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DOTCOM saga - updates
IainB:
No news on the Dotcom fiasco from NZ at present, but I was gobsmacked by this in TechDirt:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
US Court Secretly Lets Government Share Megaupload Evidence With Copyright Industry
from the government-copyright-industrial-complex dept
by Mike Masnick Fri, Dec 6th 2013 7:39pm.
In the latest in a long list of travesties carried out by the US government in the Megaupload case, apparently it went to the US court handling the case, and without letting Megaupload know, got an ex parte order allowing the government to share evidence from the case with various copyright holders and then to issue press releases about the case. As Megaupload's lawyers point out, the whole thing is a clear due process violation.
The defendants have been indicted, their assets have been frozen, their business has been destroyed, and their liberty has been restrained. Given these constraints, it is unclear what evils the Government fears defendants will inflict if provided notice of the Government’s submission, beyond having Defendants’ counsel come into court to make opposing arguments.
Basically, Megaupload's lawyers are asking to be a part of this process, since it appears that the government wanted (and the court allowed) to cut them out. As Megaupload's lawyers note, allowing the government to sort through and cherry-pick evidence to share, without any context or potential additional exonerating information, is a clear due process violation.
“The Government’s request also substantially prejudices the defendants in the case. Permitting the Government to widely disseminate a one-sided, cherry-picked set of facts threatens to improperly infect the jury pool before defendants are afforded any opportunity to present their side of the story.”
Apparently part of the issue for the original filing to reveal this information was that some copyright holders are getting antsy that as the case drags on, they won't also be able to file civil cases against Megaupload before the three-year statute of limitations expires. However, as Megaupload's lawyers point out, there is no urgency here since the government itself made no move to share this information over the past two years. If it really wanted to share the information it had ample time to make the request and allow Megaupload's lawyers to review and take part in the process, rather than trying to route around them entirely.
I'm guessing the recent successes against IsoHunt and Hotfile may have contributed to the timing as well. The MPAA pretty clearly thinks it can use those two cases to go after Megaupload as well, outside of the criminal case which will continue.
--- End quote ---
Call me old-fashioned if you want, but I really have had a gutsfull of the American so-called "ethics" and "law" over this case, and of the arm-twisting it has subjected the NZ government, police and judiciary to. The country doesn't seem to deserve its Constitution.
40hz:
Call me old-fashioned if you want, but I really have had a gutsfull of the American so-called "ethics" and "law" over this case, and of the arm-twisting it has subjected the NZ government, police and judiciary to. The country doesn't seem to deserve its Constitution.
-IainB (December 07, 2013, 03:20 AM)
--- End quote ---
Poor NZ. It's merely a fully independent sovereign nation - as it's politicians and government keep reminding us. Besides...it didn't want to do it. The Big Bad Sam made them do it! (The US must have threatened drone strikes, right? Otherwise NZ never ever ever ever ever would have gone along with any of this...)
Call me old fashioned if you like. But it's hard for anybody in that equation to even broach the topic of 'ethics' let alone justice.
Not to apologize for the Obama administration (which is not the same thing as the people of the United States of America) but the sooner NZ's current government (which is not the same thing as the people of New Zealand/Aotearoa) accepts full responsibility for going along (with some apparent enthusiasm), the better off the people of NZ and their country as a whole will be.
With luck, the people of NZ won't allow their government to play the same game the US government has. The US used "The Communists," "The Russians," "The Chinese," - and now "The Terrorists" as a handy excuse to justify its lawless excesses, abuses of power, and hypocrisies.
Hopefully the people of New Zealand will be smart enough not to allow their government to employ the US as a justification for its own breaches of public faith and constitutional law.
Just my :two: anyway.
Note: I happen to really like NZ and hope, at the very least, to visit it someday. I pray it doesn't get completely mucked up before I do.
:)
cranioscopical:
I happen to really like NZ and hope, at the very least, to visit it someday. I pray it doesn't get completely mucked up before I do.[/i]
-40hz (December 07, 2013, 07:33 AM)
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In order that you.... ;)
40hz:
I happen to really like NZ and hope, at the very least, to visit it someday. I pray it doesn't get completely mucked up before I do.[/i]
-40hz (December 07, 2013, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
In order that you.... ;)
-cranioscopical (December 07, 2013, 11:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
...have a place with an interesting climate and geography, an English-speaking populace (and decent ale!) where one can apply for political asylum. :P
IainB:
...Otherwise NZ never ever ever ever ever would have gone along with any of this...
...Hopefully the people of New Zealand will be smart enough not to allow their government to employ the US as a justification for its own breaches of public faith and constitutional law. ...
-40hz (December 07, 2013, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, "if I see something that ain't right, I gotta' say it" - sorry if it offends you.
And apologies, I didn't mean to whinge or suggest that NZ wouldn't necessarily have "gone along" with any of it, but that is only because I am well aware that the arm-twisting is there - and has been there for years.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with people who were senior members of the NZ DPMC (Office of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet), the NZDF (Defence Force) - including the Chief - NZ GCSB and NZ Police, and they were the ones to educate me on the issue of NZ's relative powerlessness in world affairs - especially when it came to the US.
However, even without such education, it must have become blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes to see it that NZ had little room to establish its "sovereignty" if a larger economic power wished otherwise.
For example, including:
* France: I recall watching a televised interview of the then retired NZ Prime Minister David Lange, where he vouchsafed the information that he had little option but to frustrate the execution of proper NZ justice on the French government terrorists found guilty of blowing up the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior as it lay docked in Auckland harbour (which also killed a crew member who was on board at the time), as the French government told him categorically that if he didn't, then NZ's access to sales of dairy and meat produce to the EU Common Market would be permanently blocked. This would have been a crippling economic sanction, as the NZ economy is primarily reliant on pastoral produce and the EU CM was/is a major market for them.
* USA: It also mentions, in the Wikipedia entry for Lange (above) that:
Lange made his name on the international stage with a long-running campaign against nuclear weapons. His government refused to allow nuclear-armed ships into New Zealand waters, a policy that New Zealand continues to this day. The policy, developing in 1985, had the effect of prohibiting United States Navy ships from visiting New Zealand. This displeased the United States and Australia: they regarded the policy as a breach of treaty obligations under ANZUS and as an abrogation of responsibility in the context of the Cold War against the Soviet bloc. After consultations with Australia and after negotiations with New Zealand broke down, the United States announced that it would suspend its treaty obligations to New Zealand until the re-admission of United States Navy ships to New Zealand ports, characterising New Zealand as "a friend, but not an ally".
Erroneous claims sometimes suggest that David Lange withdrew New Zealand from ANZUS. His government's policy may have prompted the US's decision to suspend its ANZUS Treaty obligations to New Zealand, but that decision rested with the U.S. government, not with the New Zealand government.
_______________________
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.. and also:
In January 2006, Archives New Zealand released to The Sunday Star-Times newspaper a box of David Lange's previously classified documents. They revealed New Zealand's ongoing involvement in Western alliance espionage, and a threat by the United States to spy on New Zealand if it did not back down from its ban on nuclear ships.
--- End quote ---
...and anyone reading this Dotcom discussion thread and the Snowden thread will be able to see how NZ is inextricably a bit player in the global spy/surveillance network operated with the US NSA/CIA/FBI, UK GCHQ and their Australian counterparts.
_______________________
In general, in any relationships that NZ has with the US on the world stage, the NZ actors know that it is an unequal relationship - that they are in bed with an elephant that could roll over them and squash them flat in the night without even noticing, and that the elephant could also turn very nasty if not appeased when roused/contradicted.
The US seems to be a world defender and a bully/oppressor of humungus proportions - arguably far worse than the British Empire ever was, and a good deal less subtle to boot. (Even the US President seems to think so too.)
For example:
* including the U.S. Occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946), and its subsequent economic and military colonisation from then until September 16, 1991, when the RP-US Military Bases Agreement was junked (but the last vestiges of US occupation apparently didn't fully depart until finally booted out by President Fidel Ramos around 1996).
* ...
From: http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/08/20/lost-obama-footage-reveals-push-towards-common-ground-ideology/
"The entire history of America is towards concentration of power and oppression."
- Barrack Obama (Strassman interview August of 1995)
--- End quote ---
So, one valid question would seem to be: Is he intending continuing that history, or doing something about correcting it?
_______________________
-IainB (November 06, 2013, 07:22 AM)
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NZ, on the other hand, with its tiny population of about 4.4 million people (and far more sheep) spread over a land area slightly larger than the UK, is a politically and economically insignificant wart on the arse-end of the planet, and it generally gets treated as such.
Small wonder then, that NZ Defence/GCSD/Police seem to love playing with their American counterparts - they at least get the opportunity to feel significant and to play with the big boys' toys and join in international SWAT-fests from time to time.
It's probably not very stimulating for them being an arse-wart otherwise. One has to get a sense of fulfilment from one's vocation as best one can.
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