NZ's handling of Dotcom 'test case' watched closely in US, and with concern: Curran
The government's "bungled handling" of the Megaupload case is being watched closely by United States law enforcement agencies, says Labour communications and IT spokeswoman Clare Curran.
Ms Curran has just returned from a US State Department-sponsored trip.
The focus of the trip was on intellectual property and IP law enforcement, and Ms Curran told NBR ONLINE she meet with Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice – albeit as part of a group of 19 from other countries.
Ms Curran was the only politician on the tour, which also included lawyers, academics and senior law enforcement officers from 17 countries.
The group meet government and law enforcement reps in Washington DC and New York. But the State Department also took them around two big US companies with a keen interest in defending IP – Microsoft in Washington state and Nike in Oregon.
On her return to New Zealand she fired off a press release called "Dotcom bungles being watched closely in USA" (below).
It is easy to see the Megaupload case being watched closely. Ms Curran says the federal agencies she met with see it as a test case, which it clearly is.
And there is no doubt there have been botched elements, from the illegal warrants for the original raid to evidence being wrongly sent offshore to the illegal GCSB surveillance.
But did anyone she met in US government call it bungling, or is that Ms Curran's spin?
"I’d rather not comment," Ms Curran told NBR, before pausing then adding, "There’s a high degree of awareness of the unfolding of events in NZ and what I picked up on was a high level of concern.”
The State Department trip was under Chatham House rules so the Labour MP cannot quote any US official.
It is her clear interpretation of events, however, that the handling of the case is "impacting badly on our international reputation".
Ms Curran adds, for good measure, that given the high-level US government interest in the case she witnessed during her trip, it is unthinkable Prime Minister John Key could not have been part of discussions about the case, and extradition issues, before the January 20 raid on Dotcom mansion.
Mr Key says the first he heard was the day before the raid.
Incidentally, US officials on the tour did discuss the controversial Transpacific Partnership trade deal, Ms Curran says – but more from an explanatory than a lobbying point of view.
The likes of the Motion Picture Association of America and recording and gaming industry groups were seen as key stakeholders and given access to her group.
The Labour Party MP listened to their side of the story, but note there was no US equivalent to InternetNZ – at least none that got a seat at the top table.
RAW DATA: Clare Curran press release
Dotcom bungles being watched closely in USA
The New Zealand Government’s bungled handling of the Megaupload case is being watched closely by United States law enforcement agencies and what they see isn’t pretty, Labour’s communications and IT spokesperson Clare Curran says.
Curran has just returned from a three week US State Department-funded study tour looking at the American perspective on intellectual property enforcement.
“The Megaupload case is high on the agenda of all enforcement agencies, including Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice along with the IP content owners, such as the Motion Picture Association (MPAA),” Clare Curran says.
“It was made clear to me that the ‘New Zealand Government’s co-operation’ is essential for the successful extradition of New Zealand resident Kim Dotcom and his co-accused in Megaupload. This case is seen as an important test for the US enforcement agencies.
“American interest in this case reaches the highest levels. It is unthinkable that New Zealand Government ministers and the Prime Minister would not have been part of discussions about the case and the extradition issues before the raid occurred on 20 January.
“The National Government has not done New Zealand any favours to date with its botched handling of the Megaupload case. There are too many unanswered questions, the most important ones being what was the involvement of politicians in the Megaupload case before and after the 20 January raid, and why was New Zealand so eager to co-operate?
“Our international reputation as a nation which makes its own decisions based on the rule of law is precious but the Prime Minister’s inability to be upfront with New Zealanders about his and his Government’s true role in the case is putting our credibility on the line.
“New Zealand’s public interest demands that that the truth is told, that our laws are upheld, and our reputation as an independent nation is not undermined,” Curran said.
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Comments and questions30
The sooner that Dotcom is extradited to the US to stand trial for his alleged American crimes the better. This side show has gone on long enough. There are more important things that this country needs to be focusing on than this circus. First and foremost on the list would be getting competency back into the public service, and secondly, is getting welfare users and benefit junkies off the taxpayers teat. And the list doesn't just stop there either. How about third on this list, improving the depth, breath and basic competency of New Zealand managers?
I agree wholeheartedly that Kim Dotcom needs to be booted the hell out of NZ. how he got into NZ in the frst place also needs to be looked at very very carefully. Clearly someone was paid off or something similarly dodgy happened. As for your comments about getting beneficiaries off the tax payers teat? you make it sound like taking the dry cleaning out or shopping for groceries. Thats the trouble with armchair pollies, they dont seem to realise that there are very real impacts from this stuff. Syaing it should be done is nowhere like actually doing it.
If you checked your facts you'd find that the single biggest drain on taxpayers/govt funds is superannuation - whats your solution there? Soylent green?
How would you feel if the NZ Police and FBI decided that you were guilty for running a YouTube like business and you should be extradited to the US to stand trial? Probably not that good.
FBI and the US government must be kept out of NZ's legal system for obvious reasons.
The NZ government should not allow the evil and corrupt US corporations to run this country.
Youtube is not a criminal enterprise. If Youtube becomes aware that there is copyright infringing material placed on their site, then they take it down, whereas Megaupload paid people to steal and distribute the work of others, and then failed to take it down even when asked to.
Quite frankly, I have no problem with the FBI and US government taking over New Zealand's legal system. An elected judiciary and indictments issued by jury are far more democratic than what's left our "justice" system. Why do you think the likes of Dot Con and Citizen Yan paid corrupt politicians mega $$$ to get in here? So that they could be held accountable? And at least the US government isn't paying a dogpile load to Huawei to spy on Kiwi citizens like our own government.
The inference of the govts spy centre illegally spying on a NZ resident - Kim Dotcom is they "May" also be illegally spying on other NZ residents.
They can spy away on me - I have nothing to hide. I think you'll find that the SIS and police intelligence teams keep an eye on known political agitators.
Chances are YouTube does exactly what Megaupload is accused of, i.e. deduplicating files and storing only a single copy. I.e. if two people upload a file that is - on a binary basis - exactly the same, why store it twice and increase your storage needs unnecessarily? You just store it once and reference it twice.
This is what file hosts do, and it's quite possibly what YouTube does.
Now, suppose one person who uploaded the file owns the copyright to it, and the other doesn't. If a copyright complaint is raised about a file (identified by its unique download link), you remove the link to the file. Megaupload did this.
However, what happens if you remove the file itself? The copyright owner loses their linked file too, which is a bit silly.
What the law suit against Megaupload would essentially seek to do is make the website owner responsible for policing the content people upload and establishing whether the uploader owns the content's copyright. This is unworkable for obvious reasons, including privacy. Do you want Google to be looking inside the content of every file you upload to Google Drive, for instance?
Stop with all the YouTube or dropbox vs Megaupload comparisons. This clearly indicates that you do not understand the difference between the services.
Youtube pays rights holders royalties for the use of there content based on views and also share ad revenue via their partner program for advertising around the users own content or on their channel.
Megaupload charged a flat 9.99 per month fee for full unlimited access to download any movie or music album on the site and shared that revenue via a points system with the users that uploaded the content, not the rights holders.
These are 2 very different business models.
Bit of a rambling post, but I guess your main point accusing someone as being "paid off"...why not go to the police ? I'm sure they will be very interested.
All legitimate file hosting sites like megaupload and youtube and 20 more are hosting copyrighted materials from time to time. This is unavoidable in the information sharing age that we live in. The technology simply cannot account for all of it, and when it does the ingenuity of humanity simply proves it wrong by going around it.
This Digital Millennium Copyright Act was designed to account for the changes in information sharing that the advancement of the internet has brought with it, and the pitfalls that may befall a legitimate company . So that they may continue to operate within the law in the USA.
The legal issue is (when these companies operate in the USA) do they comply with USA law, re: the DMCA et el, in regards to hosting copyrighted material which is made available for distribution.
The DMCA et el provides avenues for these companies to deal with material which is copyrighted, ie: once discovered it must be removed, thus they are considered to not have committed an offense under the Act if the material is removed.
Without this none of these companies would be able to exist, there would be no online file hosting, and no Microsoft or Apple cloud storage, we would be essentially stuck in the information stone age.
The major steps that these companies, including megaupload and youtube, employ to remove infringing material are two that I know of.
1. they use known (when discovered) "file signatures" to prevent known copyrighted materials being re-uploaded by users. This prevents further distribution of the material. However this is very easy to circumvent, simply alter the file, the signature changes. Mega upload and youtube use this method to prevent further file uploads of known material.
2. they provide an interface for avocates of the major production studios, ie: the MPAA & RIAA to physically remove infringing material themselves. This relies of the pro-activeness of these studios to seek and destroy. Mega upload and youtube use this method to remove files.
These methods are considered best practice in regards to complying with the DMCA et el, according to the highly paid legal experts in the USA.
I agree Kim Dotcom should have faced the charges in the USA alleged against him, had he been arrested in the USA.
Lo he was not. Mr Dotcom was arrested in a bungled police operation in New Zealand, which has done nothing but embarrass the incumbent government and the New Zealand police force.
This imo has been an attempt to undermine the institution of law in this country, and quite frankly I see it as embarrassment.
Those responsible clearly are not competent to fulfill their roles as they are employed to do. The police do not have the right to undermine the law even with the consent or ignorance of Members of Parliament. The police force must be seen to uphold the law of this country in competence. Without this image public confidence is undermined further.
We need jobs, not this crap.
You forgot to mention curing cancer, saving kittens and bring world peace.
Yep. You can find it all on the Internet
First off, there is only on Chatham House rule, secondly, Curran is a soft touch anyway, so the US invited the best person from the opposition. And she went for THREE weeks - nothing to do at home Clare?
Any botching was done the second the Government here agreed to cooperate with the FBI and trample over a resident's rights.
Current should have been over there kicking their asses.
hold on a second countries have extradition treaties and the moment one country stops playing nice it all falls apart. Kim dotcom has criminal charges to answer, be they legit or not it is not the govts role to question them.
Imagine how we'd feel if there was a crim in the US they refused to send back to NZ. Lets get real here folks
Curran, what a joke. First, it was the FBI that was equally responsible for making a mess of the Kim Dotcom case, so get the US to look in their own backyard first. Second, if you want to go on a US-sponsored trip to hear their people talk about how we should handle IP and copyright laws in our country, be their guest, but don't reiterate their BS propaganda and try and milk it for all it's not worth, to a public that is clued up on and completely over this sort of carry on. The US government are being paid off by those corporations who stand to win by enforcing their evil and illegal activities and draconian laws.
spoken like a true bogan. 1) most of the NZ public are not aware of the finer points of copyright 2) Claire is doing what all politicians should be doing - communicating so that a democracy can function.
I dont disagree with you about the US govt being in the pocket of corporate campaign funders, but NZ needs to realise it is a pisant banana republic in the grand scheme of things and the US have bigger fish to fry so the rantings of people such as yourself is of no consequence
I think it is important to realise that whether or not the NZ govenment has goofed on its handling of this case so far that the charges against dot com and buddies are serious and if proven should result in a very serious punishment. Interesting isnt it that dotcom now involves himself with a new business here "Bid buddy" - perhaps he can see that the megaupload business model wont ever work again- for obvious reasons
how is it that kim dotcom can run businesses even though he is clearly not fit to be a company director. I think there are some very serious questions that need to be asked about the companies office and immigration
Aren't many of NZ's finance company directors getting back into business too?
I imagine the high-level of concern is that the whole house of cards that the prosecution is built on doesn't come tumbling down and blow-up in their faces.
Maybe allowing borderline rogue agencies like FBI, DOJ and HomeLand Security to cast their long, chilling shadow over NZ's policing and justice system is not such a good idea after all?
@#5 what shadow? You make it sound like they are preparing to invade? This is simply an extradition exercise, same as has been done between governments for hundreds of years.
They didn't have helicopters hundreds of years ago in the States did they?
To the anti-Dotcom brigade above... I'm not sure how I feel about Dotcom personally, but I know how I feel about the government insisting on proper procedure in its justice process. If you guys don't feel that way, that's very disappointing. The question is: on what charges has Dotcom been convicted? On what relevant charges *under NZ law* is Dotcom being tried? If found guilty of them, are they extraditable offences? I gather they're not. If he's not guilty of those sorts of crimes, he shouldn't be extradited. It's simple justice.
I'm an American born and bred, and I don't think for a minute that Dotcom would get a fair trial in the US. I think it's likely that the US establishment (at the behest of Hollywood) would make an example of him no matter what.
If NZ gives in to US pressures or pressures from people like those above who don't seem to care about proper legal process (they've already tried him and found him guilty based on their deep knowledge of the situation, no doubt) then maybe I've misjudged NZ. Perhaps I'll have to reconsider my impression that NZ is far more egalitarian, open, progressive, positive, considerate, and *just* than the land of my birth.
Naive twaddle. The FBI took off with the data knowing full well the NZ courts had said no go. Likewise they know the rules about GCSB spying on residents and knew it was happening.
Garbage from Curran.
It is about to get much worse for Key and co as he is aware that the police commissioner is currently refusing to inverstigate otrher police involved, who have al;so been caught out illegally interceptiong other emails.
Curran swanned around the US of A on a bit of a jolly and has the gall to come back here and all haughty like comment that her new pals are a bit miffed that the NZ courts weren't such a pushover. What an air head !
A State Dept funded US Jolly i.e a Hillary Clinton affair.
Doiesn't surprise me as Curran's leader is a UN Apparatchik and like him Curran is allied with the UN, The Greens and UN Agenda 21.
Her position on this is quite clear...as is Ardern's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Parliamentary_Assembly
Nice communitarian one world government.
Curran and her fellow travelers are anti nation state and anti democratic totalitarian wannabes.
How much is Dotcom contributing to TV3?! he seems to be their lead story along with labour every single night. He is getting so much media coverage and publicity it is a joke.
Get him extridited so we can get over this saga and maybe tv3 and labour will find something else to complain about
Campbell, surprisingly enough, thought it just a little odd that a white-collar alleged criminal was being visited by the terrorist squad, so he thought he'd ask some questions if he got a chance. He did. The more he asks the more interesting it gets. It is called corruption, but, of course, that doesn't happen in NZ. http://kim.com
Well he is certainly contributing to the laughing stock that is Politics, but what else is new.