Kim Dotcom’s Lawyer Says NZ Court Made Errors in the Ruling

MegaUpload founder’s lawyer claimed that a New Zealand District Court made several major errors when it decided to grant the extradition of his client, with the judge copy-pasting extensively from the US lawyers and missing any legal ground to extradite Dotcom.
Back in 2015, a New Zealand District Court ruled that MegaUpload operators could be sent to the US to face criminal charges. The defendants immediately appealed the ruling, and the hearings started at New Zealand’s High Court. Kim Dotcom and his colleagues claim that Judge Nevin Dawson failed to give them a fair hearing and made several errors in its final ruling. For example, it largely relied on the writings of American lawyers, with the 60% of the verdict consisting of copy-pasted text from the US contributions to the record of case.

Overall, MegaUpload operators’ argument boils down to the question of whether the claimed offenses warrant extradition under the treaty in place between the US and New Zealand. Besides, the copyright angle was also widely discussed. Dotcom emphasized that MegaUpload was an Internet service provider, which enjoys safe harbor protection and therefore can’t be held liable for users’ copyright violation. So, the decision of the High Court will determine if ISPs can be held criminally liable for user generated content. In other words, to reach a conclusion, the court will have to consider what ISPs’ obligations are in terms of user-uploaded and distributed works. This is crucial to other ISPs and also the public at large.

Anyway, even if the court disagrees that MegaUpload was not liable for copyright infringement, the extradition request still should be denied, because it is not an extraditable offense under the treaty between the two countries.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.