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.
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.
Can we hold the US government liable when a drug runner uses the interstate to move his shit from A to B?
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.
“The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution.”
I know that is a Canadian ruling and the US might have a different take. Just saying that is a realistic interpretation.