Dotcom’s six-week appeal will be live-streamed

“This is a case of the internet age,” Kim Dotcom’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield, argued at the High Court in Auckland yesterday.

Tech entrepreneur and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has won a bid to have his New Zealand court battle against extradition to the US live-streamed.

Dotcom and three co-accused – Bram Van der Kolk, Matthias Ortmann and Finn Batato – are trying to overturn a North Shore District Court judgement ruling from last December. It said they must go to America to face copyright breaches and money laundering charges relating to his digital music operations.

Justice Murray Gilbert has now ruled that starting tomorrow, all six weeks of the appeal hearing will be filmed by a cameraman hired by Dotcom, and broadcast live on YouTube.

At the start of the Auckland High Court proceedings, his lawyer Ron Mansfield said that the issues had international consequences, and should therefore be relayed live rather than through traditional media.

However, prosecution lawyers for the US argued the live stream footage could prejudice a criminal case in the US if the extradition went ahead.

“There will be extensive submissions made in this court about matters that may well be inadmissible and irrelevant in any future trial,” said Crown lawyer Christine Gordon. “If those are reported or live streamed in the way proposed, there’s a very real potential for a prejudicial effect.”

Dotcom’s lawyer argued that the district court had “displayed extraordinary disinterest” in the men’s argument to stay in New Zealand. It had refused to hear evidence presented by them against unlawful behaviour by the US after their arrest.

Mansfield said: “[That includes] a massive search and seizure, manufacturing a situation of urgency in order to get procedural shortcuts […] covering up the unlawful activities that preceded the [arrests], downstream attempts to cover that up including a police officer giving incorrect information to this court, [and] unlawfully sending clones of hard drives overseas.”

Mansfield argues the entire extradition process should be shut down.

The live streamed footage on YouTube will stream with a 20-minute delay, enabling the court to stop any suppressed evidence or material from being publicised. Comments and live-chat features for the stream will be disabled, and it will be pulled from YouTube at the end of the trial.

Dotcom hasreacted to the bid win on Twitter. He linked his followers to “essential reading”, including a legal opinion published by Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig.

Now that live streaming is granted you can dig into this corrupt case. We’ll see brilliant edits & stories from the Internet generation ???⚖

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 30, 2016

DOJ evidence is full of deception, dishonesty, mistranslations, malicious misrepresentation of the law & tech. All for you to dissect 🙂

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 30, 2016

I love the Internet.
This will be fun 🙂

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 30, 2016

Essential reading before live stream:

1. The corruption:https://t.co/3X6XEAK9pi

2. Harvard Prof expert opinion: https://t.co/Qi8oK7A4oF…

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 30, 2016

Dotcom faces charges including racketeering, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering. It estimated that Dotcom caused $500 million in damages to the movie industry. If convicted, Dotcom and his co-accused could face decades of jail-time.