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DOTCOM saga - updates
Renegade:
^^ Good post!
Oh, but wait...maybe that explains why the DOJ dragged their feet so much over releasing the sealed seizure warrant documents...
-IainB (November 18, 2012, 10:46 PM)
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What was it that the 'J' in 'DOJ' stood for again...
The obvious answer...Jackboots
IainB:
This post from TorrentFreak makes a reasonable summary of a lot of what seems to be fundamentally wrong about this Dotcom fiasco - it really does seem to look rather like a deliberate fit-up.
If it is, then what a national shaming if the New Zealand judiciary and the PM continue to play along with it. I suspect that, if it had happened in the UK, then the extradition case - and any other legal action against Dotcom - would have been thrown out of court by this stage.
That probably wouldn't happen in a banana republic though.
(TorrentFreak post copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Megaupload Assisted FBI vs NinjaVideo, But Evidence Then Used Against Them
In 2010, individuals from the now-defunct NinjaVideo site stored copyright-infringing videos on the servers of Megaupload. These subsequently came to the attention of the FBI who were conducting an investigation into NinjaVideo and its operators. As a result Megaupload was served with a criminal search warrant requiring it to hand over information to the authorities, but in a cruel twist Megaupload’s cooperation and a desire not to destroy evidence is now being used as evidence against it.
The February 2012 “Superseding Indictment” document, which lays out the Grand Jury charges against Megaupload, runs to 90-pages long and contains dozens of allegations of illegal behavior against the operators of the now-shuttered file-hosting site.
As outlined in our discussions this week, Dotcom says that some of the allegations are misleading, particularly one claiming that Megaupload failed to delete infringing video files from its servers.
“A member of the Mega Conspiracy informed several of his co-conspirators [in 2010] that he located the named files using internal searches of the Mega Conspiracy’s systems,” the DoJ wrote.
“As of November, 18 2011, thirty-six or the thirty-nine infringing copies of the copyrighted motion pictures were still being stored on servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy.”
Out of context the claim, that Megaupload ignores the DMCA, looks bad. However, when the full picture is put forward – that Megaupload found these files because a criminal search warrant from the FBI required them to do so – things start to look quite different.
And the plot thickens. Wired has discovered that the infringing files were put on Megaupload’s servers by individuals connected to the now-defunct streaming video site NinjaVideo.
The FBI were conducting a criminal investigation into NinjaVideo (which later resulted in several of its operators going to jail) and required Megaupload’s cooperation after serving the company with a search warrant in June 2010, just days before NinjaVideo was raided.
“Megaupload complied with the warrant and cooperated with the government’s request,” Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken confirms.
According to Kim Dotcom, the FBI made it clear that the warrant should be kept quiet so as not to jeopardize the NinjaVideo inquiry.
“The agent was concerned that the target could be warned and that this needs to be handled confidentially,” Dotcom informs TorrentFreak.
The Megaupload founder says that this warning was taken seriously and that since the files were clearly evidence in the case none of them were interfered with.
“Obviously when the FBI contacted us they made this clear to us and therefore we did not touch the accounts or the files,” he says.
“We even emailed back to Carpathia [Megaupload's US server host] to ask the FBI (and the FBI had our emails before asking for the Mega domain seizure) if we should do anything about those files. We never got a response.”
But the criminal investigation against NinjaVideo and evidential issues in that respect were pushed aside when it came to building a case against Megaupload and seizing its domain.
“To use this against us and to tell a Judge that the Megaupload domain seizure is justified because we have not removed those 39 files is totally unethical and misleading,” Dotcom concludes.
The fact that the infringing files remained on Mega’s leased servers led the U.S. government to claim that Megaupload infringed copyright, despite the company having been served the original NinjaVideo search warrant as the site’s service provider, one that presumably should have received safe-harbor protection under the DMCA.
As previously reported, NinjaVideo founder Hana Beshara was eventually sentenced to 22 months in jail and ordered to repay almost $210,000.
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Stoic Joker:
In 2010, individuals from the now-defunct NinjaVideo site stored copyright-infringing videos on the servers of Megaupload. These subsequently came to the attention of the FBI who were conducting an investigation into NinjaVideo and its operators. As a result Megaupload was served with a criminal search warrant requiring it to hand over information to the authorities, but in a cruel twist Megaupload’s cooperation and a desire not to destroy evidence is now being used as evidence against it.-IainB (November 22, 2012, 02:27 AM)
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Leave no good deed unpunished - Where was that Don't Talk to the Police video again? I think we need a link to it here.
40hz:
I think we need a link to it here.
-Stoic Joker (November 22, 2012, 08:51 AM)
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We do. Here's two. Both are worth watching.
Please note that most police officers are law abiding and responsible individuals. Unfortunately, they're subject to political and peer pressure (being members of what is society's official "gang"). And all it takes is one rogue officer or less than honest superior and most otherwise honest police can be put in a situation where they may decide it's simply wiser to "go with the flow" rather than buck their fellow officers.
Here it is from a criminal attorney's presentation at a law school:
On a more practical note, this 45 minute video is pretty much the single best video I've ever seen on how to deal with the police in their official capacity. Most of this won't be too helpful if it turns out you actually did violate the law. But it will go a long way to protecting you if you haven't.
And as any attorney will tell you, it's not necessary that you actually break the law to get arrested - or even worse, be convicted for doing so.
:tellme:
superboyac:
40...you're the man!!
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