Megaupload neergehaald door de FBI #5 De soap gaat door!

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Dotcom Reveals Megaupload Data Massacre Emails, Plans to Sue LeaseWeb


Bron: torrentfreak.com

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Kim Dotcom says Dutch firm deleted at least 40 petabytes of Megaupload data | Ars Technica

"In our view, LeaseWeb acted like a corporate radical by destroying data in the largest corporate copyright case in history," Rothken concluded. "We learned that the [United States Department of Justice] blessed the LeaseWeb data destruction and we will raise these issues at the appropriate time with the Federal Court in the US."

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Kim Dotcom case threatens New Zealand Government | Daily News - New Zealand

Two of the New Zealand Government's key coalition parters have been plagued by scandal in the wake of the US-led raid on Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion.

Act Party leader John Banks is facing a private prosecution for claiming $50,000 in donations from Mr Dotcom were made anonymously.

United Future leader Peter Dunne has resigned as a minister after an enquiry into illegal spying on New Zealanders was leaked and he was found to have exchanged inappropriate emails with a young female journalist.

Mr Banks and Mr Dunne are two of the three MPs giving the Government a majority in the house. Without them, Prime Minister John Key will rely on the Maori Party to govern.

Mr Banks, who is the former Minister for Police, was investigated by the police who found he had acted unlawfully during the Auckland mayoralty campaign but they declined to prosecute him. However former Royal New Zealand Air Force engineer Graham McCready took a private prosecution against Mr Banks which is still before the courts.

Mr Banks denied ever meeting Kim Dotcom despite sharing a helicopter trip with the Internet entrepreneur.

Prime Minister John Key has also denied knowing Mr Dotcom at that time, despite him living in Mr Key's electorate and having sponsored a million dollar fireworks display in Auckland Harbour.

For his part Kim Dotcom has said he regretted making the donation to Mr Banks.

"He told me he is all about tech and he wants Internet business here in New Zealand and he is tired of an economy that is focused on growing grass for cows and sheep. He gave me a pitch of how he wants to modernise New Zealand. I bought it, I believed him and I wanted to help make that happen," Mr Dotcom said.

"Today I know he's just a talker, like most politicians, who will tell you what you want to hear to get your vote or financial support. I have never made a political donation before, I regret the one I made for sure."

Former Revenue and Associate Health minister Peter Dunne resigned his ministerial portfolios after he failed to co-operate with an inquiry into who leaked documents relating to an investigation of the GCSB's illegal spying on Kim Dotcom.

Not only did the report conclude that Mr Dotcom had been spied on by the GCSB after he became a New Zealand resident, but that 80 other New Zealanders had been spied on in recent times.

While this enquiry was supposed to be made public it was leaked to the media earlier than the Government intended.

An inquiry was launched into who leaked the report and Mr Dunne, who was one of five members of a high level security and intelligence committee, refused to co-operate with the inquiry making him seem like the source of the leak.

However, Mr Dunne denies leaking the report but has resigned as a Minister to avoid having to reveal the contents of a number of emails between himself and a reporter Andrea Vance.

Tweets sent by Peter Dunne to Andrea Vance reportedly spoke about vasectomies and in a Tweet from Ms Vance to Mr Dunne she calls him the New Zealand version of Spy Catcher.

Mr Dunne's political party United Future has been de-registered as a political party after falling below 500 members. His first attempt to re-register the United Future party failed after he was unable to provide signed copies of original membership forms.

By right Mr Dunne is an independent MP relegated to the back benches but the Speaker of the House has yet to strip him of his party leader status, a decision which the opposition described as breaching standing orders.

The New Zealand First MPs and some Labour MPs walked out of parliament in disgust at the speakers ruling.
Bron: dnews.co.nz

twitter:

KimDotcom twitterde op maandag 01-07-2013 om 07:31:13 Prime Minister John Key confirmed he is chairing the committee to which I'm presenting my opposition to the new GCSB bill on July 3. It's ON reageer retweet

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Dotcom to appear before committee - Yahoo! New Zealand

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom will be in front of parliament's intelligence and security committee on Wednesday to tell it why he has problems with the GCSB bill.

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom will be in front of parliament's intelligence and security committee on Wednesday to tell it why he has problems with the GCSB bill.

Dotcom, accused by US authorities of internet piracy and awaiting an extradition hearing, confirmed his appearance on Monday.

"I'm in parliament July 3 telling the security and intelligence committee why the new GCSB bill is wrong," he said on Twitter.

"I bet Key and Banks won't show."

Prime Minister John Key chairs the committee and its members are Labour leader David Shearer, Greens co-leader Russel Norman, cabinet minister Tony Ryall and ACT leader John Banks.

The bill authorises the Government Security Communications Bureau to spy on New Zealanders on behalf of the Security Intelligence Service and the police, when they have surveillance warrants.

The raid on Dotcom's Auckland mansion and his arrest in January 2012 led to the discovery that the legislation the GCSB operated under forbids it to spy on New Zealand citizens and residents.

The agency had been spying on Dotcom, who is a resident.

It believed it was acting legally because the surveillance was carried out on behalf of the police, and it was subsequently revealed it had spied on 88 other New Zealanders.

The government drafted the GCSB bill so it can legally carry out surveillance on behalf of the other agencies.

It hasn't been doing that since August, and Mr Key says security is being compromised.

Opposition parties won't back the bill and the government is short of guaranteed votes to get it through parliament.

It passed its first reading but since then Peter Dunne has said he has problems with it.

The committee has received numerous written submissions and some of the submitters will be giving evidence during hearings this week.

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Kim Dotcom has fiery exchange with New Zealand PM at surveillance inquiry | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Internet entrepreneur attacks proposed expansion of spying powers in New Zealand after NSA scandal

The internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has exchanged caustic words with New Zealand's prime minister at a parliamentary committee hearing submissions on proposed changes to surveillance laws.

German-born Dotcom, who is being sought by the US to face charges of copyright infringement and money laundering, was the star attraction on the second day of hearings at the intelligence and security committee in Wellington, chaired by the prime minister, John Key.

Dotcom told the committee the proposed expansion of spying powers was "poorly timed considering the scandalous leaks concerning US mass surveillance of the world's population, including US allies". He urged New Zealand to repeat the "heroic stance" of the 80s when the country was declared nuclear-free.

"When a great power such as the United States is committing immoral and illegal practices, ranging from Guantánamo to torture to drone strikes, let alone mass surveillance against the entire world population, there has never been a greater need for New Zealanders to once again step forward and declare their values shall not be abandoned or suspended under pressure from the United States," he said.

Dotcom claimed he had evidence that Key, contrary to repeated public assurances, had been aware of his activities before a dramatic raid on the "Dotcom mansion" north of Auckland in January last year. "Oh, he knew about me before the raid. I know about that," said Dotcom, eyeballing Key. "You know I know."

Key replied: "I know you don't know. I know you don't know."

"Why are you turning red, prime minister?"

"I'm not. Why are you sweating?"

"It's hot. I have a scarf."

Key later told reporters that Dotcom was "a well-known conspiracy theorist … He's utterly wrong."

The bill to amend the remit of the Government Communications Services Bureau (GCSB) was prompted by the admission that surveillance of Dotcom and a Megaupload colleague had been illegal. Their status as permanent residents of New Zealand meant the agency was prohibited from spying on them. Key issued a public apology to the men over the incident.

The new bill, which would make it lawful for the GCSB to spy on permanent residents on behalf of domestic agencies, has attracted wider interest following the revelations of the scope of surveillance undertaken by the US and its partners, as leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian.

The GCSB is a partner in the information-sharing Echelon or "five-eyes" group, led by America's National Security Agency and including Britain's GCHQ. Key says the Echelon arrangement has never been used to circumvent domestic law by spying on New Zealanders.

In an interview with the TV3 Campbell Live programme after the hearing, Dotcom grinned when asked whether he had been in touch with Snowden. "I do not know Edward Snowden personally, and that's all I want to say about this," he said.

The attempt to extradite Dotcom in relation to the activities of his Megaupload file-locker site has become mired in a succession of legal challenges, and is now unlikely to be heard any earlier than April 2014.

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New Zealand appears to have used NSA spy network to target Kim Dotcom | Ars Technica

The new analysis was posted by New Zealand journalist Keith Ng in a Thursday blog post. If the link proves to be true, it would seem that the NSA’s vast international surveillance capability can be turned against individuals unrelated to the NSA’s stated mission to aid military, counterintelligence, or counterterrorism objectives.

Kim Dotcom has been charged in the United States with copyright infringement rather than terrorism or any other violent crime. The German-born entrepreneur is currently fighting extradition from New Zealand to the United States. Separately, he has launched a civil suit in New Zealand against the GCSB for what the New Zealand government has already admitted was unlawful surveillance.

On Page 21 of the GCSB’s Affadavit of Disclosure (PDF), in an internal e-mail dated February 17, 2012, the document is marked: "TOP SECRET//COMINT//REL TO NZL, FVEY."

The last section of that classification (REL TO NZL, FVEY)—“Relevant to New Zealand, Five Eyes”—refers to the vast intelligence and data sharing program between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, known as “Five Eyes.” Given new disclosures about the capabilities of PRISM and XKeyscore as a result of the documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, a close examination of this affidavit seems to suggest that the Five Eyes infrastructure was used in Dotcom’s case. (In a slide published last month by The Guardian, XKeyscore is clearly shown to have a presence in New Zealand.)

The affadavit also provides a redacted list of “selectors” for Kim Dotcom, his wife Monica Dotcom, and Bram Van Der Kolk, one of Dotcom’s co-defendants.

“We intercepted [REDACTED] from the first two selectors on the list," the document states. "Obviously only a small fraction of them were used in the reports that were generated. We had no [REDACTED] collection on Dotcom, and I’m advised we saw a little [REDACTED] none of which was used in reporting.”

“All Five Eyes partners have access [to the NSA's systems], including GCSB,” Dotcom told Ars. “GCSB doesn’t even operate their own spy cloud. Everything goes into the US-based spy cloud. Including all the surveillance they have done on me. They typed in the selector and got access to everything the Five Eyes spy cloud had on me. Then the GCSB started real-time surveillance of all my communications, IP, mobile, etc. and was feeding that into the spy cloud.”

Neither the GCSB nor a spokesperson for the Embassy of New Zealand in the United States immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment. In June 2013, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key evaded answering whether the GCSB uses or has access to the NSA’s PRISM system.

"I can't tell you how the United States gather all of their information, what techniques they use, I just simply don't know,” Key told TV3’s Firstline. “But if the question is do we use the United States or one of our other partners to circumvent New Zealand law then the answer is categorically no. We do exchange—and it's well known—information with our partners. We do do that. How they gather that information and whether they use techniques or systems like PRISM, I can't comment on that.''

As we reported in March 2013, a New Zealand appeals court ruled (PDF) that Kim Dotcom has the right to sue the government of New Zealand for illegal surveillance. As we reported further last year, the NZ government admitted after the fact that Dotcom should not have been subjected to government surveillance due to his having obtained permanent resident status.

According to new documents acquired earlier this year by a New Zealand TV channel, the GCSB already had information as of December 16, 2011 (before the January 2012 raid) showing that Dotcom was a permanent resident of New Zealand and that the agency knew Dotcom should not have been targeted at all. Interestingly, the documents also show Dotcom’s government code name: “Billy Big Steps.”

Still, Ira Rothken, Dotcom’s California-based attorney, seemed to be a bit more cautious about drawing any new implications from the NZ affidavit.

“We’re in the process of litigating a civil case that implicates the New Zealand government for their illegal spying,” he told Ars. “At this point, while we have a healthy appreciation for whatever informal analysis is being done, our goal in this case is to actually get the information directly from New Zealand government sources. I don’t want to prejudge the very thing that we’re litigating now.”

Still, Rothken seemed to indicate that it was within the realm of possibility that Five Eyes was turned against Dotcom illegally.

“I think it’s axiomatic that New Zealand has access to the Five Eyes infrastructure because it’s a member of Five Eyes and it has network points in New Zealand, including a large installation in New Zealand,” he added. “I think that that’s common knowledge. We know that the spy machinery was misused because what was done was illegal. The interesting thing about this case is that it shows how not having sufficient checks and balances against the spy machinery can come back to hurt and impact the rights of innocent residents. Here, the Prime Minister has already apologized and admitted that what happened was illegal. We are litigating for what damages and remedies should be provided.”

Mark Rumold, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that it wasn’t clear how much New Zealand authorities obtained via the NSA.

“It would all be dependent on New Zealand law,” he told Ars. “There’s nothing in here that looks like a slam dunk. It doesn't seem like it’s outside the realm of possibility, but if everything is based on a single classification, it seems possible.”

At the time of the surveillance against Dotcom, the GCSB was only allowed to engage in surveillance of non-resident foreigners. However, earlier this week, the New Zealand parliament voted 61-59 to expand the GCSB’s powers to encompass citizens and legal residents.

"This is not, and never will be, about wholesale spying on New Zealanders," Prime Minister John Key told parliament on Thursday. "There are threats our government needs to protect New Zealanders from. Those threats are real and ever-present, and we underestimate them at our peril."

Bron: arstechnica.com

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Inval bij Kim Dotcom van Megaupload was toch legaal

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De grootscheepse inval in de villa van internetondernemer Kim Dotcom in Nieuw-Zeeland was toch legaal. Het gerechtshof in Wellington heeft vandaag het vonnis vernietigd van een lagere rechter die oordeelde dat de autoriteiten hun boekje ver te buiten waren gegaan.

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Het juridische gevecht is voorlopig nog niet voorbij. De verdediging liet weten nu hoogstwaarschijnlijk naar het hooggerechtshof te zullen stappen om de uitspraak van woensdag ongedaan te maken. Pas daarna kan de rechter een oordeel vellen over het Amerikaanse uitleveringsverzoek. In de tussentijd zijn de verdachten op borgtocht vrij.

Het gerechtshof was overigens net als de rechtbank kritisch op de werkwijze van de autoriteiten. Zo was het volgens het hof wél illegaal dat kopieën van in beslag genomen harde schijven werden doorgespeeld aan de Amerikanen.

twitter:

KimDotcom twitterde op dinsdag 25-03-2014 om 15:14:29 If the government destroys your billion dollar company, stay calm and build a new billion dollar company. reageer retweet

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Kim Dotcom Is Taking Mega Public with a Reverse Takeover

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Mega, the encrypted cloud storage company founded by “Entrepreneur - Innovator - Gamer - Artist - Fighter” Kim Dotcom, is going public, but it’s not taking the usual IPO route preferred by the startup bros of Silicon Valley. No, like it’s unconventional founder—and alleged “cyber fugitive”—Mega is going to get listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in a different way, via what’s called a reverse takeover.

The reverse takeover Mega is pulling is the corporate equivalent of something out of Alien—you know when the giant acid-spitting bug lays an egg in a human, only to have it horrifically hatch out of their chest hours later, killing the person in the process. So, in corporate land it more or less entails an existing corporate entity listed on the exchange (in this case TRS Investments Ltd.) buying Mega, whose shareholders will then own 99 percent of that company. Then TRS will change its name to Mega, and it's back to business as usual. Just like Alien, except with way more lawyers.

A reverse takeover is an unconventional approach to taking a company public, so I went straight to the source and asked Mega CEO Stephen Hall why they chose to go public this way, versus the more common IPO route.

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Op donderdag 27 maart 2014 09:34 schreef wolfrolf het volgende:
Blijft toch een merkwaardige snuiter die Kim Dotcom

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Wanted cyber tycoon Kim Dotcom launches party to contest New Zealand poll

(Reuters) - Kim Dotcom, accused by Washington of being one of the world's biggest internet pirates, plunged into politics on Thursday with the launch of a party to contest New Zealand's general election in September.

The alleged copyright pirate, also known as Kim Schmitz, said the Internet Party's guiding principles included faster, cheaper Internet, the creation of high-tech jobs, and the protection of privacy.

"It is a movement for people who haven't voted before, who have been disappointed by voting, or who don't like the political choices on offer," Dotcom said in a statement.

"It is a movement for people who care about a digital future, and who want a society that is open, free and fair."

The flashy internet mogul is fighting a bid by U.S. authorities to extradite him from his lavish estate in New Zealand to face online piracy charges over the now closed file-sharing site Megaupload.

The attention has not fazed Dotcom, a large and ebullient German national with New Zealand residency.

On Tuesday, Dotcom gloated over a deal that will see a cloud storage firm he founded while on bail listing on the New Zealand stock exchange and valued on paper at NZ$210 million ($179 million).

Recruitment is being done through the party's website and apps on mobile devices, where he is described as the Internet Party's "Visionary".

The party must sign up 500 members and register with electoral authorities to take part in the election.

Under New Zealand's proportional voting system, a party must win either an electorate seat or at least 5 percent of the nationwide vote to get into the 120-seat parliament.

A Reuters survey of six polls shows the center-right National Party, which has been in power since 2008, with 48.2 percent support against the main opposition center-left Labour Party, which has 33.3 percent.

Dotcom has the right to vote in New Zealand but cannot stand for election until he becomes a citizen.

Since his arrival in New Zealand in 2010, he has been embroiled in a political funding scandal, and forced an apology from Prime Minister John Key for illegal surveillance by a government spy agency.

In early 2012, the New Zealand government arrested Dotcom at his mansion near Auckland in a SWAT-style raid requested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dotcom is free on bail while he fights extradition, although his movements are restricted.

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Dotcom Bomb: U.S. Case Against Megaupload is Crumbling

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MPAA and RIAA appear to be caught in framing attempt; Judge orders Mr. Dotcom's assets returned to him

"Drinkin' beer in the hot sun / I fought the law and / I won / I fought the law and / I won." -- Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedies, 1987

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Embracing the role of IT entrepreneur in his adopted home of New Zealand, he has fought tooth and nail to defeat a puppet prosecution, acting on the behalf of the U.S. government, which is in turn intimately tied to and acting on behalf of the big money U.S. entertainment industry.

And after a long fight Kim Dotcom is on a verge of winning.

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MPAA and RIAA Members Uploaded Over 2,000 Gigabytes to Megaupload

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This month both the MPAA and RIAA filed civil lawsuits against Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom for massive copyright infringement. What they failed to mention, however, is that many of their members' employees were actually sharing files on the site. In addition, Disney, Warner Brothers and Fox were all eager to set up content distribution or advertising deals with Megaupload.

Following in the footsteps of the U.S. Government, this month the major record labels and Hollywood’s top movie studios filed lawsuits against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom.

While the legal action doesn’t come as a surprise, there is a double standard that has not been addressed thus far.

The entertainment industry groups have always been quick to brand Megaupload as a pirate haven, designed to profit from massive copyright infringement. The comment below from MPAA’s general counsel Steve Fabrizio is a good example.

“Megaupload was built on an incentive system that rewarded users for uploading the most popular content to the site, which was almost always stolen movies, TV shows and other commercial entertainment content,” Fabrizio commented when the MPAA filed its suit.

However, data from Megaupload’s database shared with TorrentFreak shows that employees of MPAA and RIAA member companies had hundreds of accounts at the file-storage site. This includes people working at Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Warner Music.

In total, there were 490 Megaupload accounts that were connected to MPAA and RIAA members, who sent 181 premium payments in total. Together, these users uploaded 16,455 files which are good for more than 2,097 gigabytes in storage.

Remember, those are only from addresses that could be easily identified as belonging to a major movie studio or record label, so the real numbers should be much higher.

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Op woensdag 19 juni 2013 16:01 schreef wolfrolf het volgende:
http://techland.time.com/(...)ile-sharing-website/

Dit soort dingen kunnen het einde betekennen van het internet zoals we het kennen.

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US brands Kim Dotcom ‘fugitive of justice’ for refusing to extradite himself

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The Department of Justice has now branded Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues at the defunct file-sharing site Megaupload “fugitive[s] of justice” for refusing to travel to the United States where they face charges related to the website.

In paperwork filed this week, federal prosecutors for the DOJ’s Eastern District of Virginia division argue that Dotcom and his co-defendants do not have standing to challenge a complaint calling for them to forfeit their assets because their unwillingness to voluntarily enter the US has, according to government attorneys, rendered them unable to benefit from the resources of the court.

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With attempts to extradite the alleged conspirators to America having stalled for years, the US prosecutors argued in July that the seized assets should be surrendered. Attorneys for the defendants fired back, however, by calling the accusations imaginary.

“The crimes for which the government seeks to punish the Megaupload defendants do not exist. Although there is no such crime as secondary criminal copyright infringement, that is the crime on which the Government’s Superseding Indictment and instant Complaint are predicated,” Megaupload’s attorneys answered last month. “That is the nonexistent crime for which Megaupload was destroyed and all of its innocent users were denied their rightful property. And that is the nonexistent crime for which the government would now strip the criminal defendants, and their families, of all their assets.”

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Ira Rothken, an American-based lawyer for Dotcom, told Torrent Freak this week that “The DOJ is trying to win the Megaupload case on procedure rather than the merits.”

“Most people don’t realize that Kim Dotcom has never been to the United States,” Rothken responded.

“The United States doesn’t have a statute for criminal secondary copyright infringement,” he added. “We believe that the case should be dismissed based on a lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”

On Wednesday, Dotcom — a German-born businessmen with New Zealand citizenship — took to Twitter to reject the latest filing from the government.

“I have never ever been to the United States. My business had no office there. Exercising my right to oppose extradition makes me a fugitive?” he asked.

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Kim Dotcom: I Regret Not Taking Threat of Copyright Law and MPAA More Seriously

Kim Dotcom has spoken out about his long battle over copyright with the US government and his regrets about the events that have led to his arrest ahead of his bail breach hearing on Thursday that could see him return to jail in New Zealand.

"Would I have done things differently? Of course. My biggest regret is I didn't take the threat of the copyright law and the MPAA seriously enough," Dotcom said via live video link from his mansion in Auckland, New Zealand at the Unbound Digital conference in London on Tuesday.

"I thought that due to court decisions we were monitoring from our competitors like RapidShare who did exactly what we did and were winning in civil court proceedings, and YouTube was winning against Viacom – our sense was that we were protected by the DMCA law.

"We never for a minute thought that anyone would bring any criminal actions against us. We had in-house legal counsel, we had three outside firms working for us who reviewed our sites, and not once had any of them mentioned any form of legal risk, so I wish I had known that there was a risk."

"Officially broke right now"

It is clear that Dotcom is tired of the three-year-long legal battle. He has spent $10m (£6.4m) on his legal defence and says his legal team has now resigned since he has run out of money.

Despite this, his latest venture, an encrypted cloud file-hosting service called Mega, is earning revenues and will be valued at $210m once it merges with a publically-listed company in New Zealand.

"As of today, I don't have a single share in Mega – it's all held in trust by my wife and my five children," he said.

"The US government has taken all my assets up until the raid in all jurisdictions and after I invested money into the Internet Party, the MPAA sued me civilly to try to seize those assets too, so I'm officially broke right now."

Dotcom's Internet Party failed to gain enough support to get into parliament in the September elections in New Zealand and might now disband.

He admits that his entry into politics may not have done him any good.

"This battle is quite exhausting – it has taken a lot of resources, a lot of time and energy, and I think I'm being unfairly persecuted here in New Zealand by the media because I engaged politically to try to change things and that unfortunately backfired," he said.

"Before I started my political movement, I was quite popular in New Zealand. Everyone was cheering for me to win my case, but after I got involved in politics and the Prime Minister and his party attacked me viciously, labelling me as a Nazi and saying I'm only going into politics to stop my extradition, well the New Zealand public heard that narrative and now I'm a pariah.

"The witch hunt worked, everyone wants to see me burn, and on Thursday I might go to jail because of that."

Governments are still spying on us

Dotcom says that even you ignore his own experiences, the world needs to pay attention as the US government "is spying on everyone in the world".

"It's just so dirty now, I've lost my faith in the law and the judicial system. Jimmy Carter said that US government is breaking 50% of the rights on the human rights charter, and in Australia, there is now a law where you can't even release information on the government anymore – you go to jail," he stressed.
Kim Dotcom in one of his more flamboyant moments, surrounded by dancers at his opening party of Mega
Kim Dotcom in one of his more flamboyant moments, surrounded by dancers at his opening party for Mega(Reuters)

"More and more human rights organisations are pointing out how governments are becoming more aggressive in prosecuting people for revealing the truth.

"Today you go to jail for telling the truth and that can't be right, especially if the truth is that the government has been breaking the law and then lying to congress and parliament about it."

Dotcom said that copyright was always considered to be a civil offence and a decade ago, would have been considered to be on the same level as a parking ticket.

"Steve Wozniak spoke up about my case and said that you don't shut down the post office. When I started Mega Upload, it was about circumventing attaching big files to email. So how can someone who created a simple technology, who made 50 million people happy a year, now face 88 years in jail," he said.

"I'm an easy target because of my flamboyance. When you travel around on private jets and you go around with cars that have number plates saying 'God', 'Stoned' and 'Mafia' on them, it's probably not the best for keeping a low profile.

"Make sure you send me some cards in appreciation for what I'm trying to do – if I go back to jail, send me a photo of a cat."

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Megaupload Programmer Sentenced to a Year in Prison

Andrus Nomm, one of the Megaupload employees indicted by the United States, has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to a year in prison. Nomm signed a plea deal and admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from Mega's sites.

After three years of relative inaction the criminal case against Megaupload and seven of its employees heated up this week.

Just a few days ago the U.S. authorities arrested Andrus Nomm, one of the indicted Megaupload defendants.

The 36-year-old programmer had been living in the Netherlands but came to the States to take a plea deal.

The Department of Justice just announced that Nomm pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement, and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

According to the DoJ statement Nomm acknowledged that he “was aware that copyright-infringing content was stored on the [Megaupload] websites, including copyright protected motion pictures and television programs, some of which contained the ‘FBI Anti-Piracy’ warning.”

“Nomm also admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from the Mega websites. Nomm continued to participate in the Mega Conspiracy,” the statement continues.

The authorities are happy with their first vistory in this case and are determined to bring the other defendants to the U.S. as well.

“This outcome is the result of years of hard work by our office and our partners from the Criminal Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said.

“The Mega Conspiracy engaged in massive criminal infringement of copyrighted works on the Internet, and we are confident that this case will be a sign to those who would abuse technology for illegal profit,” he added.

Meanwhile, Megaupload’s founder Kim Dotcom slammed the U.S. legal system in a comment, but says that he understands Nomm’s decision.

“The US Justice system: An innocent coder pleads guilty after 3 years of DOJ abuse, with no end in sight, in order to move on with his life,” Dotcom tweeted. “I have nothing but compassion and understanding for Andrus Nomm and I hope he will soon be reunited with his son.”

Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken told TF that the U.S. authorities might have taken advantage of Nomm. As an Estonian citizen living in a foreign country he was vulnerable, and running out of funds.

“The DOJ apparently used Andrus Nomm’s weak financial condition and inability to fight back to manufacture a hollywood style publicity stunt in the form of a scripted guilty plea in court,” Rothken says.

“The facts mentioned in court, like a lack of cloud filtering of copyrighted works, are civil secondary copyright issues not criminal issues,” he adds.

According to Rothken the “publicity stunt” reveals how weak the DoJ’s case is.

“The DOJ apparently convinced Andrus Nomm to say the conclusory phrase that Kim Dotcom ‘did not care about protecting copyrights’ and such point shows off the weakness in the DOJ’s case as Megaupload, amongst many other ways of caring, had a robust copyright notice and takedown system which gave direct delete access to major content owners and from which millions of links were removed.”

Nomm’s sentencing for criminal copyright infringement is raising eyebrows among several experts.

In the indictment there was only one example of possible copyright infringement, and that referred to watching a copy of a pirated TV-show. For now it remains unclear what other evidence the authorities have.

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Op zondag 15 februari 2015 09:38 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]