Kim Dotcom, who is facing criminal charges relating to the defunct file-sharing website Megaupload, is to be extradited to the US, the New Zealand justice minister has said.
German-born Dotcom has New Zealand residency and has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion.
The justice minister, Paul Goldsmith, had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” Goldsmith said in a statement.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Dotcom said: “The obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload,” in what appears to be a reference to the extradition order.
Gonna be hilarious when he spanks the us government in court after 12 years of their bs.
Not that I condone anything the US government does or may do, but the guy literally profited off of people using his site for piracy. Not sure what defense he can muster that will succeed in the US court system.
Edit> I guess people don’t understand the words I’ve written. Downvote me, please! Fake internet points are meaningless :)
Edit 2> So many attempts at completely illogical analogies. Wow. And the funny thing is all I said is the US sees what he has done as illegal and therefore will pursue him, and that he would probably have little defense of it since he profited by doing so. It’s impressive how people go from that to inferring that I am on the US’s side with this pursuit. I honestly couldn’t care less what Kim did or what the US does to him…but it sure as hell would be nice if people stopped assuming more than what was actually fucking typed. It’s impressive the sheer lack of comprehension that exists on this Lemmy instance.
People came on your land and broke the law.
YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE!
Not a good analogy. More like he set up a bunch of lockers on his land, and some people put drugs in them. Not as cut and dry.
Wait is this for real? Liability works like this? I rent a storage unit – does that mean I can send the owners of the storage company to jail if I put drugs in my unit?
It’s more like you had a storage unit, and let people do whatever they want with it, but it’s implied it’s used for illegal activity. And then you have full control to stop or prevent them from doing illegal activities, and choose not to.
I know that is a Canadian ruling and the US might have a different take. Just saying that is a realistic interpretation.
Can we hold the US government liable when a drug runner uses the interstate to move his shit from A to B?
Wow. I forgot that guy existed… I wonder if he still thinks his name change is cool.
Lol, yeah that’s a damn good question.
Aye, me too. But does it not make you think… Is there anything we can collectively do to help?
I know he’s had his issues, but man, he gave us access to do many things back in the day
the whole math of “stole $500 million” is stupid. That is hypothetical money. It is just not true that all people would have purchased instead without megaupload.
“Which generated $175 million for the site” that’s more like it. Making money with other people’s content is shitty and Kim knew it was happening.
I don’t think he should be extradited but that is at least a decent reason.
Completely agree, if you’re going in search of a movie online, even if you can’t find it, you’re not guaranteed to go out and buy it full price, it’s often a matter of both convenience & price. It’s hard to compete with a free download.
As The Gabe says, piracy is a service issue
Can confirm, since I have almost every streaming service I rarely consider pirating at all, now I don’t pay for any but 1, so if password crackdowns or location based logins become widespread I’ll be motivated to raise the flag again
Plex anyone?
“Making money with other people’s content is shitty”
What reddit, xitter, meta and pretty every big corporation is doing right now with A.I.?
