Entrepreneur and hacker Kim Dotcom is finally set to be extradited to the U.S. from New Zealand, reports TorrentFreak, after Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith approved the flight. Dotcom's wanted on charges of criminal copyright infringement, racketeering, and money laundering concerning various internet shenanigans of the post-millenial era, most notably the file-sharing platform Megaupload. — Read the rest
Now this is a bedroom suite. "But wait, there's more!" says mansion-explorer Erick Tseng. Even the panic room, which it took cops half an hour to find, is larger than most London apartments.
Kim Dotcom says he's launching a Bitcoin payments system for users to sell content uploads, or charge for streaming live video. — Read the rest
Dotcom claims he has emails between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Warner exec Kevin Tsujihara in which Tsujihara explains that Dotcom was followed by private security in Hong Kong and that Key had made the extradition promise to Warner as part of the deal to shoot The Hobbit in NZ (the MPAA, Warner and Key's office all dispute the email's authenticity).
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom tells the Guardian "governments want to engage in mass surveillance and have total citizen control." The political party he founded to contest New Zealand's September 20 elections, the Mana Internet party, promises to "abolish mass surveillance." — Read the rest
Kim Dotcom, proprietor of the defunct Megaupload, is convinced that the raid on his company was crooked, and he's put up a $5M bounty on information that will help him prove misdeeds on the part of the US or New Zealand authorities:
GCSB, New Zealand's secret police force has admitted to illegally deleting key evidence related to the raid on Kim Dotcom over his Megaupload service. The spies agree that the evidence was illegally deleted, but claim it was an honest mistake, because the data "aged off" their retention system.
A lawsuit filed by technology entrepreneur and hacker Kim Dotcom against the government of New Zealand demands NZ $6 million (roughly USD $5 million) over an "excessively aggressive and invasive approach" by police who raided his mansion 18 months ago. The raid was ordered by the FBI, which sought to extradite him to the US on copyright violation charges. — Read the rest
The founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, will meet arch-nemesis New Zealand Prime Minister John Key for the first time Wednesday, when lawmakers "examine a controversial proposal allowing intelligence agencies to spy on local residents." [Raw Story]
A judge has ordered the police to sift through all digital material taken illegally from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and to return anything irrelevant to their investigation- at their own cost.
By "at their own cost", she presumably means "at the New Zealand taxpayer's expense."
Kim Dotcom's new "Mega" site "appears to be legal and is akin to a Dropbox or Google Drive on encryption steroids," writes David Kravets of Wired News. The site reached more than a million members in just one day after its initial Saturday launch from New Zealand. — Read the rest
Kim Dotcom is going to sue the US entertainment industry and the US government over the illegal raid on him and Megaupload, and has promised to use his winnings to pay for free Internet access across New Zealand. The Guardian's
Peter Walker reports:
— Read the rest
The latest salvo involves resurrecting a planned second fibre optic web cable across the Pacific to the US, which would have doubled New Zealand's available internet bandwidth.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key issued an official apology to Kim Dotcom for illegal spying conducted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) — the NZ equivalent to the CIA, which is prohibited from engaging in domestic spying. Nevertheless, GCSB conducted a program of surveillance against Dotcom and his associates as part of the US-led shutdown of Megaupload, Dotcom's file-locker service, which had angered the US entertainment industry. — Read the rest
New Zealand's foreign intelligence spy body, the Government Communications Security Bureau spied on Kim Dotcom at the behest of the US government, despite the fact that they are legally prohibited from conducting domestic surveillance. The NZ prime minister has ordered an inquiry, stating that the GCSB acted "unlawfully" in spying on Dotcom and his associates. — Read the rest
MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom offered to hand himself over the FBI, if only they would unfreeze his assets to permit the hiring of attorneys. [Juha Saarinen / Wired]
New Zealand's high court today ruled that a raid on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion was illegal. From the Guardian:
— Read the restJustice Helen Winkelmann said the warrants used when more than 90 New Zealand officers stormed the Megaupload founder's home and other properties in January were too broadly cast, "lacking adequate specificity as to the offence".
This splendid work, by Aurich Lawson, is a perfect aperitif for Sean Gallagher's wonderful article about the ridiculous but astoundingly successful con artist, Quake cheat and entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a German national formerly known as Kim Schmitz, is seen at court in Auckland, New Zealand in this still image taken from video shot on January 23, 2012. The file-sharing website founder was ordered to be held in custody by a New Zealand court on Monday, as he denied charges of internet piracy and money laundering and said authorities were trying to portray the most negative picture of him. — Read the rest
Canada and Uruguay are the only two countries to have legalised the recreational use of marijuana (the Netherlands has laws on the books against it, but they're not enforced); the Canadian Securities Exchange has been transformed into "the cannabis stock exchange," a latter-day NASDAQ filled with hyperinflated stocks in legal weed companies.
The Lord of the Rings and Kim Dotcom put New Zealand on the map for wealthy tech moguls seeking a safe space to hole up when disaster strikes. The Trump presidency kicked the bolt-hole craze to levels where Kiwi lawmakers had to put the brakes on the trend among the ultra-wealthy.
