Where's the Case? Says Dotcom lawyer

Where's the Case? Says Dotcom lawyer

LawFuel.co.nz - The Law Newswire - Kim Dotcom came to the Court of Appeal today, parking his car out front and his team and wife upstairs. The Dotcom lawyers have attacked the method by which their client has been sought to be extradicted to the US, in a Court of Appeal case being heard in Wellington today.

The extradition hearing is currently set for next March. He has successfully defended hearings in the Auckland District Court and the HIgh Court, who dismissed a US application to review the District Court decision.Kim Dotcom's lead lawyer, Paul Davison QC, said that his client was being sought by the United States on the basis of the treaty between the two countries that required "comity", which was a two-way street.Justice doesn't exist in a vacuum, he said.

There was a need for the US to establish a prima facie case, which required that Dotcom have access to at least some of the millions of seized records held by US authorities, themselves in breach of a New Zealand court order.The barrister, apprearing before Justices Terence Arnold, Ellen France and Christine French, argued that Mr Dotcom was being subjected to unfair treatment in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and stringently argued in favour of permitting him access to the millions of files seized in this year's dramatic raid upon his home in Auckland.

He was not arrested in the US, Mr Davison said, and he was not a fugitive or anyone who had a particular affinity with the place.The charges, such as money laundering and racketeering, were "derivative offences" that required there to have been a breach of copyright law.

The US case was dependent upon Dotcom's company, Megaupload, having been a "megacompany" business scheme intended to deprive copyright owners of their property and thereby profit. The US charges were all "inferential" from the copyright-theft business scheme argument, Mr Davison said.

"Not one document has been provided in support (of the US case)" he said, other than one photograph.The US case rested on the Megaupload cyberlocker business being based on copyright theft and had focused on the massive site's lack of a search function and use of links via other third party sites to obtain files.The question was whether that was part of providing the cyberlocker service, he said. And establishing a prima facie case and providing Dotcom with fair access to the evidence arrayed against him was fundamental.The case is continuing.

Source: Lawfuel

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