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Kim Dotcom wins right to FBI files
- hastur 14y agoIs it just the judge that is so awesome, or the New Zeland justice system in general?
- 69_years_and 14y agoI would like to say NZ system in general, but there are exceptions. Generally though the judiciary is pretty fair and uphold the rights of ordinary folk and are not swayed by 'bigger interests'.
- Negitivefrags 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index You should probably take this with a grain of salt, but at least the perception of corruption is very low in NZ. This isn't the same thing as having a good justice system, but I think it's probably related.
- cesther 14y agoFYI: Judge David Harvey is the author of internet.law.nz and teaches Law & IT at the University of Auckland's Law School.
- tgasson 14y agoNote that internet.law.nz is a book, not a website. http://lawshop.com.au/products/internet_law_nz_3rd_edition-840-40.html http://lawshop.com.au/products/internet_law_nz_3rd_edition-8...
- peteretep 14y agoIf I am ever arrested for anything, I hope to make it in to the British, Australian, NZ, or Canadian legal systems.
- thatjoshguy 14y agoGOD BLESS THE QUEEN
- gouranga 14y agoOur germanic aristocratic overlord has done nothing but agree with the government and watch our rights get removed piecemeal over the last 20 years. I know she's a constitutional monarch but that takes the piss. I could almost see the glee in here eyes as she ushered in the CCDP at the last speech. Let's not forget that she is a traitor herself [1]. Edit: if you're going to downvote, tell me why. [1] She has committed five acts of treason by signing EU treaties that abolish autonomous control of the UK. She is also the only monarch to have broken her Coronation oath for doing so, the irony is that we're now bound to celebrate the Jubillee of a lying monarch.
- rmc 14y agoThe queen is not the overlord of the UK, Parliament which is elected by the people, has supreme power, and has the ability to depose the monarch (cf. Glorious Revolution). Although she "signs laws", it's a rubberstamp approval at that point. The monarch has to sign any law that Parliament makes (there have been wars over this). The UK/England has been party to international treaties for thousands of years. The EU is not something new and different and there is no reason to call it "treasonous" or "breaking the coronation oath", unless you just don't like the EU and you want to pretend the whole thing doesn't apply.
- gouranga 14y agoIt was a slightly sarcastic point. I'd have more respect for her if she was disposed of after standing up for people of her country. The CCDP is the sort of thing she should have said "screw you hippies" to: http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Communications_Capabilities_Development_Programme http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Communications_Capabili... The EU is falling to bits and was destined to from the start. The populous didn't vote it in either, despite the referrendum results. The referrendum was as unfair and biased as every election is.
- iuguy 14y agoIt's shocking to think about the US Government's casual disregard for all the people that used megaupload legitimately, and indeed the FBI's disregard for the provision of documents that would be expected to be pretty much standard in most court cases. After all, the ability to see the evidence being put against you is a basic tenet of the justice system.
- peteretep 14y agoIt's a stated tenet of most justice systems, but in the US even the justice system is politicized (elected public prosecutors?!), and everything politics touches becomes politics.
- Spooky23 14y agoUS Attorneys (Federal prosecutors) are appointed by the President for 4 year terms. Local State's Attorneys or District Attorneys are usually elected. If a case is primarily being handled by the FBI, it's generally a Federal case being handled by a US Attorney.
- rdtsc 14y agoAnd the President is elected every 4 years, and he is right at the center of political life in US. If the presidents wants to be elected again, we shouldn't be surprised if FBI and other parts of the executive branch are used to improve such odds. I would be more surprised perhaps if they are not used.
- idonthack 14y agoIf you think that appointed federal prosecutors don't play politics, think again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Gonzalez http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Gonzalez
- ktizo 14y agoIs like some anthropological form of ice-9, but constructed out of flags, money and distilled stupidity.
- J3L2404 14y agoVery few people dispute he was profiting from copyrighted material. Very few people would make a better villain. The best way to help the RIAA is to have a Kim Dotcom as your poster boy.
- bad_user 14y agoWhatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
- viraptor 14y agoWe aim to be civilised. The fact that someone broke the law, whether officially proven or not does not strip them of any protection or rights (well - it does to some extent if they're jailed, but you know what I mean). He has the right to fair justice whether he was profiting from distributing copyrighted material, or not.
- Karunamon 14y agoNo, the best way to help the MafiAA and their ilk is to ignore Dotcom's rights just because he may be a bit sketchy. You're right that nobody will dispute he was profiting from copyright infringement. The emails alone make that case. However, that doesn't mean that the circumstances surrounding his arrest were not incredibly off-putting.
- toyg 14y agoMiranda was a criminal, and guilty of rape.
- Ubervan 14y agoI find it interesting that people have files hosted in Megaupload that they have no backups for. Really?
- redthrowaway 14y agoI have files in my dropbox for which there are no backups. What's the difference?
- Simucal 14y agoAre the copies of the files on your computer in your Dropbox folder not defacto backups?
- redthrowaway 14y agoActually, I find myself in a position right now where they aren't on my computer. My MBP died, and I left my old job so my comp there was reformatted. I'm using a backup laptop that DB isn't installed on. So, were DB to get shuttered tomorrow, I'd lose everything. Although yes, that's far from the average case.
- Simucal 14y agoI had briefly considered creating a service that would backup your Dropbox, GDrive, and SkyDrive but it seemed to me that because most of the users had the files on their computers locally anyway the idea didn't have a lot of value. That is why I ask.
- tar 14y agoI wonder if there is a service that will sync a local folder on my PC with more than one cloud service. For example, all my files in a folders are synced with Dropbox, GDrive AND SkyDrive.
- wvenable 14y agoI had a backup drive die after the main drive failed in a small enough window that I hadn't moved everything over yet. Very bad day.
- junto 14y agoHe could try the 'photocopying defense'. In certain countries the prosecution has a legally responsibility to provide copies of the evidence to the defendant's legal team within a given time frame and bring the case to court within a second time frame. Individual copies of the evidence for the various interested parties must be provided by the prosecution to the defense team (defendant, legal counsel, barrister, etc). In cases such as these with overwhelming amounts of 'evidence', a surprisingly effective defensive legal tactic, is for the defendant to request as many copies of all of the evidence as viably and legally possible. It is then almost impossible for the prosecution to both copy the vast amount of evidence (imagine pages and pages of server logs) in triplicate, and bring the case to court within the allotted time. The copying alone is unfeasible. If anything this tactic can be used to force a plea bargain (lesser charge etc). A lawyer would have to confirm whether this would work in NZ.
- milesskorpen 14y agoI imagine the US government could find the people & money to make as many photocopies as necessary. The government runs on paper.
- jerf 14y agoMegaupload has 25 petabytes of data, according to the company complaining about having to host it. There was a company at one time who could put 50KB of binary data on a fax page [1]. 25 petabytes / 50 KB =~ 550 trillion sheets of paper. Heck, let's let them double-side it, so it's only 225 trillion sheets of paper. Even the United States Federal Government would choke on trying to produce that. [1]: http://faxauthority.com/3d-fax/ http://faxauthority.com/3d-fax/
- junto 14y agoI don't want to go into specific details, but I am aware of this defence being used for real about 10 years ago in a similar kind of case.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tripzilch 14y agoFinally we may learn how it's possible what tiny fraction of those tens of petabytes of data (25? I forget) held hostage actually consists of content that the RIAA/MPAA holds rights to (back of the envelope calcs in another thread showed that there's simply not enough Hollywood movies been made to get to 5% of that amount, even if they were all encoded as 10GB BluRay rips--which the majority of movies produced is not available as). It's the Porn Industry that should be suing for infringement, if anyone. Even then, given the sheer amount of data stored on MegaUpload, IMO there's actually a fair possibility (though not a given) that at least a significant part of that data does not infringe anything. Copyright-infringing data is a finite resource, There's a huge amount of it, sure, but on the scale of petabytes it's finite and very non-trivial to get such amounts of it. Non-infringing but useful data, however, is still pretty much infinite at that level. There's logs, generated stuff, calculations, measurements, renderings, database backups. It's guesswork, but I don't think it's improbable either. I'd really love to see a rundown of it, one day. And if it really turns out that a significant part of MegaUpload's data is indeed infringing content owned by the MPAA/RIAA, I'd be really curious to find out what part of my estimates were so wrong.