Eric Holder Answers Question About Kim Dotcom Prosecution

from the blah-blah-blah dept

Attorney General Eric Holder was in New Zealand for a meeting of Attorneys General from the US, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the UK. Radio New Zealand got to meet up with Holder and after asking him about the meeting proceeded to ask him about the Megaupload case (mp3), which the interviewer noted was of great interest to New Zealanders.

Holder, in his usual fashion, answers with generalities that don't actually answer the questions being asked. He gives his standard "intellectual property theft = bad!" speech:

Well I don't want to comment on a case that is pending. But I will say, more generally, that we are very concerned about the theft of intellectual property. It's something that we take very seriously, both in the United States, and I think our allies do as well. With regard that case, we've been cooperating with the New Zealand authorities. And I will just rely on the pleadings we have filed in court to talk about that.

First of all, we've pointed this out before, but you would think that the supreme "lawyer" for the government would know the damn law. There is no "intellectual property theft." That's a made up term by copyright maximalists. There is such a thing as copyright infringement, which is what he means. He should use the actual term. Otherwise it does make him look like a pawn of Hollywood.... Which leads right into the next question. The interviewer notes that Kim Dotcom has been saying that the case is all about the DOJ "heeding the beck and call of Hollywood moguls." Holder immediately responds:

Well, that's not true. I don't want to comment on that case other than to say that it was brought on the basis of the facts and the basis of the law and it's consistent with the enforcement priorities that this administration has had.

Well, yes, the enforcement priorities that have heavily been pushed for by Hollywood.

The interviewer notes the various screwups in the case, and Holder doesn't bite, saying that there's been good collaboration and they expect everything to turn out fine in the end. The next question is about how serious Holder is about pursuing extradition, and Holder makes it sound like no big deal:

We have made an extradition request. We have an existing treaty between the US and New Zealand that has been used a great many times throughout the years. And I don't see how any individual would not be subject to that treaty.

Uh.... that's a bullshit answer. Because the problem with the extradition issue is not whether or not Dotcom is subject to it, but whether or not the issues in the case are subject to it. The DOJ had to bolt on some questionable conspiracy claims to make this work, since mere copyright infringement is not an extraditable offense. Holder also responded to a question about New Zealand's attempt to spy more on citizens and residents by saying he doesn't see how that violates civil liberties. When questioned on that, he throws out some random statement about cooperation to stop terrorism, and again says that spying on people doesn't need to violate civil liberties.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright infringement, eric holder, extradition, kim dotcom, new zealand
Companies: megaupload

Kim Dotcom Files Brief In His Trial In The Court Of Public Opinion

from the laying-out-the-arguments dept

A bunch of folks have been pointing us to the new "whitepaper" released by Kim Dotcom, which lays out two key things: why the lawsuit against him is a complete legal sham and also why it was driven by a corrupt connection between the US government and the MPAA. The paper is written by his lawyers, including Ira Rothken and Richard Amsterdam (whose addition to his legal team was discussed a few months ago). Frankly, most of this reads like the lawyers refining the eventual motion-to-dismiss filing that they expect to submit to the federal court (should it ever get there). The majority of it is taken up with the clear legal statements as to why the lawsuit is based on very questionable theories. The main point, as we've discussed before in the context of other cases, is that the DOJ seems to have completely made up a legal theory of contributory copyright inducement. While there is such a thing in civil contexts, it's not there in criminal contexts. Supporters of the DOJ will argue that there is aiding and abetting, but the rules there are quite different and, again, it doesn't look like Dotcom and crew would be guilty of such a charge.

The overall point is clearly stated in the whitepaper. Here's a snippet:

The fact of the matter is that the notion of criminal liability for secondary copyright infringement does not exist in U.S. law. The attempt by prosecutors to expand criminal liability for secondary infringement by couching it as “aiding and abetting” or “conspiracy” goes against established precedent in case law and repeated positions taken by the U.S. Congress.

The Copyright Act creates civil and criminal liability for various acts of copyright infringement, but it does not expressly give rise to liability for infringement committed by third parties. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court has defined specific circumstances under which service providers may be held civilly liable (i.e., not criminally responsible) for direct copyright infringement by third parties, such as distributing “a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright.”

The fundamental legal problem with this aspect of the government’s case is that only Congress can create new criminal liability; judges cannot. Previous instances in which courts have imposed civil liability for secondary copyright infringement – based on application of common law principles – do not apply in criminal proceedings, as federal crimes are “solely creatures of statute.” Whatever authority the courts may have had to recognize a contributory theory of copyright liability in the civil context, the courts simply have no power to impose a basis for criminal liability beyond what is expressly authorized by statute.

One surprising inclusion is that the whitepaper supports this well known point -- that courts can't create new criminal liability -- by extensively quoting legal analysis from Jay Prabhu from years ago. This is a bit of dagger twisting by Dotcom's legal team. Prabhu, well after writing those analysis, took a job in the Justice Department, and eventually was put in charge of the DOJ's "cybercrime" unit -- and has been a key prosecutor against a number of copyright cases, including various domain seizures. In fact, he's the one who signed the indictment against Dotcom. To use his own words against the case is amusing.

The filing also lays out a number of arguments that we've seen before, including a further explanation of how the DOJ was being totally disingenuous in arguing that Megaupload refused to remove works it knew were infringing, by pointing out the files they mentioned were ones that Megaupload has clearly been asked to preserve as part of an investigation into copyright infringement.

There's also an interesting and more detailed than previous discussed defense on the point about Megaupload's rewards program. We had pointed out how silly it was to use this element against Megaupload, since it was a general rewards program to get people to make use of its cloud storage, and there was nothing in the program that induced more infringement (in fact, it seemed like a great tool for a content creator to make money by releasing his or her own works via the rewards program). On this, Dotcom's whitepaper points out not just those points, but also (1) the fact that lots of other sites have similar rewards programs (2) specific features Megaupload included in its rewards program that made it bad for infringement (including file size limits and required identification) and (3) the fact that they had dropped the program long before the indictment.

While I do wonder how wise it is to basically give the DOJ their opening brief way before they would actually see it in court -- and giving them a lot more time to respond to it -- there are a few reasons why this move could make sense. First, they're so damn confident in their argument that it doesn't really matter. That may be risky. Another point may be that it signals to the DOJ that they may want to look for ways to extricate itself from the case quickly, because it's not going to go as easy as the DOJ has assumed from the beginning. The other issue may be that Dotcom and his legal team realized long ago that the court of public opinion probably matters more in the long run than the federal court system in the US.

To that end, of course, the paper has a second section, which has received most of the attention: all about the supposed corrupt process that brought about the indictment. When Megaupload hired Richard Amsterdam, he specifically noted that the details of the case suggested a typical "contract prosecution," and the paper seeks to lay out that argument clearly, highlighting the close relationship between the Obama Administration (mainly via VP Joe Biden) and MPAA boss Chris Dodd.

Chris Dodd’s jump from the U.S. Senate into the cockpit of the MPAA was an equivalent move. As the new Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Chris Dodd improperly leveraged his friendship with Joe Biden to achieve the MPAA’s objectives. Former Senator Dodd’s relationship with the Vice President– who comes off manipulated, a cheerfully credulous facilitator – together with the Obama Administration’s ravenous hunger for campaign contributions, has given the MPAA absolute control over how the U.S. Department of Justice plays the game in enforcing copyright law. This capture is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the Megaupload/Kim Dotcom prosecution.

Frankly, while this section is getting the most attention, I actually find it to be the weakest and most poorly supported part of the paper, which would probably be more compelling without it. I don't doubt that the close connections between the MPAA and various folks in the DOJ and in the VP's office contributed to Megaupload being a target, but trying to make it out as anything more than that seems like a stretch. Yes, the MPAA complained regularly about Megaupload, and that clearly helped put a target on its back. But, it's quite likely that the over-eager folks at the DOJ ran with this one on their own. The MPAA (with the help of the press) had worked over time to paint Kim Dotcom as "Dr. Evil" of the copyright world. Everything about the process of taking down Megaupload screams of a bunch of feds who totally bought into the theatrical version of the MPAA's vision, without much effort to understand what was really happening. The myriad mistakes and sloppiness in the case really suggest that the DOJ assumed that the stories the MPAA told were so accurate that everything about this case would be a layup. The investigation, the indictment, the raid, the handling of evidence -- all of it was done in a sloppy way -- as if they expected no one would challenge any of it.

I'm sure there was influence and pressure that went into this, but painting it as a case where Chris Dodd called up Joe Biden and said, "Destroy Megaupload" is probably a massive exaggeration. Instead, it seems quite likely that MPAA folks just kept playing up the theatrical version of Kim Dotcom as evil (and, Dotcom himself actually helped promote this sort of view of himself at times as well...), and then the DOJ's imagination combined with its general over-aggressive nature towards any copyright issues just sort of took over from there.

Either way, the paper is definitely a worthwhile read. I'm sure a group of folks at the DOJ are taking their time reading through it quite carefully. I imagine that we'll eventually see their response in court.

Filed Under: chris dodd, copyright, corruption, criminal contributory infringement, indictment, ira rothken, joe biden, kim dotcom, richard amsterdam, whitepaper
Companies: megaupload

New Zealand Wants New Spying Powers To Legalize Illegal Spying On Kim Dotcom And Others

from the i'm-sure-that-will-go-over-well dept

You may recall that in the course of the case against Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, it was revealed that the New Zealand intelligence service, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), illegally wiretapped and spied on Kim Dotcom. The GCSB's mandate is that it can only spy on foreign communications, but used its powers illegally domestically. While NZ prime minister John Key apologized for the episode, it has raised lots of questions about his role in the whole matter -- and when he knew the law was being broken. Other info has come out as well, including attempts to cover up the illegal surveillance, and the fact that the GCSB illegally spied on nearly 100 people. Dotcom is now suing the government over this whole mess.

Given all that, you might think that PM Key would be focused on putting in place safeguards to stop the system from being so abused in the future. Not so. Instead, as reader aster points out, Key is now trying to change the law to make it easier to spy on citizens and others in the country. In other words, he's seeking to legalize domestic spying for the intelligence agency. The new proposal would allow for domestic spying on citizens and residents if approved by PM Key. As if he didn't already appear untrustworthy in the matter, he's now suggesting that because it has to go through him, it'll somehow avoid abuses? Opposition politicians are pointing out how laughable it is that Key is now asking people to trust him personally that such spying powers won't be abused.

Filed Under: gcsb, john key, kim dotcom, new zealand, privacy, spying, surveillance

Megaupload Points Out That The DOJ Has Contradicted Itself Concerning Legality Of Serving Megaupload

from the oops dept

Earlier this month, we pointed out that the Justice Department had asked the federal courts to amend the federal rules concerning issuing a summons on a corporation. As the filing made clear, they were concerned about being able to serve criminal complaints on foreign companies with no US presence, since the law clearly says that you need to send a summons to "the organization's last known address within the district or to its principal place of business elsewhere in the United States." If they can't do that, they don't meet the qualifications of the summons.

We thought it was noteworthy that the DOJ was looking to change that rule and wrote about it. It appears that the lawyers for Megaupload have noticed this same point... and quickly realized that this filing pretty clearly contradicted the DOJ's own statements in the Megaupload case, where they insisted that the existing rules did not get in the way of serving Megaupload. Megaupload is using that to renew its request to have the indictment dismissed.

Back in January, it seems, the DOJ told the court that there was no issue at all with the fact that Megaupload had no US address. As Megaupload summarizes in its filing:

Among other things, the Government argued that, even if the individuals are never extradited to the United States, the Government can simply ignore Rule 4’s requirement that the summons be mailed to Megaupload’s “last known address within the district or to its principal place of business elsewhere in the United States” and instead mail it to an alternate destination. (See Dkt. 159 at 3-4 (suggesting that the Government could mail the summons to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission; or to the warehouse of third party vendor Carpathia Hosting; or to other third parties).) Previously, the Government had even suggested that Rule 4’s mailing requirement is merely hortatory, and that “[s]ervice of process in the corporate context . . . is complete upon delivering the summons to an officer or agent” of the corporation. (Dkt. 117 at 9-10.)

But that's clearly contradicted by the DOJ's own statement to the courts in the request for the rules change -- which were filed before the DOJ's request to the courts.

The Government’s letter is directly relevant to the Court’s consideration of Megaupload’s pending motion to dismiss without prejudice, as it contradicts the Government’s repeated contention that it can validly serve Megaupload—a wholly foreign entity that has never had an office in the United States—without regard for Rule 4’s mailing requirement. To the contrary, the Government explicitly acknowledges in the letter that it has a “duty” under the current Rule to mail a copy of the summons to a corporate defendant’s last known address within the district or to its principal place of business elsewhere in the United States. (See Exhibit 1 at 2.) Moreover, by seeking to have the mailing requirement eliminated, the Government implicitly admits it cannot validly serve Megaupload consistent with Rule 4 as currently written. Finally, contrary to the Government’s contentions before this Court that Rule 4’s existing provisions are mere accidents of drafting, the Government is acknowledging to the Advisory Committee that they are in fact well considered products of “the environment that influenced the original drafters of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” albeit an environment that the Government believes “no longer exists,” given what it calls the “new reality” of “federal criminal practice.” (Id. at 2- 3.) To the extent that the Government would urge this Court to work the same substantive modification of Rule 4 that it is urging upon the Advisory Committee, this Court should be forthrightly advised in the premises as to the nature of the Government’s request and the reasoning behind it.

The Government’s letter to the Advisory Committee thus confirms what Megaupload has argued all along—that the Government indicted Megaupload, branded it a criminal, froze every penny of its assets, took its servers offline, and inflicted a corporate death penalty, notwithstanding the fact that the Government had no prospect of serving the company in accordance with current law, yet to be amended. Megaupload should not be made to bear the burdens of criminal limbo while the Government seeks to rewrite the Federal Rules to suit its purposes.

Those darn pesky rules.

Filed Under: doj, kim dotcom, service
Companies: megaupload

Justice Department Looking To Change The Law That Made It Impossible To Serve Megaupload

from the but-of-course dept

This one is a bit old, but it appears that nothing's happened on it yet. cosmicwonderful alerts us to the fact that, back in October, the DOJ asked the federal courts to amend the rules on serving criminal complaints to foreign companies. As you may recall, the Justice Department ran into a bit of a hiccup when the courts first realized that Megaupload is a foreign corporation with no US address, and that the federal rules on issuing an arrest warrant or summons requires that a copy be sent to "the organization's last known address within the district or to its principal place of business elsewhere in the United States."

But what if there is no business in the US? That's what the DOJ and Megaupload have been fighting about in the courts, though the courts have (so far) said that the DOJ can proceed. Still, with this requested amendment, the DOJ makes it clear it doesn't want to run into this issue again.

The Department of Justice recommends amendments to Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to permit the effective service of a summons on a foreign organization that has no agent or principal place of business within the United States. We view the proposed amendments to be necessary in order to effectively prosecute foreign organizations that engage in violations of domestic criminal law.

First, we recommend that Rule 4 be amended to remove the requirement that a copy of the summons be sent to the organization's last known mailing address within the district or principal place of business within the United States. Second, we recommend that Rule 4 be amended to provide the means to serve a summons upon an organization located outside the United States. The proposed amendments are necessary to ensure that organizations that commit domestic offenses are not able to avoid liability through the simple expedients of declining to maintain an agent, place of business and mailing address within the United States.

While most of the request for the amendment focuses on a ruling in a case involving Chinese espionage via a Chinese firm called Pangang, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom do get a mention. The DOJ first notes how unfair it seems that it can't unleash its powers on foreign companies:

Accordingly, the United States maybe faced with the anomalous result that a private civil litigant will be able to pursue an action against an organization while the government remains helpless to vindicate the laws of the United States through a corresponding criminal proceeding.

And then discusses Megaupload in a footnote:

Another example is provided by a pending case, United States v. Dotcom.... A grand jury returned an indictment against foreign organization Megaupload Limited and other defendants on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges. In response, Megaupload Limited — a foreign organization that has an extensive presence in the United States (it allegedly leased more than 1,000 servers in the United States, facilitated the distribution of illegally reproduced works throughout the United States, and has caused damages in excess of $500 million to victims) — has specially appeared and argued that it is immune from prosecution in the United States simply because it does not have an agent or mailing address in the United States: "Megaupload does not have an office in the United States, nor has it had one previously. Service of a criminal summons on Megaupload is therefore impossible, which forecloses the government from prosecuting Megaupload."

I wouldn't be surprised to see this amendment eventually go through, though it still does seem somewhat questionable to think that the US government can bring criminal charges against a foreign company with no physical presence within the US.

Filed Under: criminal complaints, doj, foreign companies, kim dotcom, summons
Companies: megaupload

Investigation Into Illegal Spying On Kim Doctom Reveals NZ Intelligence Illegally Spied On 85 People

from the oops dept

Remember how the New Zealand intelligence organization GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) had to admit that it had illegally spied on Kim Dotcom? That kicked off an investigation that has now revealed that the GCSB illegally spied on somewhere around 85 people.

GCSB director Ian Fletcher said in February that his agency did not illegally spy on anyone else on behalf of law enforcement agencies.

But the Kitteridge report contradicts this - questioning the lawfulness of GCSB surveillance involving 85 New Zealanders. The agency is forbidden from spying on anyone with citizenship or permanent residence here.

The illegal spying was conducted between April 2003 and September last year and done on behalf of the Security Intelligence Service, the domestic spy agency.

But wait... there's more. The report also found that it's likely GCSB violated other laws as well, including the Privacy Act and the Defence Act. Not surprisingly, the report also finds a mess of an agency with terrible management, poor record-keeping and little oversight. Shocking, isn't it, that such conditions would lead to abuse of power and illegal surveillance, huh?

Filed Under: gcsb, kim dotcom, new zealand, spying, surveillance

Kim Dotcom Allowed To Sue Kiwi Government For Illegal Spying

from the and-off-we-go dept

You may recall that last fall, the New Zealand government admitted that its equivalent of the NSA, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) had illegally spied on Kim Dotcom for US law enforcement. Like the NSA (in theory), the GCSB is not allowed to spy on people domestically. But they did exactly that. Now the other shoe has dropped, as Kim Dotcom has been allowed to sue the government over illegal surveillance, for which Dotcom may receive compensation. The NZ government had tried to argue that it was "inappropriate," but a court has rejected that idea. This also means that Dotcom (and his lawyers) will be told what information was captured and who it was sent to -- though the actual documents won't be shown to him.

Filed Under: gcsb, kim dotcom, new zealand, privacy, surveillance

Kim Dotcom Loses Appeal Concerning Extradition

from the it's-going-to-happen-eventually dept

To date, Kim Dotcom has been having a long string of victories in court in his ongoing battle with the US concerning their attempt to extradite him and try him in the US for creating and running Megaupload. One of the big victories was the district court ruling that the FBI needed to reveal its evidence against Dotcom as a part of the extradition procedure. The US DOJ had been arguing that the evidence only matters for the US trial, and that New Zealand should effectively rubberstamp the extradition. Eventually, you knew there had to be some setbacks in Dotcom's case, and now an appeals court has overturned that earlier ruling, and said that the FBI does not need to reveal its evidence.

In its judgment, the Court of Appeal says extradition hearings are not criminal trials and that the judge deciding whether to order extradition has only to be satisfied there is a case to answer.

The court said the US government had a duty of "candour and good faith" in making an extradition bid, but a summary of the evidence held would suffice.

Dotcom has made it clear that he's going to appeal this to the Supreme Court, so there's still the possibility of at least one more level of review before this is over. I'm sure there are specific reasons for today's ruling, but I have to admit it does seem odd that you can pull someone out of their home country and take them across an ocean without having to actually prove you have an actual case first. The idea that the US government is doing any of this in "good faith" seems like an assumption that isn't particularly supportable in reality.

Filed Under: appeal, evidence, extradition, fbi, kim dotcom

Odd: Mega Removing Any File It Can Find That Is Publicly Indexed -- Even Completely Legitimate Uploads

from the strange-move dept

There has been talk about how various anti-piracy operations have been "testing" Kim Dotcom's Mega in terms of how it responds to takedown notices (so far, it's apparently doing quite well). However, the folks at TorrentFreak noticed something odd. From their tests, it appears that Mega is actually taking down almost anything that shows up via a search engine that was set up to search publicly released "Mega" links. TorrentFreak uploaded some content that has been shared legally, and which is authorized for further sharing -- and all of it went away almost immediately.

To test how quickly a file is removed by Mega we decided to post some previously uploaded legal content to Mega-search.me ourselves. Our uploads included a few Dan Bull songs, a clip from the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK, a video explaining fair use and Kim Dotcom’s single Mr. President.

Quite shockingly, the files were pulled down by Mega in a matter of minutes, claiming they had received copyright infringement notices for each of them.

We are in receipt of a takedown notice affecting the following public link
in your account:

https://mega.co.nz/#!iRQRnLzT

Please be reminded that MEGA respects the copyrights of others and requires that users of the MEGA cloud service comply with the laws of copyright. You are strictly prohibited from using the MEGA cloud service to infringe copyrights. You may not upload, download, store, share, display, stream, distribute, e-mail, link to, transmit or otherwise make available any files, data, or content that infringes any copyright or other proprietary rights of any person or entity.

Furthermore, please be reminded that, pursuant to our Terms of Service, accounts found to be repeat infringers are subject to termination.

It's possible that someone is sending takedowns on all content it can find, or it's possible that Mega itself is taking down all such content -- and then flat out lying about receiving a takedown notice. Unfortunately, it also does not appear that Mega has any sort of appeals process, or the ability (as per the DMCA) to file a counternotice. While Mega is not a US company, and not subject to the DMCA, it seems only reasonable that it at least have a counternotice process.

Yes, given the legal mess that Kim Dotcom and his partners are in over their previous company, Megaupload, you can certainly understand why they might default to an extreme position of "take down everything that is publicly searched," but that still seems ridiculous. There is plenty of content out there that is legally shareable, and if Mega does not want to allow public sharing at all, even of legal content, it should make that explicit. Alternatively, if someone is issuing bogus takedowns, Mega should have a process for dealing with that. Finally, it seems that Mega is in desperate need of an appeals process or counternotification system.

Filed Under: content removals, copyright, counternotification, kim dotcom, legitimate content, takedowns
Companies: mega

Human Rights Lawyer Explains Why He's Working For Kim Dotcom: Exposing American Corruption

from the corruption-laundering dept

We recently wrote about how Kim Dotcom has retained famed human rights lawyer Robert Amsterdam to explore whether or not there's a human rights angle to his case, specifically alleging "contract prosecution" by the entertainment industry. I'm still somewhat skeptical that such an argument could go anywhere, but Amsterdam himself has put up a rather detailed blog post, explaining why he's taking the case, which may seem quite different than his usual fare: taking on corruption and human rights violations in far flung parts of the world, including Africa and Latin America. After highlighting the many problems with the case (and the continued failures in court to date), as well as the close ties prosecutor Neil MacBride has with big copyright holders, he points out that he sees some serious similarities to what's happening here with the kind of corruption he's witnessed in third world nations.

This case highlights not only the issue of “state capture” by the Hollywood lobby, but at the same time should lead to a thoughtful discussion on how we define corruption. No one would venture to allege that there is any form of cash payment taking place when official bodies appear to act at the behest of special interests motives. Because that’s not how these groups work.

It is a demonstration of the growing ambiguity of the lines between regulators and the regulated, and the proper role of intellectual property in the digital age. As we’ve seen in the sad and tragic case of Aaron Swartz, for whom Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz was seeking 13 criminal charges and more than 50 years in jail, the American justice system is increasingly flawed by this prosecutorial exuberance aimed at future political reward.

It is one thing when the victims of these abuses are American citizens, who live at the whim of an unaccountable prosecutorial machine driven by personal political ambitions and an appetite for headlines. It is something else entirely when these prosecutors visit their ambitions upon foreign citizens, charging them with heinous crimes with no basis under law, even if that person has never once set foot inside the United States (like Kim Dotcom).

That is, he appears to be aware of the nature of corruption laundering that's going on -- using the close connection between big businesses and governments to create laws where people can make the case that cracking down on some behavior is necessary to stop crime, but where the details show it's really about cracking down on competition and innovation.

And, he notes, this sort of activity is a huge stain on the US and the federal government:

With this attempt to “colonize” the global internet under U.S. laws, Washington is quickly making a bad name for itself, and putting its considerable influence on the wrong side of digital rights, free markets, and competitive innovation. They do this in the name of protecting a broken business model, subsidizing monopolies, and seeking to destroy crucial online functions instead of adapting to the incredible opportunity afforded to them through mass connectivity. We deserve better, we can do better, and everyone can benefit from a more reasonable approach focused on the best interests of the public, not the best interests of lobbyists and the politicians in their pockets.

We see this as a grand ideological debate with far-reaching implications, and sadly, my lengthy experience in countries where special interests control the levers of power may have some utility here.

Even if there isn't a legal human rights angle, it should be interesting to see what Amsterdam turns up. This growing recognition of how laws are created to benefit legacy players, and then used against innovators, is a real problem. Shining more light on that would be tremendously helpful in actually promoting important innovations.

Filed Under: corruption, human rights, kim dotcom, robert amsterdam
Companies: megaupload