Megaupload Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-trial-may-never-happen-judge-says-120420

by res0nat0r • 14 years ago

184 84 14 years ago

drcube• 14 years ago

Since the sentence (taking down MU's business and confiscating all of their property and money) has already been carried out, I'm pretty sure the FBIAA doesn't care.

Karunamon3• 14 years ago

The business can be rebuilt (perhaps at great cost), but since the NZ court order which led to the seizure of his property was also ruled to be "null and void", Kim is legally entitled to his property back.

kijin2• 14 years ago

Which he might eventually get back, after 5-10 years I guess.

liquidise• 14 years ago

FBIAA might be one of the best, and most accurate, acronyms I have seen in some time

cryptoz• 14 years ago

I like MAFIAA too :) https://www.google.ca/search?q=mafiaa

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

MAFIAA.org

kiiski• 14 years ago

What exactly is it supposed to be an acronym for? MAFIAA at least has a clear meaning ("Music And Film Industry Association of America"), but FBIAA seems to only stand for "Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association", which doesn't have anything to do with copyrights.

dirkdk• 14 years ago

agreed, MU has already been destroyed pretty much

however, wondering if the whole case is thrown out, what options MegaUpload has to sue. He sure seems the kind of guy with the funds to put up a fight

iRobot• 14 years ago

I'm no real fan of MU or kim dot com but the way all this occurred taking down the guys whole business empire and putting him under arrest makes me think it can happen to any dot com company which I am (I trade in Europe, NZ and australia and a .com address seems the most logical to make it country agnostic)

I seriously hope he takes the NZ government for millions for being a bunch of FBI arse kissers.

And maybe he can use the wads of cash he gets to fund a start-up pirate party here.

comex• 14 years ago

dunno, Megaupload is now famous in a way it never was before. If the site somehow reopens, there will be attention.

shangrila• 14 years ago

Exactly. They took the site down and gave pause to anyone who is thinking of starting a similar site. Mission accomplished!

alexqgb• 14 years ago

Unless he decides to fight back in a precedent-setting way, which he now has the free time to do.

AJ0072• 14 years ago

This event may have made their brand a household name, but one would imagine it poisons the trust consumers would place on any storage service Kim would create in the future.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

I wonder how many real criminals (murderers, etc.) are never prosecuted because of all these procedural errors.

fl3tch• 14 years ago

Very few (although it does happen), because generally law enforcement takes a lot of time and great care to build a case. They may allow a drug gang to operate for months or years before busting them. This case seems rather rushed.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

I wonder how many real crimes could have been investigated and prosecuted with the resources the FBI used to make the MPAA and the RIAA happy.

nitrogen• 14 years ago

As a thought experiment, I've wondered what would happen if prosecutors were required to go through a full trial every time they file criminal charges (no plea bargains, no dropped charges, and all the prosecutorial mistakes publicly recorded as evidence).

Strallus• 14 years ago

Have they already wiped all of the Megaupload's HDDs?

suneilp• 14 years ago

Wouldn't that count as destruction of evidence? Even being the 'authorities', surely that would count as a strike against them.

droithomme• 14 years ago

The feds are trying to have the servers wiped and evidence destroyed. Dotcom has tried to stop this as he believes the evidence on the servers is crucial for his defense.

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-host-refuses-to-delete-us...

The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.

http://torrentfreak.com/us-megauploads-hosting-company-might...

soupboy• 14 years ago

No. Apparently the company hosting MU's servers is keeping them up at their own expense

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

From Kim's response [1]:

“This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood,” he says. “Mega has become a re-election pawn.”

The sad thing is, as flamboyant a character as he is, he's probably right.

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-lashes-out-against-corrup...

jmspring2• 14 years ago

I don't know about "re-election" pawn. But this whole thing is certainly a pawn in the game between popular media consumption and rights holders. I really can't see left or right taking a stand in favor of Mega's position in this.

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

I can quite easily see this as a move by the Obama DoJ to mollify the content industry after SOPA fell through, so they wouldn't follow through on their threat to not donate. Colour me jaded, but I can easily see him (or any recent US politician) doing that.

tankenmate2• 14 years ago

Joe Biden has long supported Hollywood; one of the reasons Obama chose him as a running mate was because of this support. Biden's track record on the Senate Judiciary Committee speaks for itself.

MrJagil• 14 years ago

“It is just a matter of time until the truth comes out. We are working on that and we are making good progress,” Dotcom concludes.

Was the more interesting bit for me. This could actually have serious ramifications. Kim seems devoted.

bo1024• 14 years ago

Could. Too bad the alternative is Romney....

fpp2• 14 years ago

Once you have looked behind the curtain of government wheeling and dealing at such multi-billion situations you tend to believe that what Kim Schmitz is telling might actually be the closest we get to the truth.

Now we should all think about how such a case would/will be handled in a few years time based on the changes to civil rights / Internet regulations / totalitarian powers currently in the pipeline across most western societies.

2015:

I guess you will not hear about it other that a few of those who lost their files and were not immediately constraint with gag orders will mentioning it on some low frequented boards. Sites like TorrentFreak will then immediately taken off the net / silenced by gag orders.

A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing in the moment and will eventually get better over time.

a3_nm• 14 years ago

> A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing in the moment and will eventually get better over time.

But of course, we don't care enough about all of that to bother using censorship-resistant technologies like Freenet or Tor hidden services because The Web is so much more efficient and convenient...

(Not trying to blame you -- I'm guilty of the same laziness myself.)

thebigshane• 14 years ago

"Necessity is the mother of invention" -- paraphrase of Plato?

icebraining• 14 years ago

Tor and Freenet for now are premature optimization.

Personally, I run an hidden Tor bridge and before I ran an exit node. But I have no real reason to use Tor for my daily browsing.

calloc• 14 years ago

So does this mean that all of the assets that were seized from Kim Dotcom were illegally seized (especially the assets in NZ)?

If so what does this mean for Kim Dotcom going forward? Does that mean he gets back all of the seized assets, and start rebuilding MU?

Osiris• 14 years ago

I never quite understood how the government could have the power to completely shut down a business before a court had determined the business' practices to be illegal. It seems completely backward to me.

In other well known laysuits against major publicly traded companies, for example the anti-trust suit against Microsoft or AT&T, the government wasn't able to take any action against the company until a settlement or verdict had taken place.

Even in other torrent lawsuits, like the isohunt.com lawsuit, those sites weren't shut down even after being served the suit. In fact isohunt.com is still operational despite the lawsuit that was filed a number of years ago.

So I wonder under what legal authority the FBI operates to completely shut down an entire business without a court order or ruling?

Joakal• 14 years ago

USA has a reputation for trumped up charges: mentioning money laundering charge allows police to seize everything. There's no money to request lawyers. Judges in USA are known to do ex parte and default decisions in favour of plaintiffs. And a history of sovereign immunity which means no compensation because police can lie that they did it in good faith. There's no liability for police to lie in USA.

There's no justice in USA against government abuse except through some gun amendment I hear.

I'm not sure about NZ though. Join your Pirate Party to fight against the anti-Internet American government.

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

From Kim's reply: ...“We have already been served a death sentence without trial and even if we are found ‘not guilty’ which we will, the damage can never be repaired,”...

That pretty much sums up what the US Gov intended to do from the start - show that they don't need SOPA or whatever. Hopefully, Megaupload can sue the US Gov and get some money out of them, although that's probably not going to happen...

jimfl• 14 years ago

Seems like another section of a businesses disaster recovery plan should be the one on how to resume operations after a government raid.

Megaupload Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says

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