Kim Dotcom Gets Green Light to Sue New Zealand Spies

http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-gets-green-light-to-sue-new-zealand-spies-121206/

by Garbage • 14 years ago

144 57 14 years ago

torrentfreak.com

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

Kim is turning into a Julian Assange of the Internet and he is now taking this to a whole new level.

GotAnyMegadeth• 14 years ago

Is JA not the JA of the internet?

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

In my books, Assange deals more with politics and organizational process issues. Sure - he uses the Internet as his medium. On the other hand, Kim Dotcom deals with Internet issues.

kzrdude• 14 years ago

And both are getting stuck in the corruption of the system. More people need to combat it. Corruption exists in many forms. When you pay someone to get around the law you know it is corruption, but when a law is created to do one thing, but it is used for another thing it is also corruption.

veb• 14 years ago

>> corruption of the system

The difference between Julian Assange and Kim Dotcom is that Kim Dotcom is in New Zealand, which is tied with 3 other countries as the countries with the least perceived corruption in the world.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

sigzero• 14 years ago

Assange is a douche. Let's not lump the two together.

illuminate4• 14 years ago

Assange's alleged assaults would put him in a different class than a con-artist, I suppose.

flyinRyan3• 14 years ago

What and you think Kim is a great guy?

It's really important to separate the work from the person. I doubt many of us would have wanted to be friends with Steve Jobs but man I'm glad he existed and did the (professional) things he did.

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

Yeah this is according to TorrentFreak. Of course they're going to put him up as a role model.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Gotta admit he got both balls and the backbone to keep pushing this matter forward.

maeon32• 14 years ago

What can I do to increase his chances of success?

illuminate4• 14 years ago

His most honed skill is self-promotion, so that's a given.

digitalengineer• 14 years ago

police search, illegal seizure raids, great show of force, attacking him in his safe-house, unlawfully intercepted communications, unlawful surveillance, (still!) freezing his accounts... But somehow people pirating music/films is the worlds biggest problem? I'd say any government willing to break so many of it's own laws is the problem.

cdooh• 14 years ago

Worse is any goverment willing to break their own laws for another government that is really a proxy for an industry... That's what's really scary about this

pirateking• 14 years ago

Welcome to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong!

testeroni• 14 years ago

> I'd say any government willing to break so many of it's own laws is the problem.

And when the breaking of laws becomes too onerous or attracts too much attention, they simply change the law to make their behavior legal, e.g. NDAA in the USA.

Tipzntrix• 14 years ago

Or they delegate the activities to the NSA who work under-the-radar and nobody knows anything except what the whistle-blowers say.

dia80• 14 years ago

I'm amazed at how the NZ institutions are putting their hands up and the courts seem to be working. It seems so different from so many of the stories/comments here regarding similar stuff in the US.

Corruption Perception Index:

NZ = 90 (1st) vs US = 73 (19th)

Not a coincidence?

J_Darnley• 14 years ago

Hang on, does that indicate that NZ is perceived to be the most corrupt country on the scale? Just what countries are included, or excluded for that matter?

AdamTReineke• 14 years ago

The opposite: "A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean." http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results

ihsw• 14 years ago

The most interesting point of the article is that it is illegal for the GCSB (New Zealand spy agency) to monitor New Zealanders.

Personally I feel that other nations should learn from this and implement similar policies.

btilly• 14 years ago

It already is illegal for the CIA to monitor Americans on American soil.

Of course once you are used to breaking laws around the world, what is one more law?

maeon32• 14 years ago

There is a worldwide effort going on right now to put a ownership sticker on the worldwide internet, that goal has been failing, so now they are settling for an "ownership of the internet in their jurisdiction", and that is failing too, so they do the next best thing: "Digital rights management" because oh god won't somebody think of the children with child pornography and music downloads!

It's about expanding the power base, the ultimate goal here is for governments to acquire the ability to tax every bit and byte that travels across their borders. Kim stands for freedom. Government, stay out of my shit, you have a few defined jobs and you're not doing any of them here.

Power corrupts and seeks more power, it's the human condition. I'm afraid a free neutral and open internet and the explosion of technology it brought will be a phenomenon for the history books either soon or eventually.

mistercow3• 14 years ago

>"Digital rights management" because oh god won't somebody think of the children with child pornography and music downloads!

I don't understand what connection you're drawing between CP and DRM.

graeme3• 14 years ago

CP is often used as a justification for stricter internet controls, which leaks over into non-CP areas.

Common strategy. Use a cause that no one will argue against in order to push rules that serve a broader agenda.

rohansingh• 14 years ago

There is no good connection between them. However, I've seen legislators often conflate the two in order to promote pro-DRM legislation in the name of protecting the children.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted." - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva

The exposure and removal of corruption is one of the ways in which the industry of societal governance is being disrupted and reformed.

westicle• 14 years ago

Upvoted for quoting Frank Herbert. So much interesting (sometimes convincing, often troubling) political philosophy in his books. Recommended reading.

kahawe• 14 years ago

>Kim stands for freedom

I think you mean "...stands for the freedom to make money off of people in the same way he has been the last 2 decades, namely through at best shady and several times completely illegal and fraudulent means".

Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No, don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero" or "freedom fighter".

>It's about expanding the power base

On this point, I could not agree more with you. It has been my own impression for a LONG time that all those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads and all the media attention the RIAA/MPAA-mafia are getting for their strong-arm methods is really nothing but a very clever and calculated PR campaign to implant this actually non-existent problem in people's minds so that they then can lobby and extort money and continue increasing their power and influence/leverage on governments the world over. So what I am saying is, it was never about changing people's minds to not copy a CD or a movie but it was mainly about rallying and lobbying for their cause; a self-feeding cluster-frakk because the topic is then obviously "en vogue" so politicians can no longer ignore them and have to give in to their demands. When actually they do not make less money now than they did 15 years ago.

It is very sad to see how successful this has become, seeing NZ fold like that.

pyre6• 14 years ago

  > Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No,
  > don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic
  > allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero"
  > or "freedom fighter".

Larry Flint stood for freedom too, doesn't mean he's a humanitarian only thinking of the greater good of mankind.

Even the 'Founding Fathers' of the US were rich landowners that didn't want to get taxed by England. For all of the "fluff" that the history books talk about them being warm and fuzzy about human rights, their philosophies didn't disagree with their pocketbooks.

  > When actually they do not make less money now than
  > they did 15 years ago.

Their profits/revenues do fluctuate, but they use piracy as their scapegoat for everything.

Is the economy down, so people have less disposable income to spend on consuming entertainment media? It's piracy at fault! It definitely could not be because people have less money to spend, therefore they spend less money in aggregate.

Are other industries encroaching into the consumption media space (e.g. video games industry)? It's piracy at fault! It definitely could not be because people are now choosing to distribute spending of their finite amount of disposable income in other industries (e.g. buying few movies, and more video games).

moheeb• 14 years ago

I like Kim's version of freedom, personally.

lancewiggs• 14 years ago

NZ blinked and sent in the helicopters, but the recent events have shown that NZ has not folded. And we won't.

downandout2• 14 years ago

The interesting part of this case for me is that it underscores the tremendous differences between the US justice system and those of the rest of the world. In New Zeland, Kim Dotcom seems to at least be getting a fair chance. Their government seems to be willing to admit when it makes mistakes, and their judges seem apt to attempt to make amends when mistakes occur.

By contrast, in the US, all of the issues he has brought up so far would be dismissed by judges claiming they were harmless error because they are unlikely to affect the question of guilt or innocence. Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US. It's sad to say, but other countries are making the US look less and less civilized every day.

wtvanhest2• 14 years ago

>Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US.

I can't find a single example of this. Some people are convicted for long sentences for violating 3 strikes rules, which are questionable, but I think you have exaggerated more than a little here.

[EDIT] [Added] The comment below mentions this case, but the guy only did 6 years:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me-pizzathi...

I looked around and there just are not many, if any cases like the OP describes. His comment is an exaggeration to say the least, and may even been an absurd exaggeration based on something he vaguely remembers from 1995.

graeme3• 14 years ago

I read 'frequently' as meaning 'much more than it should'. I'm guessing he was referring to three strikes violations leading to jail time for pizza-stealing.

I googled 'stealing pizza jail' and came up with one example, which of course was from California. Doesn't seem like it happens often, but there are enough stories of long jail time for comparably petty offences.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of-piz...

I also found this odd story from spain, which is a more serious incident of pizza thievery, with a knife:

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/04/25/pizza-thef...

downandout2• 14 years ago

Yes, I was referring to 3 strikes sentences. In Nevada, for example, 1 in 6 prisoners - over 2,500 people - are serving life sentences. A significant portion of these are sentenced under a wild "habitual offender" statute that enables life sentences for even non-violent repeat offenders. The Nevada version of the three strikes law makes its more famous cousin in California look tame and completely rational by comparison.

And there is also stuff like this, which was not a habitual case... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d0_1272286354 . That video is a pretty chilling look at how quickly and non-chalantly courts in the US are willing to take away a person's life for relatively minor offenses. Call me crazy, but I don't think that the statement "She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him" should ever have to be uttered by an attorney in a court in the "land of the free".

nvmc2• 14 years ago

The head of the GCSE at the time is now our Governor General. So the guy directly at fault is untouchable and the Prime Minister flatly denied (lying) all knowledge of any spying. We're not so squeaky clean.

joeblau• 14 years ago

I've been following Kim since my friend showed me the kimble.org flash website back in the early 2000's. All the events in his life could be an amazing story for a movie.

nvmc2• 14 years ago

Rapt when I saw this on the news last night. A hugely influential decision. Not only is the GCSE now liable for their actions, but it opens up the opportunity to sue other organizations, which we have been unable to do since the eighties.

Kim Dotcom Gets Green Light to Sue New Zealand Spies

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