[x-pubpol] Kim Dotcom's legal team is making his case to international AGs

[Joly MacFie]

Relief As U.S., UK, Canada Attorneys General Converge Down Under

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/07/kim-dotcom-makes-another-plea-for-legal-relief-as-u-s-uk-canada-attorneys-general-converge-down-under/

INGRID LUNDEN

Kim Dotcom and his legal team are seizing the moment of a meeting of
attorneys general from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand
in Auckland to bring more attention to his legal fight with the U.S.
government, which wants to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand and try
him for copyright violations related to his now-defunct Megaupload
venture. Robert Amsterdam, a high-profile lawyer known for human
rights cases and the legal defense of political and business leaders
who wasappointed in January to help Dotcom’s case, has also now
published a white paper detailing his take on Dotcom’s legal position.

But while Dotcom’s legal team attempts to take a higher ground, Dotcom
is also taking a no-holds-barred approach as well. As Reuters reports,
Dotcom is offering a prize of $500 the best film of the U.S. Attorney
General, Eric Holder, while his Dotcom’s own Megaupload theme song
plays in the background.

Holder is currently visiting Auckland, New Zealand, along with the
AG’s from the UK, Dominic Grieve, and Canada, Rob Nicholson, who are
meeting with Australia’s AG Mark Dreyfus and Christopher Finlayson of
New Zealand. On the agenda is also a meeting with the Strategic
Alliance Group, which brings together policing agencies from the five
countries — the FBI; the Australian Federal Police; the UK’s Serious
Organised Crime Agency; the New Zealand Police; and the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. During their meetings, the case of Dotcom, who is
resident in New Zealand, will inevitably come up. Megaupload is
accused of costing film studios and music labels some $500 million in
missed revenues, and responsible for some $175 million in “criminal
proceeds.” The criminal copyright case was first filed in January
2012, and an extradition hearing is set for this coming August.

While the Megaupload case continues, Dotcom has busied himself with
the launch of Mega, a new file sharing site and cloud-storage service
that debuted in January of this year. He’s also preparing an online
music and entertainment service called MegaBox; in March, Dotcom said
Megabox could launch in the next six months.

The white paper penned by Amsterdam and Ira P. Rothken, another member
of Dotcom’s legal team as well as that of Megaupload, brings the focus
of Dotcom’s defense down to three main points (the full white paper’s
embedded below):

1. There is no provision in U.S. law for “secondary” copyright
infringement in criminal law, in which the person operating the
delivery method is prosecuted along with the individual posting
material in violation of copyright. Previous cases have only concerned
civil cases, Amsterdam and Rothken write.

2. Megaupload was also used for a lot of legitimate purposes, and so
should therefore be protected under the so-called “Sony doctrine,”
which accepts that any online service is subject to misuse.

3. They also claim that in fact Megaupload cooperated with copyright
owners “millions of times” (over 15 million, they say) by taking down
content when it was flagged by them, and that infringement was no
wilful. “The company’s subjective belief that it was operating within
the law (even if it turns out to have somehow been wrong in that
regard) should by itself be enough to negate the criminal willfulness
requirement, especially considering the novel nature of the
prosecution’s legal theory.”

Whether or not any of this holds water, it’s also interesting to see
that Dotcom is on some level looking to distance himself from those
who have used Megaupload in the past.

This is a change in tactic from a person that up to now has appealed
to those same people to continue to support him throughout all of his
many legal and publicity battles against the likes of the MPAA and its
leader Christopher Dodd. Mega’s CEO, Vikram Kumar, said earlier this
month that Mega is on track to reach 6 million monthly users this
month. That’s still a far cry from where Megaupload was at its peak,
with 60 million registered users, 50 million daily visits and
accounting for about 4% of total internet traffic (according to
figures provided by Dotcom’s team).




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