And his past convictions are irrelevant on every conceivable level -- not only is he not currently serving a sentence in relation to them, they provided no basis to believe he could be dangerous.
In the video, I didn’t see physical force used. Neither did I read of anything like it in any of the reports of the arrest. What part of the operation is violent to you?
Schmitz was found with a sawed off shotgun, and the police had to cut him out of his panic room, so he could obviously be dangerous.
Pretty much all of it?
Something doesn't have to be as bad as Nazi Germany to have lessons learned from Nazi Germany usefully applied to it. No one said "OMG Kim Dotcom is exactly like Anne Frank!". The police raid was clear overkill and many people are, rightfully, bothered by the militarization of police forces. It is important to object, even in defense of a fairly shady character like Dotcom because eventually that apparatus will be turned on others and it will be too late to stop it. Really, we should have been complaining a long time ago when the police (at least in the US) started treating the inner city like a war zone.
Your comment is about the militarization of police forces, which I agree, is scary and should be objected to, even if it were only used against the scum of the earth.
I plead guilty. I do not like Kim Dotcom and what he does. My impression of him is that he’s an egotistical sociopathic opportunistic hedonistic grandstanding thug without moral compass. Megaupload is only a small part of what gave me that impression, I’ve been reading about his ‘endeavors’ for over a decade.
As for Megaupload, in the articles I’ve read over the years, he hasn’t done much to combat piracy on his network, some go as far as suggesting he encouraged it. He also claims patents over web tech like two factor authentication.
He also posed on photos with all the firearms he has, which surely must’ve made the NZ authorities queasy about peacefully apprehending him.
>Megaupload is only a small part of what gave me that impression, I’ve been reading about his ‘endeavors’ for over a decade.
Specifically as it relates to megauploads is there anything that differentiates megauploads from say dropbox or google drive (even youtube for that matter), and I don't care if its your opinion or you point me to a third party article. We all know copyright violations take place, but in no other instance, I am aware, has a website been criminally liable for the acts of its members, in fact the US created the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which creates a legal firewall between the websites and its members activities. Even Napster only got sued in a civil context, no criminal charges, much less a counter terrorist unit sent to detain Sean Parker.
>he hasn’t done much to combat piracy on his network, some go as far as suggesting he encouraged it.
According to this Wired article (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/ff-kim-dotcom/) Megauploads gave Copyright holders far greater access/control to protect their registered copyrights than any other cloud sharing service.
>He also claims patents over web tech like two factor authentication.
Kim is the registered patent holder for this in the US, perhaps it is inappropriate, maybe even unenforceable, but compare this patent with Apple having a patent on rectangular electronic devices, or the ridiculous patents Motorola owns which is the sole reason for Google acquiring them. Do you equally hate Apple and Google?
>He also posed on photos with all the firearms he has, which surely must’ve made the NZ authorities queasy about peacefully apprehending him.
This is a slippery slop, more or less it appears you justify the use of counter terrorist operations, complete with helicopters and silencers to take down alleged non-violent criminals so long as there is a picture showing the alleged suspect with a gun. Having guns does not make someone a violent person, and I do not think pictures of Kim with guns made NZ authorities "queasy", because their intelligence was not limited to pictures depicting a man with guns, they knew everything about their target, Kim, including the fact that he is non-violent.
I don’t perceive him as a victim, even though his marketing team does a great job at making it seem as if he is. The video in the linked article has a lot of production value.