Kim Schmitz, more famously known as Kim Dotcom, and his lawyers have failed in their attempt to dodge the United States’ attempts for extradition. The founder of the file-sharing site Megaupload was arrested in January of 2012 during a raid by New Zealand police in his home in Auckland.
Dotcom and three of his former Megaupload associates: Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk are all wanted in the U.S. for charges that accuse the group of conspiracy to commit racketeering and money laundering, as reported by CNN. They claim that they ran an “international organized criminal enterprise responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of copyrighted works.” Their main argument against the claims is simple, they aren’t responsible for the content that was uploaded to their site. Megaupload has since been shutdown by the United States government.
Earlier today the High Court of New Zealand had done exactly what the lower court had done before it, ruled in favor of U.S. authorities. Dotcom’s lawyers are now taking the fight to the Court of Appeals in a last attempt to stop the advances of the Untied States.
While profiting from copyright infringement through their file-sharing website is a clear violation of U.S. law, it was found to have no relevant baring on New Zealand’s copyright law.
The court then found that Dotcom and his associates are available for extradition under a different law, which is the conspiracy to defraud and potentially other serious crimes.
In a tweet by Dotcom he said that he was now getting extradited under a new law that “doesn’t even apply” after they couldn’t get extradition for Copyright.
In the years that these legal struggles have occurred for Dotcom, he has become heavily involved in his New Zealand community. He founded his own political party and worked with Edward Snowden to accuse the country’s leader of misleading the public, according to CNN.
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