NZ High Court delivers blow to Megaupload founder in privacy appeal
New Zealand's High Court has overturned an earlier ruling which awarded Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom damages in a privacy dispute.
The High Court's decision, delivered on Monday, October 1, upheld the attorney general’s appeal against a March ruling and said that the damages awarded to Dotcom were “wholly erroneous”.
German internet entrepreneur Dotcom founded Hong Kong-based file sharing service Megaupload in 2005. Megaupload reportedly committed online piracy on a massive scale and cost copyright owners over $500 million in lost revenue, according to Reuters.
Dotcom has been based in New Zealand since the US Department of Justice shut down Megaupload in 2012. Since then, he has been battling extradition attempts from the US, where he faces charges of copyright infringement, wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit racketeering.
Last year, the High Court said that Dotcom is eligible for extradition because conspiracy to commit copyright infringement amounts to a conspiracy to defraud—an extradition offence.
However, in March, the Human Rights Review Tribunal in Wellington found that Dotcom’s privacy had been interfered with and that multiple government departments had failed to provide the information they held on Dotcom at his request.
The tribunal awarded Dotcom damages of NZ$60,000 (US$39,524) for loss of dignity and NZ$30,000 (US$19,762) by way of compensation. At the time, Dotcom said that the judgment means his extradition case is “ over”, as the former attorney genera had “perverted the course of justice” by withholding evidence from Doctom.
New Zealand’s attorney general filed an appeal against the ruling.
Earlier this week, the High Court upheld the appeal and said that there was “no evidential basis” for the tribunal to find that the information sought by Dotcom would have been relevant to the pending extradition proceedings.
The High Court added: “There was no direct evidence relating to Dotcom having suffered loss of dignity or injury to feelings such as to warrant an award.”
Siding with the attorney general, the High Court confirmed that Dotcom’s requests for information were “vexatious”, as all 52 of them had demanded a response urgently.
Dotcom had used the requests “tactically” to delay his extradition hearing by around three and a half years, the High Court noted, making it difficult to infer that he had suffered a loss of dignity.
As a result, the High Court overturned the finding of the tribunal.
Dotcom has responded to the ruling on Twitter. He claimed that the judges in New Zealand are “corrupt” and “don’t care about the law”.
According to Dotcom, the judges are not impartial, and they rather “assist former associates or current friends”.
In another tweet, Dotcom said: “We will obviously appeal today’s judgment from the High Court. It is ignorant of the law and parliament’s intention to provide citizens with access to information that the government holds about them.”
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