It wasn't available and now people just pay for streaming services because it is available. Also it is just easier to use streaming services.
- tachyonbeam 9y agoThat's not quite true. I pay for streaming services, and when it comes to music, I can find 99% of what I want on said streaming services. For video though, even if you have Netflix, Amazon video, Google Play and HBO now, there are still a number of movies and TV shows you don't legally have access to. That, and last I checked, the software for HBO now was pretty crap, I couldn't get it to stream on my Chromecast. Amazon video also refused to build in Chromecast support because they want to sell you their own device.
- baldfat 9y agoSure there are always going to be a ton of exceptions but we are light years past where we were just 5 years ago.
- sam0x17 9y agohere here!
- kodablah 9y ago> a Wellington court ruled the attorney general broke the law When does the sentencing or punishment phase start?
- Taniwha 9y agoin New Zealand, a parliamentary democracy, all ministers are elected politicians, including the attorney general - that particular attorney general is now out of power - sentencing has completed and a fine (against the government) levied
- redm 9y agoLove Kim Dotcom or hate him, you have to applaud his tenacity in defending himself. When he was arrested in 2012, I don't think anyone remotely imagined he would still be battling, and, in many regards, winning against the US Government.
- jonathanstrange 9y agoThey took away his business and more than 5 years of his life, and he hasn't even prevented extradition yet. I wouldn't call this winning. I personally think that the case should be dismissed because the legal proceedings went on for so long and were plastered with rights violations - such as illegal surveillance, property prematurely transferred to a foreign country.
- ben010783 9y agoIf you don't have money you take a deal and plead guilty. If you have money, you can drag things out for years.
- the-pigeon 9y agoYeah but they froze most of his assets initially so he didn't have money to defend himself. It's been a mix of luck, US Government mishandling the case and the tenacity of Kim.
- the_cat_kittles 9y ago
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoIs there an alternate universe where our tax dollars aren't being flushed down the toilet on things like this?
- fareesh 9y agoKim claims that he gave Hollywood companies direct DB delete access for anything they didn't like, in addition to DMCA takedown request processing. There are arguments suggesting that he and his team knew that there was illegally copied content on his servers and they did nothing about it of their own volition. Is there a law that says that if you see something that was uploaded and you don't believe that it's licensed, you are legally obligated to suo moto delete it? Genuine question
- ElCapitanMarkla 9y agoI believe part of the case here was that they would hash uploaded content, only storing unique files once but would create a new link to the content each time someone uploaded it. And when they received the DMCA requests they only took down the reported link rather than all of the links to that file.
- braderhart 9y agoBut will he tell us who the killers of Setch Rich are?