Hasta La Gadget!

Kim Dotcom, the Internet mogul who is the main “star” of a US investigation which concerns online piracy and fraud charges, mentioned that he was willing to make his way to the US in order to maintain his good name and clear whatever outstanding charges there are against him – with a little bit of help from some of the brightest legal minds his money can buy, of course. Upon doing so, this would mean he would forego a pending extradition hearing in New Zealand.

Kim Dotcom’s claim to fame would be to be the founder of the Megaupload file-sharing site, where he has challenged the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to run a fair trial, touting that he has the cojones to meet them in the court, assuming they agreed to select conditions.

Kim posted on Twitter, “We want bail, funds unfrozen for lawyers & living expenses.” Do you think Kim and his team of legal eagles will stand a chance in the court of law?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Megaupload founder believes U.S. Vice President is behind the takedown of his company, MegaUpload Users Might Not Get Data Back, Today’s Hearing Decides,

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has spoken out on his frustrations around the Megaupload case, as well as praising Microsoft’s visual design as something Steve Jobs would be proud of. The outspoken exec voiced his dissatisfaction with the Kim Dotcom case while at the Entel Summit in Chile, FayerWayer reports, refusing to comment on whether he believes high-ranking politicians had a hand in the investigation, but expressing dismay at some of the techniques used to bring Dotcom to trial.

“Kim Dotcom was so successful, and he was well known for his flagrance, and his sports cars, and his racing cars, and style of life, that he was made an easy target” Wozniak said. “He was the biggest in the world, and they swamped in on him … I don’t want to take a side in this political thing, I don’t know if that’s where it came from.”

It’s not the first time Wozniak has spoken publicly on the Megaupload situation. One of the original founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Wozniak compares the cloud storage system to other platforms like Apple’s own iCloud and Google Drive.

As for Apple’s rivals, Wozniak has plenty of praise for Microsoft. “A lot of people like to say that Microsoft’s had no successes in the last so many years, but the Xbox is a success, and certainly Kinect” he pointed out, highlighting the clean UI of things like Metro in Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

“They have such a strikingly good visual appearance, which is a lot of what Steve Jobs always looked for, the art in technology, the convergence of art and technology. And usually it was visual appearance of things. So, I made a joke that Steve Jobs came back reincarnated at Microsoft” Wozniak said. “But I’m glad that Microsoft is starting to show that maybe they’re a different company from before, i don’t remember this sort of thing happening in a long time from Microsoft, so I’m very happy.”

Surface isn’t the only product on Wozniak’s shopping list, either. He’s hoping to pick up a pair of Google’s Project Glass wearables, suggesting that the head-mounted display could – as long as the functionality was right – be a good example of the next-generation of portable computing.

“Google Glass is maybe the thing, but I don’t want to comment on that because I don’t have Google Glass. I would love to be able to have Google Glass and just talk to it any time I want and ask valuable questions and get those answers, that would be good too.”

[via Cult of Mac]

Steve Wozniak speaks: Megaupload frustrations, Microsoft praise and Google Glass lust is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Legal proceedings against Kim Dotcom aren’t going so well for the US authorities. First a New Zealand court ruled that the Megaupload seizures were illegal, and now Dotcom’s extradition hearing has been pushed back to March 2013. More »

Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is claiming that he knows who is behind the shutdown of his company in January this year. Dotcom reportedly told TorrentFreak yesteday that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden ordered lawyer Neil MacBride to bring his behemoth site down. Interestingly, Dotcom said that the Vice President is a close friend to former-Senator and now-MPAA CEO Chris Dodd.

(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: MegaUpload Users Might Not Get Data Back, Today’s Hearing Decides, MegaUpload host pleads for cash to preserve user files,

The massive US copyright infringement case against Megaupload founder Kim DotCom has found itself in choppy waters, after courts found search warrants used to seize data were invalid. In addition to New Zealand police acting without due process in their evidence collection, the New Zealand Herald reports, Justice Helen Winkelmann also decided that the FBI’s cloning of the confiscated hard-drives was invalid, as DotCom had not given his own consent to the process.

According to Winkelmann, the initial raid on DotCom’s property – which saw not only multiple computers and external drives grabbed, but a cavalcade of luxury cars and motorcycles – was far too broad in the net it cast. The warrants the police used “fell well short” of describing the offenses DotCom was to be charged with; “they were general warrants” Winkelmann said, “and as such, are invalid.”

An independent lawyer will now be appointed, to comb through everything that was seized and figure out what evidence is relevant to the investigation. The US authorities will have access to that information, but must return all other data copied from the New Zealand police.

“These categories of items were defined in such a way that they would inevitably capture within them both relevant and irrelevant material. The police acted on this authorisation. The warrants could not authorise seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid” Justice Helen Winkelmann

Exactly what happened in that data exchange process will also be investigated. According to DotCom’s lawyer, Paul Davison QC, the Crown legal team assured him back in February that “the evidence is required in its original form to be sent to the US. That has not happened and will not happen without prior warning” when he wrote to them insisting that no evidence leave the country. However, he was subsequently informed that the FBI had visited New Zealand and cloned drives, returning with the data to the US.

The Crown legal team argues that the original warrants made it clear that evidence would be shared with US authorities, and have said they are in discussions about the implications of the warrant decision on the ongoing case.

Megaupload case stalls as evidence seize & share judged illegal is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.