What can we learn by contrasting Kim Dotcom's experience fighting extradition to the US with Julian Assange's? Watch this fascinating documentary and think about it. Kim has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012, but initially the NZ justice system proved more resistant to the US than the UK one. However the NZ PM then changed the laws to assist the US case. Kim's wife left him soon after the trouble began and, more recently, the people he built his empire with have agreed to testify against him, so that they will no longer have to fight extradition themselves. See "Megaupload case: Deal done, now only Kim Dotcom facing extradition, prospect of United States prison cell," (10 May 2022). This 1hr 47 minute NZ documentary is engrossing and educational on a number of levels. It gives us a historical view of how the internet began to break away from pre-internet copyright and entertainment industry structures. It makes us think about how commercial hegemonic structures are overturned - usually not legally. It adds Kim Dotcom's view of US surveillance to Snowdon's and Assange's. Indeed, Snowdon and Assange appeared via internet in Kim Dotcom's NZ political party discussions about this. Kim Dotcom is, himself, an extraordinary figure, physically, in personality, and in his unusual intelligence, sense of humour and fun. The son of an alcoholic, he does not drink, but has or had a habit of entertaining rich and famous people who did.
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