SOPA and PIPA put on hold!!!

[Parihaka]

The tv3 item mentioned

http://www.3news.co.nz/Campbell-Live...6/Default.aspx

[Parihaka]

And an interview with the authorizing officer

Police defend actions during Dotcom raid - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

[Wayfarer]

And an interview with the authorizing officer

Police defend actions during Dotcom raid - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

Very well done by Campbell, he has improved a ton since 2007, back when he was fodder for facelift. I remember watching him and his wife visit my primary school.

Any idea what warranted such a use of force?

[Parihaka]

Very well done by Campbell, he has improved a ton since 2007, back when he was fodder for facelift. I remember watching him and his wife visit my primary school.

Any idea what warranted such a use of force?

Well that is the question.
As Campbell pointed out the Police sent an officer round to scope the outside of the place the day before and he was promptly invited inside and offered breakfast. Perhaps they were consider armed with bacon and eggs and dangerously generous?
In truth I suspect the senior officer was swooning over the FBI working with him and wanted to show we could do Hollywood as well....
He was asked the last time a white collar criminal was arrested by armed police, silence was the only response....

[Parihaka]

UPDATED5:48 PM Thursday Jun 28, 2012
Dotcom searches illegal: Judge - National - NZ Herald News

The High Court has ruled the police raid on internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion was illegal and the removal from New Zealand of cloned copies of hard drives seized was unlawful.

Justice Helen Winkelmann found the warrants used did not adequately describe the offences to which they were related.

"Indeed they fell well short of that. They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid.''

A spokesman for Dotcom's attorneys said Dotcom and his co-defendants were pleased.

"They are very happy with Justice Winkelmann's decision," wrote a representative for Simpson Grierson. "We are considering our clients' remedies as a result of the decision that the search warrants were unlawful and that the FBI sending the clones to the USA was also unlawful."

Police said they were considering the judgement and are in discussions with Crown Law to determine what further action might be required.

They would not make any comment until that process was complete.


Justice Winkelmann's judgement released a short time ago found the warrants were far too wide in terms of the scope of the search and the amount of items they gave police authority to seize.

"These categories of items were defined in such a way that they would inevitably capture within them both relevant and irrelevant material. The police acted on this authorisation. The warrants could not authorise seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid.''

The cloning of Dotcom's hard drives by the FBI, who took the copied disks back to the US was also ruled as invalid because Dotcom had never given consent.

The court ordered an independent lawyer to review everything seized in the raid to determine what is relevant to the investigation and what is not.

Relevant material is to be released to US authorities and everything else is be returned to Dotcom "forthwith''.

The decision followed a hearing at the High Court in Auckland last month.

Kim Dotcom cried in court as his lawyer spoke of how he was ``ripped from his family'' during a dawn raid by police at the request of US authorities.

Dotcom, who was arrested alongside three associates, had argued for copies of the data on 135 computers and hard drives seized when police raided his $30 million home in Coatesville.

His lawyer Paul Davison QC said his client's rights had been "subverted'' after cloned copies of the hard drives were taken overseas by the FBI without his lawyers knowing.

Mr Davison told the court he wrote to Crown lawyers in February to ask that none of the data from Dotcom's computers leave New Zealand.

Mr Davison said Crown lawyers responded, saying: "The evidence is required in its original form to be sent to the US. That has not happened and will not happen without prior warning.''

He said he was told the FBI had been in New Zealand and made clones of the data on the computers and one copy would be made available to him.


Mr Davison said he had yet to receive that copy and was only told today that copies had been sent to the US.

"There has been no approval for removal.''

Mr Davison also said there had been an "excess of authority''.

"Here is an example of what I would submit at the most moderate was high-handed and at the worst misleading.''

He said the process was "off the rails'' and his client's rights had been "subverted''.

Dotcom wiped tears from his eyes and left court as Mr Davison said his client had been "ripped from his family'' and was now before the court asking for the legitimacy of the police actions to be looked at.

Justice Helen Winkelmann said she wanted an affidavit from Crown lawyers that would clarify whether or not the Solicitor General gave police permission to allow copies of the data on Dotcom's computers to be taken to the US.

Crown lawyer Mike Ruffin said the original police search warrant, signed by a district court judge, made it clear that the computers and hard drives would be taken to the US.

He said a proposal by Dotcom to have a judicial review of the information was "not practical because of the volume of the data''.

Mr Ruffin said copies of Dotcom's computers and hard drives could not be handed over because investigators were not yet able to determine what is relevant to the case and what is not.

Dotcom faces an extradition hearing in August which will determine whether or not he is to fly to the US to face charges including copyright infringement and wire fraud relating to the file-sharing website Megaupload.

Prosecutors allege a "mega conspiracy''; Dotcom denies the charges and says his website was legitimate.

- APNZ

[Double Edge]

Dotcom faces an extradition hearing in August which will determine whether or not he is to fly to the US to face charges including copyright infringement and wire fraud relating to the file-sharing website Megaupload.

If the raid has been deemed unlawful, then chances should be good for not getting extradited ?

[Parihaka]

So, we now have a ruling that the searches were illegal, the seizure of his assets were illegal, the handing of his assets to the FBI was illegal and the refusal of the FBI to hand back those assets has pitched the FBI directly against the NZ High Court: it has been revealed our GCSB illegally spied on him, illegally passed that information to the Police: the police head of investigation perjured himself twice before the high court when claiming they hadn't and our Prime Minister is politically 'on the run' because he claimed he had no knowledge that the GCSB was surveilling Kim Dotcom despite being the only politician they report to and receiving daily briefings.
Truly our politicians and police have hit rock bottom: corruption is rampant.

[zraver]

So, we now have a ruling that the searches were illegal, the seizure of his assets were illegal, the handing of his assets to the FBI was illegal and the refusal of the FBI to hand back those assets has pitched the FBI directly against the NZ High Court: it has been revealed our GCSB illegally spied on him, illegally passed that information to the Police: the police head of investigation perjured himself twice before the high court when claiming they hadn't and our Prime Minister is politically 'on the run' because he claimed he had no knowledge that the GCSB was surveilling Kim Dotcom despite being the only politician they report to and receiving daily briefings.
Truly our politicians and police have hit rock bottom: corruption is rampant.

Sounds like NZ is preparing to become the 51st state.... thats all par for the course here....

[Parihaka]

Sounds like NZ is preparing to become the 51st state....

Pretty much. Our current PM began his term by forcing legislation through parliament to severely restrict employment rights in the motion picture and TV industry to please Peter Jackson and Hollywood.
He's now followed that up with this debacle just after meeting... guess who.....

[dalem]

Pretty much. Our current PM began his term by forcing legislation through parliament to severely restrict employment rights in the motion picture and TV industry to please Peter Jackson and Hollywood.
He's now followed that up with this debacle just after meeting... guess who.....

Yeah, but... LOTR and The Hobbit. :)

Seriously, Aussieland and NZedville are on my list of places I'd like to go.

-dale

[Doktor]

Erm... IDK if it is for here, but some bad news:

Text of H.R. 624: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Passed the House (Engrossed) version) - GovTrack.us

and a cool infographic:
WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR

[chanjyj]

Let me grab some popcorn.

[Parihaka]

The copyright industry should brace itself: the Kim Dotcom saga isn't over | David Fisher | Comment is free | theguardian.com

The copyright industry should brace itself: the Kim Dotcom saga isn't over
Kim Dotcom has caused carnage in New Zealand politics, and is set to challenge the music industry with his new website. He personifies the danger technology poses to copyright law

Big rarely means agile. Even so, there remains in New Zealand a fast-moving fat man who is causing an immense amount of trouble to anyone who ever troubled him.

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom was stopped dead almost two years ago when the FBI had the New Zealand police haul him from his palatial country home north of Auckland. United States prosecutors claimed his filesharing Megaupload business enabled mass, criminal copyright violation. The website was destroyed, fortunes seized and Dotcom arrested, along with three colleagues, for extradition.

Broke but buoyed by the goodwill of others, Dotcom started to move against those who came after him and has only gained momentum since. His “Kimpire”, as he once vaingloriously called it, has been rebuilt through targeting the failures of the police, prosecutors and spies who so willingly helped the FBI.

Domestically, Dotcom has caused carnage. A government minister has resigned and is facing charges of not declaring political donations made by Dotcom. Prime minister John Key has had to apologise because an intelligence agency for which he was personally responsible was exposed as illegally spying on Dotcom. The police were embarrassed when it emerged their raid, using an anti-terrorist strike force, was carried out unlawfully. As the raid unfolded, police commanders rubbed elbows with senior FBI agents and high-ranking US department of justice cyber crime prosecutor Jay Prabhu.

The pain is set to continue next March. A NZ$6m damages case is scheduled to begin. Dotcom will attempt to put a price tag on the unlawful behaviour of the authorities. Information drawn out through the court process so far has been excruciating for the government. It promises to only get worse.

It is a nightmare for Key’s governing National party, made worse after Dotcom declared an intention to form his own political party. As a resident but not a citizen he cannot stand as a candidate himself, and his chances of having a candidate elected are slim. But creating a new political force, armed with information harmful to the government, will introduce a wildcard element into a knife-edge election. There's no doubt the government has wondered many times why it gave Dotcom residency, knowing of his prior convictions and being aware the FBI was after him.

And astonishingly, Dotcom once again has money. He launched Mega in January, offering consumers an online encrypted cloud storage service. Spurred on by the Five Eyes spying intrusion into his own life, it created an online data haven at the beginning of a year in which NSA leaker Edward Snowden emerged and destroyed everybody’s idea of privacy.

Mega’s fortunes have risen along with its Alexa internet site ranking, and risen faster since it began touting its encryption as the answer to NSA surveillance. When Megaupload was raided, the FBI cited its ability to identify and take down child porn and terrorism-related files as grounds for expecting copyrighted material should be removed. Dotcom built Mega so it was technically impossible for anyone, including the site’s operators, to know what content users had stored. It means one result of the FBI’s action is the creation of a rogue website which exists outside the intrusive surveillance technology exposed by Snowden – surely not the result the US expected when it brought Megaupload crashing down.

Dotcom fights battles on every front, and has shown there’s nothing as like to clog the gears of a well-oiled machine as a 175kg self-styled Internet visionary who feels put upon. His original foe, the music industry, is next. Dotcom will launch Baboom! next year – an online music service. It aims to directly reward artists by paying them when users listen to the songs for free. The price for downloading free music is that users install the "MegaKey", a piece of software which strips out embedded online advertisements in favour of those sold by Dotcom.

Plans of this sort suggest Dotcom remains irrevocably on a collision course with the copyright industry. He personifies the danger technology has posed to copyright law, ever since the Motion Picture Association of America complained Betamax video players would destroy Hollywood.

In September, former Longpigs band member Crispin Hunt told the British music industry it needed to take back ground from Dotcom. Hunt, now speaking for the Featured Artists Coalition, a grouping of musicians debating piracy, told the British music industry body, the BPI, it needed to “rebrand the music industry as the good guys who give us great music, rather than the bad guys who exploit young talent". Dotcom, he said, was a “chubby Che Guevara” whose “self-interest (was) masquerading as idealism”.

And yet the music industry refuses to move. It remains locked in an inflexible business model, pressing the US to strengthen its position around the world through trade deals which include tougher copyright laws.

Dotcom, meanwhile, dances around those embedded movie and music industries. Big doesn’t often mean agile, but when they are so determined not to move, it’s easy to appear nimble. If Megaupload was trouble, wait and see what happens next.

He's reached cult hero status here and, with his newly acquired wealth, could indeed easily bring down the National Government.

[bigross86]

You know something? I'm all in favor. Like the article says, the MPAA and RIAA are so inflexible and so unwilling to move or budge, even when the world has clearly moved on, that they deserve a good drubbing.

Until the MPAA and RIAA adapt to a new business model that learns how to exploit technological advances and the changes in society, there will always be a Kim Dotcom somewhere making money off of their inability to adapt.

Just an example I read a coupla days ago: In Israel, movie tickets have increased in price steadily over the years, but in the period from 2006 and until today, ticket sales (in number of tickets sold, not profit) has risen something near %40. The reason is because the theaters realized that in the age of streaming and downloads, something needed to be done to attract moviegoers again, so they turned multiplex cinemas into centers where the movie theater is the center, but you can go clothes shopping, have a meal in a decent restaurant, etc. They've opened small malls based around the cinema, where a movie ticket will get you a discount at stores, encouraging people to buy movie tickets. They've also opened VIP lounges for the theaters, with couches instead of chairs, and unlimited food and beer/wine, all for an extra price, obviously.

So, if movie theaters in Israel are smart enough to adapt, why aren't the MPAA and RIAA?