US Gov't Says Megaupload Shouldn't Be Allowed To Use Top Law Firm It Hired For Its Defense
from the fair-trials? dept
The US government seems to be bending over backwards to make sure that Megaupload cannot get a fair trial. Perhaps they're finally realizing that their own indictment had serious problems and figure the best way to get past that is to make it that much harder for Megaupload to defend itself. We've already covered the desire of the feds to have significant evidence destroyed in the case, but now they're trying to block Megaupload from hiring a top law firm. It had recently been noted that top litigator Andrew Schapiro from Quinn Emanuel, was joining the defense team.But the US is objecting to Quinn Emanuel taking part in the case, claiming that Schapiro's previous work with YouTube and Google represent a conflict of interest -- since the government intends to try to show that YouTube was a "victim" of Megaupload, and use Google as a witness since it pulled AdSense over infringement concerns. Furthermore, the government uses the fact that Quinn Emanuel -- a pretty large law firm -- has also represented some Hollywood interests to say that it shouldn't be able to take part. The thing is, law firms like Quinn Emanuel have a pretty detailed conflict of interest process, in which they check a bunch of things before they take on a case. If they satisfied that process, then why should the government be involved at all, other than just as an attempt to deny Megaupload the skills of the lawyer it wants to hire?
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Filed Under: andrew schapiro, indictment, lawyer
Companies: megaupload, quinn emmanuel, youtube
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Changing my mind
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Re: Changing my mind
There are way too many people who were using MU for legal purposes. It is an over reach by the government and perhaps it is time for them to allow MU to defend themselves and prepare to accept the resignations of attorneys who screwed this up this badly.
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Furthermore, in the evidence of laws having been broken, it would be irresponsible for the U.S. Government to allow the site continued operations; and should there exist digital evidence, allowing megaupload to destroy said evidence is absurd.
Megaupload is guilty, we KNOW they are guilty... and we know that they will win regardless. This is not a fight over who is guilty and who is not... it is a fight against the corporate takeover of the world, and the government's inability to do anything about it.
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They are offering to pay to keep the data available for their defense, but their assets are not available.
MU do not have finances to do what ever they want. Their money in most places is frozen ... i.e. not available.
Said government colluding with the MPAA want the stored files ... aka evidence .. destroyed.
2) Ding Ding Ding: the government should not be able to be allowed to deliver punishment before a trial and to cut off their financial income necessary to defend themselves while the government is here attacking them
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Changing my mind
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So you don't care if they are guilty, you just want to punish them for ... taking over the world? Really? Wow, seems like they have managed to accomplish what Pinky and the Brain have been trying to do for quite some time now.
By your logic, lets just execute you for murder. Who cares if you are guilty or not, since this is not what the fight is about.
"it is a fight against the corporate takeover of the world"
I somewhat agree, the RIAA/MPAA, big pharma, and big agriculture (among other industries, like big oil), have taken over our government through campaign contributions and the revolving door. and that needs to end.
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You mean the evidence that the government wanted to destroy yet MU is fighting to keep alive?? Which btw, had you read the article you would have seen that Mike pointed that bit out already
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If they're not guilty of breaking the law then what is this about? What are they guilty of, providing content distribution services that compete with incumbent government established monopolists?
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Re: Changing my mind
The government realizes that the judicial system is horrible and wants to prevent anything from interfering with their justified case.
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Re: Re: Changing my mind
1) Extensive governmental resources
2) Anti-criminal bias, even alleged
and in an attempt to prevent even a single innocent being incarcerated. The designers of the system felt that it was more important that no innocent find themselves in jail than that all criminals did.
The Judicial system actually works moderately well from this point of view (where the only error in the system is an innocent in jail). Besides, only a judicial process can determine whether their case is actually justified.
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Re: Re: Changing my mind
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Re: Changing my mind
I just came off a jury and the defense lawyer opened with:
Raise your hand if you think my defendant is guilty.( No hands.)
Raise your hand if you think my defendant is innocent. (No hands.)
Raise your hands if you need to see the evidence before deciding. (Every hand went up.)
Lawyer: Let me remind you all that the Constitution is very clear that my defendant is Innocent Until Proven guilty.
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Re: Re: Changing my mind
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good news
Its nice to see lawyers realising what a sham this trial is turning into.
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Re: good news
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Think someone in the DoJ is having an "Oh Shit" moment now ;)
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Re: good news
No, lawyers are just realizing the money they can make by taking the case. It was lawyers that created the legal system that created this legal mess. This results in plaintiffs and the defendants hiring lawyers. It's a win - win situation for the lawyers.
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Re: Re: good news
The public will have lost a useful service (either temporarily or for good), potentially a lot of personal files, and a bunch of their tax money;
Artists using the service to distribute their content AND make money from it will also have lost a useful service and income;
MegaUpload will have lost a lot of revenue;
The USG will have massively lost face (yep, I'm betting on them losing);
The MPAA will have achieved nothing to stem piracy of movies, and most likely converted even more people from their cause;
And the lawyers will walk away with millions of dollars in fees.
What a great system...
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Just not in the circles they actually care about.
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This smacks of guilty until proven....more guilty than originally thought.
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You really should read up on history before you go talking about it...
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Re: Actually, the Spanish Inquisition was nowhere near the villains that popular culture today makes them out to be.
And he just had to stay home and not talk to anybody for the rest of his life.
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Re: Re: Actually, the Spanish Inquisition was nowhere near the villains that popular culture today makes them out to be.
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Re: Re: Re: Actually, the Spanish Inquisition was nowhere near the villains that popular culture today makes them out to be.
wait, where'd everything after that first ) come from? you weren't even talking about that...
whoops?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: good news
Otherwise you would be saying that everything that Monty Python has taught me has been a lie
How dare you Sir.. I challenge you to a duel.. May the best knight of Ni, win! (my weapon of choice will be a salmon)
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Re: good news
Interesting, next time I see the USG trying to stick its nose into a foreign jurisdiction and criminal case (or civil) I think I might show this interesting statement that wipes out a century of working with foreign courts and solicitors/attorneys.
Oh wait, there might be a few I know about already and might even be involved in.
Is the DoJ composed of a bunch of blithering idiots in regards to this case?
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Well, this and sticky sheets.
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But...but...but...PIRACY!
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The lawyer they can use:
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What next? abolish human right constitution for your laws to be implemented?
Go back to the feudal era and stay there....
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Hard core Republicans do think that America is not only corrupt but socialist and ruled over by a muslim dictator who isn't even an american citizen, who will force children to become atheists and pass laws that will require all red blooded (and possibly necked) proper heterosexual men to enter into gay marriage against their will.
Not to mention that when they get Gay STDs they will be paraded in front of a death panel instead of being able to rely on the proper capitalist good will of an insurance company.
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How come there's still birther crud happening?
How come anything Obama does, he's accused of being an 'evil' socialist?
If you want some 'evidence', go to Fundies Say the Darndest Things or such delightful places as Free Republic or WorldNetDaily.
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In the meantime, why don't you focus on sorting out your own country as well, rather than lamenting about the influence of another nation? I see a whole bunch of politicians that keep caving to "American ['based' corporation's] interests" rather than standing up for their own countries.
The most important thing you could do is get your diplomats to refuse to negotiate with the US in the absence of a truly transparent process (fully declassified and publicized would be nice). This kind of pressure would put the USTR between a rock (your diplomats) and a hard place (American citizens) and eventually grind them down to such a process, which would end much of America's strong arming in other nations.
If you want, we could start working on a petition to show them that Americans oppose the way their diplomatic position is being abused. You just have to ask the ACLU and EFF and I'm sure they'll be happy to put one together.
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This will probably be like Casey Anthony
Trying to rail road someone so badly, is why I believe she was found not-guilty, and will hopefully lead to MU being found not-guilty, and the MPAA/DoJ having to pay restitution.
The DMCA notice and takedown exists for a reason, if MU had it... then it is MPAA/RIAA's fault for having MU take away the search feature.
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Wait, wait, wait!
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Re: Wait, wait, wait!
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Re: Re: Wait, wait, wait!
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What process? Can you please describe it for us? There are plenty of lawyers who will gladly turn a blind eye to conflict of interest in order to reap a multi-million dollar payday.
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Even so, the judge ultimately is granted discretion in this matter. It is not something that either the gov or the lawyers get to decide. I'm reasonably sure that if the judge has reservations, they can simply ask to review the process to ensure it meets the standards it claims.
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I'm assuming you have about 0 experience with a decent sized or larger law firm when it comes to these things.
They all have a process of checking the parties in the lawsuit to see if there's any direct conflict. Different firms call it different things but the one I hear most typically is "running the traps." And most top law firms take it pretty damn seriously. I've seen significant business turned away via that process, and from what I know of Quinn Emanuel, I'd bet they have a pretty detailed process.
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No, sorry, he can't.
Too much to ask for his Google-stooge ass...
Look somewhere else for enlightenment.
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It's really nott haqt hard to get, unless you're either a moron or already dead. And seeing as you're talking here...
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So ... mistakes happen.
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The firm maintains a database of its lawyers and which cases they've worked on. Every time they work on a new case or matter, that gets added to the database. This list is usually very robust, since firms have to keep track of who their clients are in order to bill them.
The problems arise when lawyers are moving between firms. Usually the lawyer just takes the list of prior matters from the old firm and gives it to the new firm. But to my knowledge, there's no standardized way of formatting that list, so someone at the new firm has to manually re-enter all the data or otherwise massage it to get it into the new database. This is probably where the most mistakes are made.
That said, firms have a strong interest in identifying conflicts. First, conflicts are expensive. If a conflict is discovered late in the game, the firm is disqualified and all the work they've done gets tossed out. That's incredibly disheartening and huge pain in the ass to clean up. And you can't bill for it.
Second, conflicts are hard to hide. If a firm is adverse to a client they had a former relationship with, there's a good chance that the client will remember! Moreover, the fact that a firm represents a client isn't always a secret. It's often recorded in press releases, case opinions, and other publicly available information that gets indexed by major databases.
Anyhow, a firm will usually check with their internal database before taking on a case to see if there are any conflicts. Conflicts don't automatically disqualify the firm though. If only a subset of the firm's lawyers have a conflict, the firm can "wall off" those lawyers. Large firms are pretty good about maintaining these walls. They'll restrict a conflicted lawyer from both physical and electronic access to confidential information. And everything you do at a firm is tracked and recorded. Ostensibly it's for billing purposes, but it also means it's hard for a conflicted lawyer to involve herself without leaving an incriminating paper trail.
That's the high-level view. I don't know exactly what Quinn does, but they're a large enough firm that I imagine they have a similar process in place.
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Wow, I bet Viacom won't be very impressed with that approach.
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Because
Because they (the US government) knows it has no clothes, and its ass is hanging over the precipice?
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Yawn...
Its not.
https://torrentfreak.com/megauploads-top-lawyer-outside-pressure-120123/
You act like this isn't to keep the case in the headlines and gathering attention.
It is.
They (**AA's you can't really tell them from the DoJ anymore) are currently suing Hotfile and pushing claims that cyberlockers need to do more to protect the interests of the **AA's at no cost to the **AA's.
Their government granted monopolies are to costly for them to police themselves, so everyone else has to bear the burden and costs.
The DoJ is corrupt. (It has to be corruption because to think they are just naturally this inept and stupid is far more worrisome.)
They have been and continue to subvert the legal process they are charged with upholding. When they can't be trusted, the Judges can't be trusted, how the hell do they expect us to have any faith in anything they do any more?
They are trying to stack the deck in this case, and its obvious. I guess its time to cross the right to a fair trial off the list of "rights" we are allowed to have.
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Re: Yawn...
Its not.
https://torrentfreak.com/megauploads-top-lawyer-outside-pressure-120123/
No, that's different. There was no indication the government was involved in that one. That was a case of the firm realizing his work tripped one of their conflict systems. That's perfectly normal and happens all the time.
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Based on this logical analis by teh US Government prosecutors, they should then remove any prosecutor who has ever:
* Watched a Youtube video (ebedded or direct)
* Searched using Google, or knowingly used any google service.
* Have ever Payed to watch, rent, or purchase a "Hollywood" movie
Sadly, the logic they are using to try to remove law firms (which are representatives not the actual witness's [another logic fail by the DoJ]) is totally unmitigated bullshit and smacks of bias, so the above criteria to remove the prosecutors for bias wont happen.
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How about prosecuters and law enforcement being dinned by the very people who accuse others?
How about a government that is catering exclusively to a set of interests?
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Beryl Howell (sp) was paid as an RIAA lobbyist before becoming a Judge who decided that Doe defendants in copyright trolling cases had no standing to object to the ISPs having to hand over their information so they could be "sued" * .
* - The number of people actually sued in the copyright trolling cases is tiny. The evidence used to turn these peoples lives upside down is flimsy at best, but very few Judges have actually wondered why out of the 200,000 Does named in these cases so few ever are in a court room. They assume people will not just fear the $150,000 number, or would pay more money than the settlement to hire a lawyer to tear the case to shreds. Oh and the handful of people who have gotten a lawyer and tried to fight see themselves dropped from the cases before their day in court, or the trolls claiming there was never any lawsuit naming them, despite what their own settlement letters claim.
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