If it was Bernard Madoff, Sir Allan Stanford, Nick Leeson, Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski & it was a $500 million alleged financial fraud, & they were arrested in NZ you'd probably be thinking "good job" and be in general support.
I think the thing is there are two issues:
- The fact that Kim Dotcom has been arrested or held at the behest of the FBI in New Zealand. This seems to be counter to most people's expectations of a fair and free existence, and seem to trample on our sovereignty and right to police our own country. A sort of "How dare they!"
The NZ ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has this handy document on Extradition. "The Act does not require a foreign country to have a treaty to request extradition from New Zealand"
or
- That most of the tech-savvy may have at one time or another used the services facilitated by Megaupload, or one of the many other similar services, such as PirateBay, LimeWire, Rapidshare, and that we don't collectively see this as a 'theft" or "fraud" issue.
Megauplaod upload exists to facilitate the movement of large files in a direct download model between users, on an often anonymous basis. Someone uploads a file and then others can pick and choose to download that file - in total- as they choose, or not.
To drag someone back to the USA to face a media storm and circus seems a little odd. But then financial fraud and crime needs to be dealt with in a far more seveer manner than most other crimes.
Bit of a pigs ear then, the "authorities" could have closed down the business, and frozen assets under various RICO and money laundering / income from crime statutes I imagine without the drama of extradition and display, which in the end would result in one man in jail for a few years for being a visionary, albeit a bit of a dodgy one.
Related articles
- Feds Shut Down File-Sharing Website Megaupload.com, Seven People Charged (circleid.com)
- Pop Artists Support Megaupload; Universal Censors (entertainment.slashdot.org)
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