New Zealand's High Court Steps Into Extradition Fight Over Kim Dotcom

from the not-so-simple dept

As the Justice Department continues to pretend there's nothing strange at all about its highly questionable tactics in shutting down Megaupload and having its executives arrested, the courts are still struggling with the details. A few weeks back, we noted that a judge in New Zealand rejected the US's demand that New Zealand merely rubberstamp an extradition order to the US, despite there being numerous questions over the case itself and whether or not extradition is appropriate. As part of that, the judge also ordered the US Attorneys to hand over the evidence they're using to make the case against Dotcom and his colleagues, such that they can properly respond to the evidence. The US, as you might expect has gone absolutely ballistic about this, insisting that such an effort is impossible -- and that "it would take at least two months" to get the evidence together.

Of course, to some of us, that suggests that the DOJ hasn't yet looked at the evidence -- and thus it shut down the company and arrested its staff first, without even knowing if a crime had been committed.

Either way, that months-long delay presented a problem, since New Zealand had scheduled the extradition hearing for August 6th, and the Megaupload legal team deserved some time with the evidence to formulate its defense. The latest, however, is that New Zealand's High Court has agreed to an "urgent review" of the original ruling. The court also told the US to start the process of putting together the evidence to hand over to Dotcom's lawyers, but that it can wait until the High Court has reviewed the case before actually handing them over.

No matter what, this is once again showing the US's hubris in this case -- assuming it could waltz into New Zealand, with highly questionable evidence, shut down a company, and extradite the executives to the US without anyone asking questions. With each move in this case, more questions are raised about the competence of the DOJ staff who worked on this case, led by Neil MacBride -- a former "anti-piracy VP" for the copyright industries, who may have let his biases and previous (and future?) employers' interests get the best of him.

Filed Under: copyright, doj, evidence, extradition, high court, kim dotcom, neil macbride, new zealand, us
Companies: megaupload

NinjaVideo Admin Phara Gets 22 Months In Jail, 500 Hours Of Community Service & Has To Pay MPAA $210k

from the well,-well... dept

Today was the sentencing for Hana "Phara" Beshara, the admin for NinjaVideo who has received plenty of attention in the last few months. Just a few hours ago, she was sentenced to 22 months in prison, another two years probation after that, 500 hours of community service and she has to pay back the $209,896.95 that she supposedly made from NinjaVideo to the MPAA. I'm sure they'll be passing that along to moviemakers, right? Either way, what's telling here is that the judge appears to have given Beshara significantly less than what the government asked for.

After receiving what appears to be some pretty bad legal advice, Beshara was indicted, and quickly realized that she was left with little choice but to plead guilty in the case. Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about the fantastic and detailed American Prospect article by Rob Fischer, which detailed Beshara's story in a way where she certainly made it clear that she didn't agree with the reasonableness of the charges against her. Once again, it seems as if Beshara has been on the receiving end of bad legal advice (talking to the press post-guilty plea, but pre-sentencing... not so smart).

The US Attorney, Neil MacBride (who, it's important to note, spent years as the Business Software Alliance's "anti-piracy" boss), asked the judge to throw the book at her, using Fischer's article to repeatedly claim that Beshara's "substantial ego" and "inflated sense of self-importance" justified sending a strong message with the sentencing. Who knew that having a big ego was illegal? MacBride -- as he used to do with the BSA -- totally overplayed the claims of "losses" to the entertainment industry -- insisting that, every week, the MPAA alone was harmed to the tune of $1.5 million, "resulting in a staggering sum if the figure is extrapolated" to cover the 120 weeks that the site was in existence. Here's a tip, Neil, if extrapolating leads you to "a staggering sum," perhaps it's because your assumptions are wrong.

Either way, the judge appears to have decided not to completely buy into these claims of harm. While the government "agreed to limit the loss" to just $1 million, even though "the harm was certainly far more than $1 million," the judge seems to have capped the financial restitution to just her salary from NinjaVideo. The judge appears to have chosen not to also include a fine (which sentencing guidelines would allow between $10,000 and $100,000). On top of that, the judge gave Beshara less time in jail then either what Beshara claimed she expected (3 years) or what the sentencing guidelines and MacBride suggested (46 to 57 months). It seems that the judge didn't buy into all of MacBride's assertions.

Either way, expect the government to play this up as some huge victory against the scourge of online infringement and use it to justify continued censorship of websites.

Filed Under: copyright, hana beshara, ice, infringement, jail, neil macbride, operation in our sites, phara, sentencing
Companies: mpaa, ninjavideo

DOJ Gets Another Copyright Cop

from the not-looking-good dept

Among the tech community, there was some belief that the Obama administration understood some of the key issues, such as the damage done by draconian copyright laws -- and they had shown that with the way they went about running their campaign. However, there's an increasing realization that the techies on the campaign are entirely separate from the policy people now involved in the administration. First there was the appointment of one of the RIAA's top lawyers as associate attorney general, and now comes news that Neil MacBride, the BSA's antipiracy enforcer, has also been appointed to a high level role in the Justice Department.

You may recall MacBride, because last year, right before the BSA released its usual entirely bogus stats on the impact of piracy, he was kind enough to call me and walk through why he stood by those numbers. In that post, you can see some of how MacBride approached these issues -- insisting that piracy represents a real loss, not a business model issue, and even suggesting that it's all a generational thing. This is somewhat worrisome, as I believe it's the wrong approach to understanding what an impact copyright issues have on business, society and culture. That two such individuals are now in high level positions in the Justice Department does not bode well at all for the idea that we may have more reasonable copyright policy and enforcement coming out of the Justice Department any time soon.

Filed Under: bsa, copyright, justice department, neil macbride, obama