Kim Dotcom Gets Green Light to Sue New Zealand Spies | Hacker News Reader

Kim Dotcom Gets Green Light to Sue New Zealand Spies

torrentfreak.com

144 pointsGarbage57 comments

The interesting part of this case for me is that it underscores the tremendous differences between the US justice system and those of the rest of the world. In New Zeland, Kim Dotcom seems to at least be getting a fair chance. Their government seems to be willing to admit when it makes mistakes, and their judges seem apt to attempt to make amends when mistakes occur.

By contrast, in the US, all of the issues he has brought up so far would be dismissed by judges claiming they were harmless error because they are unlikely to affect the question of guilt or innocence. Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US. It's sad to say, but other countries are making the US look less and less civilized every day.

>Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US.

I can't find a single example of this. Some people are convicted for long sentences for violating 3 strikes rules, which are questionable, but I think you have exaggerated more than a little here.

[EDIT] [Added] The comment below mentions this case, but the guy only did 6 years:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me-pizzathi...

I looked around and there just are not many, if any cases like the OP describes. His comment is an exaggeration to say the least, and may even been an absurd exaggeration based on something he vaguely remembers from 1995.

I read 'frequently' as meaning 'much more than it should'. I'm guessing he was referring to three strikes violations leading to jail time for pizza-stealing.

I googled 'stealing pizza jail' and came up with one example, which of course was from California. Doesn't seem like it happens often, but there are enough stories of long jail time for comparably petty offences.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of-piz...

I also found this odd story from spain, which is a more serious incident of pizza thievery, with a knife:

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/04/25/pizza-thef...

I find the characterization of that California crime as "stealing one slice of pizza" to be wildly misleading. It conjures the image of someone sneaking up and nicking a piece while everybody's attention is diverted, or similar. The punishment isn't so much for the actual theft as for the threat of violence that was used to carry it out.

I'm not sure that threat deserves life in prison, but it's much more serious than the headline makes it sound, and I don't think it deserves to be called "petty".

According to the article he was convicted of "felony petty theft."

  > Williams, who testified in his own defense during his trial,
  > testified that some of the children nodded their heads "yes"
  > when he asked them for a slice of pizza and that he thanked
  > them for it.

  > But a 13-year-old boy in the group testified: "I was scared."

Sounds like implicit intimidation. I think that if there were claims that he threatened violence, it would have been quoted in the article.

  > While petty theft is typically a misdemeanor charge, Williams'
  > earlier convictions allowed prosecutors to upgrade it to a
  > felony.

They used his earlier convictions to upgrade a misdemeanor to a felony, then claim "3 felony convictions" == "life sentence".

> Sounds like implicit intimidation. I think that if there were claims that he threatened violence, it would have been quoted in the article.

This confuses me a bit. I would personally put "implicit intimidation" under the category of "threatened violence", and it seems that the state agreed.

If you look (by your nature) intimidating and give someone a grim look, they could be intimidated (especially a 13 year old). Does that mean that you should treat this the same as if he had said aloud, "I'll break your bones if you don't give me that piece of pizza?"

[This is all speculation anyways since we don't really have the full story.]

There are really two separate questions here which are getting tangled up.

The first question is what crime he was convicted of. The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with assault or intimidation.

The second question is what he actually did. The answer to that is much less clear.

But the second question doesn't really matter to this specific discussion, although it's obviously highly important in the grand scheme of things. He was sentenced based on the crime he was convicted of, so it was theft with assault or intimidation which got him a life sentence, and characterizing it as "stealing a slice of pizza" is tremendously misleading.

Whether he did something that deserves to be considered that crime is another question, but a completely different discussion. If I get life in prison for a murder I didn't commit, I still got life "for murder", and it would be wrong to characterize it as e.g. harsh sentencing for a lesser crime.

  > The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with
  > assault or intimidation.

I don't see any references to 'assault or intimidation' being part of the charge in that article. There's also the part where the prosecutor got the charge 'upgraded' to a felony instead of a misdemeanor, which was based on his prior record rather than the facts of this particular case (at least according to the article).

Well, a felony implies a serious crime. For a theft to be felony-level, it either needs to be theft of extremely valuable goods, or the act of stealing needs to be be aggravated. The pizza was presumably not value, so process of elimination leaves us with the second.

So again, maybe he didn't actually do what he was convicted of, but that's a separate question altogether.

You're speculating though. The only 'hard information' that we're going on here is the article that says this:

  > While petty theft is typically a misdemeanor charge,
  > Williams' earlier convictions allowed prosecutors to
  > upgrade it to a felony.

Sounds more like a "pattern of law breaking" argument was used to upgrade it rather than the facts of this particular matter, but again this is just speculation because we're not reading a blow-by-blow account of the trial.

Again, doesn't matter. He was convicted of felony theft, a serious crime, and sentenced accordingly. To say he was sentenced for stealing a slice of pizza is entirely wrong. Whether the additional factors were threats at the time of the theft or previous crimes or whatever, that's what he was sentenced for.

Is it so hard to believe that a prosecutor used the 'stole a slice of pizza' incident as a foot in the door, and pushed hard to upgrade it to a felony just to get a feather in his hat (i.e. as a political power-play)? Would you be singing the same tune if a prosecutor had tried to get him convicted of 'felony jay-walking' and then sent him away for 25 to life? If 2 felony convictions + 1 minor infraction are enough to get you to do hard time, can we really claim that it's a '3 strikes policy?' Though, not a resident of California, I was under the impression that 3 strikes laws were sold to the public under the guise of hard criminals that are repeat offenders. This guy doesn't sound like a hard criminal, so I would venture that this situation is one that violates the intent of the law (or at least the advertised intent that the public was sold on).

This got out of hand, so let me try to present another viewpoint.

1) No one deserves to go to jail for 6 years (the term he served) or life imprison, even for intimidation of kids.

2) He wasn't a guy who just took a piece of pizza, he threatened kids and he did so after he committed multiple felonies.

3) The three strikes laws were designed to stop people from continuously committing crimes and getting of easily. The mid 1990s were a tough period for American politicians due to rising crime rates and they tried new stuff. (Basically they did the lean startup movement on criminal prosecution.)

4) If you ask me, the case and situation were misapplied.

5) My original point that this rarely if ever happens in the US still stands. This (pizza lifer) was an obvious injustice and it was fixed. It doesn't happen often, if ever and should not be viewed the way it is.

6) We should never let someone go to jail for 6 years, or even 2 years for stealing a piece of pizza from some kids. IMO the US should seriously look at reducing sentences for many crimes and we should take a hard look at reducing our imprisoned population.

7) Most importantly, The US has not deteriorated to the point of a police state, or anywhere close to it. Part of the reason it hasn't is that American's and international citizens have stood up to the government and demanded that they not violate the constitution. HN/Reddit/others have defeated SOPA, and will defeat other measures like it.

Great discussion.

This is disgusting. So if you're insecure, suddenly other people need to go to jail?

Yes, I was referring to 3 strikes sentences. In Nevada, for example, 1 in 6 prisoners - over 2,500 people - are serving life sentences. A significant portion of these are sentenced under a wild "habitual offender" statute that enables life sentences for even non-violent repeat offenders. The Nevada version of the three strikes law makes its more famous cousin in California look tame and completely rational by comparison.

And there is also stuff like this, which was not a habitual case... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d0_1272286354 . That video is a pretty chilling look at how quickly and non-chalantly courts in the US are willing to take away a person's life for relatively minor offenses. Call me crazy, but I don't think that the statement "She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him" should ever have to be uttered by an attorney in a court in the "land of the free".

The head of the GCSE at the time is now our Governor General. So the guy directly at fault is untouchable and the Prime Minister flatly denied (lying) all knowledge of any spying. We're not so squeaky clean.

police search, illegal seizure raids, great show of force, attacking him in his safe-house, unlawfully intercepted communications, unlawful surveillance, (still!) freezing his accounts... But somehow people pirating music/films is the worlds biggest problem? I'd say any government willing to break so many of it's own laws is the problem.

Worse is any goverment willing to break their own laws for another government that is really a proxy for an industry... That's what's really scary about this

Welcome to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong!

> I'd say any government willing to break so many of it's own laws is the problem.

And when the breaking of laws becomes too onerous or attracts too much attention, they simply change the law to make their behavior legal, e.g. NDAA in the USA.

Or they delegate the activities to the NSA who work under-the-radar and nobody knows anything except what the whistle-blowers say.

I'm amazed at how the NZ institutions are putting their hands up and the courts seem to be working. It seems so different from so many of the stories/comments here regarding similar stuff in the US.

Corruption Perception Index:

NZ = 90 (1st) vs US = 73 (19th)

Not a coincidence?

Hang on, does that indicate that NZ is perceived to be the most corrupt country on the scale? Just what countries are included, or excluded for that matter?

The opposite: "A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean." http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results

The most interesting point of the article is that it is illegal for the GCSB (New Zealand spy agency) to monitor New Zealanders.

Personally I feel that other nations should learn from this and implement similar policies.

It already is illegal for the CIA to monitor Americans on American soil.

Of course once you are used to breaking laws around the world, what is one more law?

Gotta admit he got both balls and the backbone to keep pushing this matter forward.

What can I do to increase his chances of success?

His most honed skill is self-promotion, so that's a given.

Kim is turning into a Julian Assange of the Internet and he is now taking this to a whole new level.

Is JA not the JA of the internet?

In my books, Assange deals more with politics and organizational process issues. Sure - he uses the Internet as his medium. On the other hand, Kim Dotcom deals with Internet issues.

And both are getting stuck in the corruption of the system. More people need to combat it. Corruption exists in many forms. When you pay someone to get around the law you know it is corruption, but when a law is created to do one thing, but it is used for another thing it is also corruption.

>> corruption of the system

The difference between Julian Assange and Kim Dotcom is that Kim Dotcom is in New Zealand, which is tied with 3 other countries as the countries with the least perceived corruption in the world.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

Assange is a douche. Let's not lump the two together.

Assange's alleged assaults would put him in a different class than a con-artist, I suppose.

What and you think Kim is a great guy?

It's really important to separate the work from the person. I doubt many of us would have wanted to be friends with Steve Jobs but man I'm glad he existed and did the (professional) things he did.

Dotcom is trying to make a buck, not sincerely change the system.

If making a buck ends up changing the system, why would I care about why he did it? If you go back and look at history with a critical eye you'll find none of your heroes had you in mind when they did whatever it is they did. If we only celebrate the self-less then we have no one to thank for much of anything. That doesn't strike me as very fair.

Hey, I'll be happy if this changes anything for the better. I feel I'm setting my expectations reasonably low.

He's best known for bluster and charisma and promises unfulfilled, after all. I'd happily eat these words if anything positive comes from this.

Yeah this is according to TorrentFreak. Of course they're going to put him up as a role model.

Rapt when I saw this on the news last night. A hugely influential decision. Not only is the GCSE now liable for their actions, but it opens up the opportunity to sue other organizations, which we have been unable to do since the eighties.

I've been following Kim since my friend showed me the kimble.org flash website back in the early 2000's. All the events in his life could be an amazing story for a movie.

There is a worldwide effort going on right now to put a ownership sticker on the worldwide internet, that goal has been failing, so now they are settling for an "ownership of the internet in their jurisdiction", and that is failing too, so they do the next best thing: "Digital rights management" because oh god won't somebody think of the children with child pornography and music downloads!

It's about expanding the power base, the ultimate goal here is for governments to acquire the ability to tax every bit and byte that travels across their borders. Kim stands for freedom. Government, stay out of my shit, you have a few defined jobs and you're not doing any of them here.

Power corrupts and seeks more power, it's the human condition. I'm afraid a free neutral and open internet and the explosion of technology it brought will be a phenomenon for the history books either soon or eventually.

>"Digital rights management" because oh god won't somebody think of the children with child pornography and music downloads!

I don't understand what connection you're drawing between CP and DRM.

CP is often used as a justification for stricter internet controls, which leaks over into non-CP areas.

Common strategy. Use a cause that no one will argue against in order to push rules that serve a broader agenda.

Yeah, but that only makes sense when there is a connection. Requiring ISPs to keep more detailed records of internet usage, while terrible, does at least make sense as an anti-CP measure, even if the real purpose is to make it easier to sue file sharers. But DRM doesn't have any plausible connection to CP.

But OK, I'm not going to go too far down the road of imagining that legislators and lobbyists are behaving rationally. The more important point is that while I've seen plenty of examples of using the fight against CP as a front for the copyright agenda, all of those examples did bear some reasonable facade of plausibility.

Can you give an actual example of where they've been so brazen as to actually try to claim DRM was a tool for fighting CP?

Oh, you're right. I read the original exchange too hastily. I think the OP was being a bit sarcastic.

Now I read it as him expressing the spirit of the opportunistic conflation between the two issues, even though there isn't any literal case where CP was used to justify DRM.

edit: Interesting side-note, I seem to get the same number of upvotes on comments where I have to say 'oops, you're right' as on comments where I don't. Hmm.

There is no good connection between them. However, I've seen legislators often conflate the two in order to promote pro-DRM legislation in the name of protecting the children.

I was certainly aware of the connection between anti-CP and copyright, but I have never heard of a connection to DRM specifically. I thought the connections were limited to the shared interests of fighting CP and fighting copyright infringement, like monitoring peer to peer networks and requiring ISPs to keep records and comply with requests from law enforcement.

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted." - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva

The exposure and removal of corruption is one of the ways in which the industry of societal governance is being disrupted and reformed.

Upvoted for quoting Frank Herbert. So much interesting (sometimes convincing, often troubling) political philosophy in his books. Recommended reading.

>Kim stands for freedom

I think you mean "...stands for the freedom to make money off of people in the same way he has been the last 2 decades, namely through at best shady and several times completely illegal and fraudulent means".

Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No, don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero" or "freedom fighter".

>It's about expanding the power base

On this point, I could not agree more with you. It has been my own impression for a LONG time that all those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads and all the media attention the RIAA/MPAA-mafia are getting for their strong-arm methods is really nothing but a very clever and calculated PR campaign to implant this actually non-existent problem in people's minds so that they then can lobby and extort money and continue increasing their power and influence/leverage on governments the world over. So what I am saying is, it was never about changing people's minds to not copy a CD or a movie but it was mainly about rallying and lobbying for their cause; a self-feeding cluster-frakk because the topic is then obviously "en vogue" so politicians can no longer ignore them and have to give in to their demands. When actually they do not make less money now than they did 15 years ago.

It is very sad to see how successful this has become, seeing NZ fold like that.

  > Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No,
  > don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic
  > allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero"
  > or "freedom fighter".

Larry Flint stood for freedom too, doesn't mean he's a humanitarian only thinking of the greater good of mankind.

Even the 'Founding Fathers' of the US were rich landowners that didn't want to get taxed by England. For all of the "fluff" that the history books talk about them being warm and fuzzy about human rights, their philosophies didn't disagree with their pocketbooks.

  > When actually they do not make less money now than
  > they did 15 years ago.

Their profits/revenues do fluctuate, but they use piracy as their scapegoat for everything.

Is the economy down, so people have less disposable income to spend on consuming entertainment media? It's piracy at fault! It definitely could not be because people have less money to spend, therefore they spend less money in aggregate.

Are other industries encroaching into the consumption media space (e.g. video games industry)? It's piracy at fault! It definitely could not be because people are now choosing to distribute spending of their finite amount of disposable income in other industries (e.g. buying few movies, and more video games).

I like Kim's version of freedom, personally.

NZ blinked and sent in the helicopters, but the recent events have shown that NZ has not folded. And we won't.

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