I don't really like how the arm of US law is so long, but I also do not like Kimble very much either. He was too blatant and when you run a piracy scheme where everyone and their grandmothers can easily access it, it is going to be a matter of international diplomacy. The entertainment industry is a large export for the USA, so when it gets to a certain scale there will be diplomatic pressure. He was greedy and is now paying the price.
Edit: In before the extolling the legitimate use of Megaupload... Let's face it, a vast majority of the business, traffic, and links there were for pirated content. If it were not for the proliferation of pirated content on there, he would have made a fraction of the money he made.
In fact, you could "pirate" anything and use cloud services to store illegal content. But no one is blaming the companies that provide "cloud" services for this piracy...
All of this is what people call "hypocrisy".
From a non-legal perspective, many Kiwis are uneasy at the level of force that the police used in the raid, and also at just how far NZ police bent over backwards at the behest of an overseas commercial entity.
For starters, YouTube worked with the government to establish a framework for making copyright management even vaguely tractable online where it wasn't before. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en
Kim Dotcom, in contrast, basically tried to thumb his nose at several hundred years of intellectual property law shared among the former members of the British Empire. That's not going to win you any friends among those who enforce those laws.
You would think not existing in the jurisdiction would be enough. Apparently not.
Why haven't the US attorneys responsible for this been disbarred?
They're dependent upon the secondary copyright infringement charge, but racketeering and money laundering are quite serious.
Those charges seem serious because they're associated with organized crime, but that's not the case here.
There is a presumption against extraterritoriality. In other words, it is presumed that in a sovereign state the laws of other sovereigns do not apply.
The exception to the presumption against extraterritoriality is agreement among states or a reciprocal judicial respect. The agreement is usually a treaty. The reciprocal respect is called "comity".
There are other exceptions to the presumption against extraterritoriality, but I do not think they apply here.
I have not looked at the details, but New Zealand and the U.S.A. must have an extradition treaty or otherwise the judge determining extradition believes that the judicial system in the U.S.A. is "comparable" (i.e. comity applies).
The case looks appealable. So long as the independence of the judiciary is not impugned, neither is the sovereignty of New Zealand, and they may extradite as they feel fit.
In short, there's nothing wrong here. Not in the slightest.
It's not just this case obviously. I used to be proud to be a New Zealander, but the last 5-10 years have made it dreadfully obvious we're actually being operated by foreign and commercial interests, and local/national leaders have no interest in changing that.
Sure, it's probably not as bad as certain other places, but it no longer fills me with pride. I'm tired of this country :(
I imagine it's waned a bit by now, though.
Here's another possible angle: Hollywood might actually be contributing favorably to New Zealand's economy, either directly or indirectly (e.g. through increasing tourism), when it films movies like Avatar, LOTR and The Hobbit. See, for instance http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/12/14/the-i.... In 2014, the screen industry revenue was NZ$3 billion (see http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/industry_sectors/f...).
This guy was directly undermining Hollywood's business, which meant it could also undermine New Zealand's movie industry, implying it was also in New Zealand's interests to bring him to justice.
I have no doubt that he knew the system was being used for illegal file sharing. And no doubt he probably turned a blind eye to a lot of it because it generated money.
But he should have been tried and convicted in NZ without the influence of America.
That's not the issue here.
People commit crimes in every country. They should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No one is arguing that.
The issue is that you're suggesting that everyone should obey american law, which has been shown to be corrupt and driven entirely by campaign donations; while the locals are arguing that, perhaps, their own government should say...
...use its own laws, to prosecute its own citizens, rather than the laws from another country.
Do you think women should be punished in America for not wearing a hijab in public? That the tenants of Sharia law should be upheld in your country, because they are the laws of another country?
No? Right then, like I said...
Unfortunately, to many on HN, when people freely take the information created by content creators it's "disruption of outdated business models", but when the NSA freely takes their own information it's an "invasion of privacy". They simply don't realize that everybody would like to control the spread of information that is significant to themselves. This is why certain laws exist, yet they denounce some laws (such as copyright) as "wrong". The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
Riiiiight.... Not conflating at all....
You're free to disagree with me. You may hold a different opinion. That's perfectly fine. However a dissenting opinion does not mean I conflated the situation. It does not mean that I'm acting irrationally. It's simple a different opinion.
I don't mind downvotes for disagreeing with the HN HiveMind.
So NZ has laws and treaties. Great. Should they? What's the tradeoff? Is the prosecution of someone who is clearly guilty allowing a greater evil to occur? Is the copyright system and corporate influence of governments a problem?
I would have loved to hear the answers to any of these questions, but what I got was essentially "he is a criminal" and "laws shouldn't be broken". Sure.
When you have to hedge your comments like this, it's generally because your arguments are weak.
The problem is he is getting extradited on these parts of the treaty:
Receiving and transporting any money, valuable securities, or other property knowing the same to have been unlawfully obtained.
…
Obtaining property, money, or valuable securities by false pretenses or by conspiracy to defraud the public or any person by deceit or falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether such deceit or falsehood or any fraudulent means would or would not amount to a false pretense.
I'm not sure you can argue that he did that, and if that is the case, you have to ask what is going on here?
Of course, there is much to this that I don't know, but still it's a bit fishy.
i'm sure that scumbag violated a lot of Saudi Arabia and Russian laws too (until of course he has all these years been a model Muslim as well as Russian patriot simultaneously). Why do you think infringement of US copyright takes precedence over violation of the Saudi Arabia or Russian laws?
"He's scumbag who laughed at a caricature about prophet Mohammad. He deserves prison time." - does it sound ok to you?