Kim DotCom to get everything back?

[BobCox2]

Police court order Dotwrong




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Kim Dotcom. Photo / Brett Phibbs


Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom's cash, cars and property were seized using a court order which should never have been granted.
A judgment from Justice Judith Potter on Friday declared the restraining order "null and void" and having "no legal effect".
The blunder might now lead to the beleaguered internet mogul getting back everything that was stripped away in the surprise dawn raid on his mansion eight weeks ago.

[BobCox2]

Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why

For the first time since his arrest in January, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is responding to allegations in what he calls the “MPAA-sponsored” indictment. Eager to fight back, Dotcom refutes several “nonsense” claims made by the Government. In addition, he shows that Mega wasn’t a big bad pirate haven, but a legitimate service that may have been shutdown for political reasons.



Warner Bros., for example, asked Megavideo if they could provide a tool to automatically upload content from the movie studio. “We would like to upload our content all at once instead of one video at a time,” Warner’s Joshua Carver wrote.
More details on these partnership emails are published in a separate article here.
And then there’s the issue of the millions of site users that didn’t use it as a pirate haven. US Government workers had many accounts at Megaupload, as did those at MPAA member companies and those employed by the US Military.
Many of these users paid for a premium account and uploaded a variety of content. Talking to TorrentFreak, Kim Dotcom suggested that of the 15,634 soldiers that used Megaupload, many were probably using it to share pictures and videos with their loved ones at home.
More details on the government, MPAA and military users are published in a separate article here.
A Political Scandal?

Having digested the above, it does indeed seem that the US indictment doesn’t tell the whole story, or that it’s one-sided to say the least. This begs the question of why Mega was so aggressively targeted.
What we do know is that the copyright lobby, headed by the MPAA, has been one of the main facilitators of the criminal investigation. It’s also not a secret that the MPAA and other lobby groups hire former high ranked Government officials and vice versa.
The current head of the MPAA for example is former Senator Chris Dodd, and in recent months alone the MPAA also hired former employees from the Justice Department, the White House staff and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Needless to say, the movie industry group is well-connected in Washington.
On the other hand we see that Neil MacBride, the U.S attorney who filed the Mega indictment, has connections to the copyright lobby as well. In fact, he served as the Vice President for Anti-Piracy and General Counsel of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), MPAA’s software counterpart.
It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the Mega investigation was somewhat of a ‘gift’ to Hollywood, a theory which Megaupload’s founder subscribes to.
“Mega has become a re-election pawn in the White House / MPAA affair. If I was a Republican presidential candidate I would investigate this,” Dotcom says.
However, this gift isn’t as free as it may seem. Dotcom says that the witch hunt against his company is putting the US technology sector at a disadvantage.
“The MPAA / White House corruption has weakened US technology leadership. Internet businesses, hosting, cloud, payment processors, ad networks, etc. are going to avoid the US,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.
“There is an opportunity for liberal countries to welcome those businesses with better laws,” he predicts. “The loss of IT business & jobs in the US will substantially outweigh the inflated losses claimed by the MPAA & their billionaire club.”
For now, however, Dotcom is mainly concerned with taking the criminal indictment apart. He is confident that he and his legal team will succeed in this and promises fireworks when the complete motion is published.
“We did nothing wrong. Watch out for our first motion in response to the MPAA-sponsored Department of Justice indictment. It will be enlightening and maybe entertaining,” Dotcom concludes.

[Dredd]

@ Blob: Just a very quick fair-use/netiquette note for future reference:

Don't copy/paste whole articles. It's rude (amongst other things). Also, unformatted walls of text like that are torture on the eyes.

Quote the opening paragraph or a few relevant bits to give the reader a taste of the article and then let them decide if they want to click the link and read the rest. Here's a revision of your above post in a more acceptable format:
--------------------------------

Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why

For the first time since his arrest in January, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is responding to allegations in what he calls the “MPAA-sponsored” indictment. Eager to fight back, Dotcom refutes several “nonsense” claims made by the Government. In addition, he shows that Mega wasn’t a big bad pirate haven, but a legitimate service that may have been shutdown for political reasons.

Source: TorrentFreak

[BobCox2]

This is really a heavy on-topic thread Dredd
I did edit it down some per your request but I doubt that guy would yell I was not doing fair use.
IP is imprtant and this guy is PR Crazy but which side crossed the line here?

FYI:
Sports Reporter Demands Return of Megaupload Files


“It is one thing to take legal action against an alleged copyright infringer. It is quite another to do so at the expense of entirely innocent third parties, with no attempt to prevent or even mitigate the collateral damage,” the brief starts.
The attorneys explain that Goodwin signed up for a premium Megaupload account that he used to store raw footage of games, player and coach interviews, and promotional materials for his business. This Megaupload account served as an online backup of the files he stored on his hard drive, in case that crashed.
Unfortunately for Goodwin the hard drive did indeed crash in January, right after Megaupload was shutdown. However, when he attempted to download the backup files, he noticed that Megaupload was no longer operational. As a result, the sports reporter claims to have suffered significant losses.

[krischan]

Copying big parts of an article is plagiarism as well, if not a copyright violation, even if it's found on a public website. In many countries, the maintainer of a website can be held liable for things done by forum members if not acted on quickly enough. Maybe the chance for it to happen is low, but if a greedy lawyer notices it, he might send a cease-and-desist letter which comes with a 4 digit invoice if agreed to it not reacted on quickly enough. In Germany we have a whole army of these people.

[BobCox2]

I link to Source, It's 2 clicks away and no Paysite or anything and I have never had a problem or known anyone that had one.

Now if it were music or a movie . . .RIAA MMPA C&D might get made.


But that would be the what are you listening to thread.

Megeupload had given the Content owners (Warner Bros etc) rights to pull things down at will (back on topic) so why the raid?

Political Arrest.

[Stevinator]

My how times have changed, we used to always put the whole thing in case the link broke/moved/people too lazy to click it. Stupid lawyers ruin everything.

[Pixie]

Sure is serious business up in here.

My how times have changed, we used to always put the whole thing in case the link broke/moved/people too lazy to click it. Stupid lawyers ruin everything.

Times haven't changed, this place's just so dead in terms of user traffic, seems like the mods're itching moderate anything & everything.
It's like I can visit reddit, and then come here, and see stuff from the previous few days slowing aggregating into the "weird **** on the interwebs" thread. Why isn't that a concern? Reposted content, without original source, hmm?

Nothing wrong with quoting stuff. C&Ds, over a quote? Even if you get one (in that inanely remote chance), all you have to do is take it down. I can't believe you even remotely consider that an issue, even more so over a news article. Even more so from TorrentFreak of all sources.

"Guys, they're pirating our news article!!!!1"

Copying big parts of an article is plagiarism as well.

If you try to pass it off as your own sure.
He sure wasn't. Quotes, original source, lol what?

In before draconian ban for dissension.

[krischan]

If you try to pass it off as your own sure.
He sure wasn't. Quotes, original source, lol what?

I'm no lawyer, but I wouldn't be that sure that adding a link is enough of that. It could still be regarded as a copyright violation.

In before draconian ban for dissension.

Relax. I don't think that I was citing any forum rules and it wasn't meant as moderation. However, if you wish to discuss it with me as a mod, we can do that via PMs.

[BobCox2]

It's like I can visit reddit, and then come here, and see stuff from the previous few days slowing aggregating into the "weird **** on the interwebs" thread. Why isn't that a concern? Reposted content, without original source, hmm?

Reddit is not a original source for anything except AMA's and ASK Reddit.

MEh http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...fair-trial.ars

Megaupload: Erasing our servers as the US wants would deny us a fair trial

By Timothy B. Lee