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Kim Dotcom Lawsuit Still Going - "United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A..."

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Luke
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Kim Dotcom Lawsuit Still Going - "United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A..."

#1

Post by Luke »

Does anybody remember Kim Dotcom? These lawsuits are still happening and Kim is on Twitter. Warning: This is severely geeky.
The controversial figure founded file-sharing site Megaupload in 2005, and made millions of dollars from advertising and premium subscriptions. At one point, he boasted that it was responsible for 4% of internet traffic.

In 2012, he was arrested when armed police stormed his Auckland home in a dramatic dawn raid, which was later to become the subject of its own legal enquiry, when Mr Dotcom sued for damages. A district court in New Zealand ruled in 2015 that he could be extradited, but a series of appeals and judicial reviews followed. Lawyers for Mr Dotcom argued that his actions did not amount to criminal offences in New Zealand, and were therefore not extraditable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54809226

A blog called TechDirt has been fans of Dotcom. Back from 2015:
US Court Rules That Kim Dotcom Is A 'Fugitive' And Thus DOJ Can Take His Money
Fri, Feb 27th 2015 7:39pm — Mike Masnick

In the long, convoluted and complex legal battles facing Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, there was some bizarre stuff that happened late last year. As you may recall, early on, the US government seized basically all of his stuff and money. Dotcom has made efforts to get some of it returned, as it's tough to fight the most powerful government in the world when it's holding onto all of your money. Keep in mind from our previous discussions on asset seizure and forfeiture, the government can basically seize whatever it wants, just by claiming it was somehow related to a crime, but the seizure is only a temporary process. If the government wants to keep it, it then needs to go through a separate process known as civil asset forfeiture, which is effectively the government suing the assets. Back in July, the US government moved to forfeit everything it had seized from Dotcom in a new lawsuit with the catchy name USA v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto. As you may have guessed, Attachment A [pdf] is basically all of Kim Dotcom's money and posessions.

Back in November, the DOJ argued that it should get to keep all of Kim Dotcom's money and stuff because he's a "fugitive", which is a bizarre and ridiculous way to portray Kim Dotcom, who has been going through a long and protracted legal process over his potential extradition from New Zealand (though he's offered to come to the US willingly if the government lets him mount a real defense by releasing his money). Dotcom's lawyers told the court that it's ridiculous to call him a fugitive, but it appears that Judge Liam O'Grady didn't buy it.

In a ruling [pdf] that was just posted a little while ago, O'Grady sided with the government, and gave the DOJ all of Dotcom's things. You can read the full reasoning here and it seems to take on some troubling logic. Dotcom's lawyers pointed out, as many of us have, that there is no secondary copyright infringement under criminal law, but the judge insists that there's enough to show "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement." But the reasoning here is bizarre. Part of it is the fact that Megaupload did remove links to infringing content from its top 100 downloads list. To me, that seems like evidence of the company being a good actor in the space, and not trying to serve up more infringing downloads. To Judge O'Grady and the DOJ, it's somehow evidence of a conspiracy. No joke.

The government has alleged that the conspirators knew that these files were infringing copyrights, as evidenced by their exclusion of infringing files from the "Top 100" list. The "Top 100" list purported to list the most frequently downloaded files on Megaupload.... According to the government, an accurate list would have consisted almost entirely of infringing content, so the claimants "carefully curated" the list to make the site look more legitimate.... Additionally, the claimants regularly told copyright holders, including many U.S.-based organizations, that they would remove infringing content, when in actuality they only removed particular links to the files.... The actual infringing files remained on the Mega-controlled servers and could be accessed from other links.
Much much more: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150 ... oney.shtml

Then more:
How The US Government Legally Stole Millions From Kim Dotcom
from the the-fun-of-asset-forfeiture dept
Fri, Mar 27th 2015 10:36am — Mike Masnick

About a month ago we covered the basics of the lawsuit by which the US government was seeking to keep pretty much all of Kim Dotcom's assets, despite the fact that Dotcom himself hasn't been tried -- and, in fact, it hasn't even been determined if he can be extradited to the United States (a country he's never visited). This week, that case took another step, with the judge, Liam O'Grady, who had already ruled that Kim Dotcom could be considered a "fugitive," more or less finalizing the theft of Dotcom's assets by declaring a default judgment in favor of the US. This isn't the end of the process (not by a longshot), but it highlights just how the US government can use some ridiculous procedures to steal millions in assets from someone who hasn't been shown to be guilty of anything.

As we discussed last time, the story of the raid on Kim Dotcom's rented home in New Zealand, the seizure of all of his cars, money, bank accounts, computers, servers, etc. is well known. That was part of a case for which Kim Dotcom was indicted (under what appears to be questionable legal reasoning -- but that's a separate issue). As has been widely reported, that case is still on hold while Dotcom fights extradition from New Zealand. The extradition fight will finally go to a New Zealand court later this summer. Once that's done, if Dotcom loses, he'll be sent to the US, where he'll face a criminal trial based on the indictment.

But this is actually separate from all of that. You see, when the US government grabbed or froze all of Dotcom's assets, they did so using an asset seizure procedure. Asset seizure is allowed in such cases, but the government then has to give that property back. What the government really wanted to do is keep all of Dotcom's tens of millions of dollars worth of assets -- and in order to do that it has to go through a separate process, known as civil asset forfeiture. It's technically a civil (not criminal) case, but (and here's the part that people find most confusing), it's not actually filed against Kim Dotcom at all, but rather against his stuff that the government already seized. Yes, it's technically an entirely separate lawsuit, that was only filed last summer (two and a half years after the government seized all of his stuff and shut down his company), entitled United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto. And, as we noted last time, Attachment A is basically all of Kim Dotcom's stuff.

This whole process is known as an "in rem" proceeding -- meaning a lawsuit "against a thing" rather than against a person. And the "case" basically says all this stuff should be "forfeited" to the US government because it's the proceeds of some criminal activity. You would think that in order for such civil asset forfeiture to go forward, you'd then have to show something like a criminal conviction proving that the assets in question were, in fact, tied to criminal activity. You'd be wrong -- as is clear from what happened in this very case. Once the Justice Department effectively filed a lawsuit against "all of Kim Dotcom's money and stuff," Dotcom did what you're supposed to do in that situation and filed a challenge to such a ridiculous situation. And here the DOJ used the fact that Dotcom was fighting extradition to argue that he was a "fugitive." Judge O'Grady agreed with that last month, and that resulted in the decision earlier this week to then declare a "default judgment" in favor of the DOJ, and giving the US government all of Kim Dotcom's stuff.
Lots more:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150 ... tcom.shtml

Court: vaed
Docket #: 1:14-cv-00969
Case Name: United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto
PACER case #: 307658
Date filed: 2014-07-29
Date of last filing: 2017-01-13
Docket: https://ia803107.us.archive.org/7/items ... ocket.html

Flash forward:
MPA and RIAA’s Megaupload Lawsuits Are Postponed Again
April 5, 2021 by Ernesto Van der Sar

A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload's request to keep the civil lawsuits filed by music and movie companies on hold until October. With no movement in the criminal case, this standstill could last for many years. Kim Dotcom and his colleagues are still fighting a US extradition request, a battle that started nearly a decade ago. In 2012, Google Glass was all the rage and Microsoft released its latest operating system, Windows 8. It was also the year where Internet blackouts took place in protest against the SOPA copyright law. And a few days later, Megaupload was raided and effectively shut down.

To many people, these events are little more distant memories. However, for the key players involved, it’s still a central part of their lives. That’s also true for the Megaupload defendants. The criminal case against Dotcom was billed as the largest copyright infringement case the U.S. Government had ever launched. It also turned into one of the longest criminal copyright battles in history.

No Progress
After nearly a decade, the Megaupload case has barely progressed. In New Zealand, lawyers have been very busy with the costly extradition proceedings against Dotcom, but it could be years before that battle ends. This means that the criminal lawsuit remains in limbo. The same is true for the civil cases the RIAA and MPA filed back in 2014. Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and a few days ago they requested another extension. In line with other recent requests, the RIAA and MPA didn’t object. As a result, District Court Judge O’Grady swiftly agreed to issue yet another extension, putting the cases on hold until October.

Looking at the matter realistically, it will probably take many more years before these civil cases can finally get underway. First, the extradition process has to be concluded. This matter recently went back to the Court of Appeal in New Zealand and given the legal complications, it could take a while before a final conclusion is reached there. If the case eventually makes its way to the US criminal court system, that could take many years to resolve as well. If the RIAA and MPA cases have to wait that out, as is suggested now, October of this year seems a bit optimistic. In essence, these bi-yearly extensions are merely a formality. If anything, it’s a painful reminder of a legal battle that, thus far, only has losers.
https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-and-riaas- ... in-210405/

Are they trying to take the crown from Lisa Liberi et al v. Orly Taitz et al's lawsuit length? :P

Dotcom's Twitter: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/with_replies
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Re: Kim Dotcom Lawsuit Still Going - "United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A..."

#2

Post by fierceredpanda »

If you want to blame anyone, blame New Zealand's courts for allowing an extradition matter to languish for more than ten years.
"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton
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