July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The only thing taking longer than the whole Kim Dotcom/MegaUpload legal boondoggle is the Apple/Samsung court battle being waged across half the globe.

But it’s starting to get close.

Today a New Zealand court granted Dotcom’s legal team access to all the evidence seized by police in that illegal raid way back in early 2012 that followed an also-illegal government surveillance campaign. Last year, the FBI had wanted to give Dotcom access to only one document out of 22 million seized emails, arguing rather cheekily that Dotcom did not need to see all the evidence against him before he faces trial in U.S. courts.

In addition to digital evidence, police had seized $17 million worth of Dotcom’s personal assets, including millions of dollars worth of luxury cars — including a Mercedes SUV with a custom “MAFIA” license plate — and art.

It’s no wonder Dotcom has pulled a Che Guevara on Barack Obama.

Based on today’s ruling, any computer hard drives — apparently there were 135 — and other evidence, including emails and other files, must be returned to Dotcom. Irrelevant materials must be returned immediately, and materials that the prosecution thinks are relevant to the case can be cloned or copied before being returned. There’s no word, however, on whether Dotcom’s cars and art fit the category of “evidence.”

An extradition hearing that could deport Dotcom to the U.S. is scheduled for August.

It’s unlikely that it will proceed as planned, as other cases could disrupt the timetable, but even if it does and Dotcom is actually extradited, it might be a good thing for the flamboyant technologist, who led the Time100 poll for top leaders, artists, and innovators in the world before ending up third.

That would just increase his visibility, and add power to his message.

Image credits: Elliot Kember/Flickr; Kim Dotcom

Leading the #Time100 poll with a 93% approval rating. I can die now (or enter politics). Eat this FBI. twitter.com/KimDotcom/stat…

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) April 8, 2013

He’s currently second on the list, with 82,336 positive votes, and first in terms of approval rating, with only 6,326 downvotes. First place for positive votes is Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi (no, I didn’t recognize the name either), but he also has 192,037 downvotes.

To say the list has been hijacked a little by the technorati and social media is to say that water is wet: North Korean dictator and nuclear warmonger Kim Jong Un currently sits in ninth place, and Beyoncé is 11th. South Korean pop star Psy sits in 13th, and Ben Affleck — Ben Affleck — is a few spots further back.

In other words, this is a gong show, and Time probably knows it.

But it’s all good for Dotcom, who has tweeted about the poll multiple times in the past day to his 293,278 Twitter followers. Dotcom, whose MegaUpload file sharing service was shut down by the FBI, and whose New Zealand house was searched illegally, is busy opening a new file-sharing service called Mega.

Naturally, any publicity for Dotcom is publicity for his new venture.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

There must never be a dull moment in Kim Dotcom’s life.

Sure, he is a massive publicity hound, but he’s an interesting publicity hound. Fresh off rebranding his defunct MegaUpload service as a sparkling new file-sharing service called Me.ga — yes that’s Mega, but it’s also ME dot GA — Dotcom now wants to help build a new fat pipe to online content in the U.S.

Specifically, in fact, to Los Angeles, home of the Hollywood execs who instigated his MegaUpload mega takedown.

One way or another New Zealand needs Pacific Fibre. I think it is important to reboot efforts to make it happen.

—
Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) November 03, 2012

Pacific Fibre was an attempt to create a second link between Australia, New Zealand, and Los Angeles. However, the consortium failed to attracted the $400 million in investment required to lay the 10,500 kilometer (6500 mile) cable and closed its doors as of August.

Now Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, is proposing rebooting the project — which would surely be helpful to his new file-sharing business, as it needs high-speed global connectivity.

But while Dotcom’s legal problems may be slowly clearing up as both the American and New Zealand governments have significantly fumbled the copyright infringement proceedings against him, he is almost certainly still persona non grata to officialdom and content czars in both countries.

In other words: Dotcom agitating for a new intercontinental broadband cable may very well be the kiss of death to the project. That is, if it weren’t dead already.

At least one Internet user in New Zealand, however, who dubbed the effort megacable, pointed out the fatal flaw:

While I admire the @KimDotcom #megacable plan, there is a tiny flaw. US permission required to connect to USA m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/articl…

—
Rod Drury (@roddrury) November 03, 2012

Image credit: Pacific Fibre; Hat tip: Ars Technica

But the new poster boy for internet freedom has a big-kids message:

“The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The Government is killing innovation. Don’t let them get away with that.”

Whether you agree or disagree, Dotcom is eager to make his case on the new Kim.com, where he calls on American president Barack Obama to “end the war on internet freedom” … and shares 10 facts about the MegaUpload scandal and court cases in an attempt to both exonerate his company and demonstrate the illegal nature of the US government’s actions.

And he explicitly links his message to Dr. Martin Luther King, saying “I have a dream, like Dr. King.” He also links himself implicitly to Che Guevara, the famous Argentinian Marxist who contributed to the Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, by wearing the beret cap in the video.

Watch, listen, enjoy:

Somewhat interestingly … on the bottom of the Kim.com website is a small image: a copyright notice.

And there’s a terms of service, which states that the website is copyrighted and may not be used by organizations, companies, or businesses for any purposes. And one more thing:

Unauthorized framing of or linking to the Website is prohibited.

I don’t think Che had a terms of service page, Kim.

Note:  last week Dotcom published the following letter to the movie industry via The Hollywood Reporter.

Dear Hollywood,

The Internet frightens you. But history has taught us that the greatest innovations were built on rejections. The VCR frightened you, but it ended up making billions of dollars in video sales.

You get so comfortable with your ways of doing business that any change is perceived as a threat. The problem is, we as a society don’t have a choice: The law of human nature is to communicate more efficiently. And the economic benefits of high-speed Internet and unlimited cloud storage are so great that we need to plan for the day when the transfer of terabytes of data will be measured in seconds.

Businesses and individuals will keep looking for faster connectivity, more robust online storage and more privacy. Transferring large pieces of content over the Internet will become common — not because global citizens are evil but because economic forces leading to “speed of light” data transfer and storage are so beneficial to societal growth.

Come on, guys, I am a computer nerd. I love Hollywood and movies. My whole life is like a movie.

I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for the mind-altering glimpse at the future in Star Wars. I am at the forefront of creating the cool stuff that will allow creative works to thrive in an Internet age. I have the solutions to your problems. I am not your enemy.

Providing “freemium” cloud storage to society is not a crime. What will Hollywood do when smartphones and tablets can wirelessly transfer a movie file within milliseconds?

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their views. The fact remains that the benefits of Megaupload to society outweigh the burdens. But instead of adapting, you imported one of your action-conspiracy movie scripts into the real world. In my view, MPAA CEO and former Sen. Chris Dodd lobbied his friends in the White House to turn me into a villain who has to be destroyed. Due process? Rule of law? Eliminate me and my innovation and worry about the consequences later. Never mind that millions of Megaupload users lost access to cloud data like their wedding photos. Well done, Hollywood, everyone with similar innovations got the message. But wait … You did not read the end of the script.

The people of the Internet will unite. They will help me. And they are stronger than you. We will prevail in the war for Internet freedom and innovation that you have launched. We have logic, human nature and the invisible hand on our side.

As you should have known, our Mega services operated within the boundaries of the law. We had users that spanned from the military to Hollywood to lawyers and doctors. If you are unhappy with that, it is up to you to convince Congress to amend legislation. You tried with SOPA and you failed. As an alternative, you chose to lobby the Justice Department to ignore the law and stage a global show of force and destruction. The only parties a New Zealand court has found to have violated the law in this case are the local police and the FBI.

Regardless of the issues you have with new technologies, you can’t just engage armed forces halfway around the world, rip a peaceful man from his family, throw him in jail, terminate his business without a trial, take everything he owns without a hearing, deprive him of a fair chance to defend himself and do all that while your propaganda machine is destroying him in the media. Is that who you want to be?

There can still be a happy ending. I am working on solutions. Just call me or my lawyers. You know where to find me. Unfortunately I can only do lunch in New Zealand.

This open letter is free of copyright. Use it freely.

Image credit: Kim.com