New legal victory for Kim Dotcom

New Zealand Justice confirmed that the founder of Megaupload was able to access the evidence seized by the police during his raid in 2012.

New setback for Kim Dotcom's accusers. The High Court of New Zealand has confirmed that the police should provide the copy protection of all relevant evidence to the U.S. investigation, including information provided to the FBI. Moreover, all evidence seized in the raid, including computers, hard drives, files and other documents do not constitute evidence must be returned to Kim Dotcom.

 Finally, the police can keep the items it considers evidence but it is required to provide a clone of the device to the defenders. This new decision is yet another setback for the Americans who demand the extradition of Kim Schmitz, alias Kim Dotcom, the German-Finnish citizenship.

500 million dollars 

An extradition hearing is scheduled for next August, but it could be delayed, especially because illegal conditions under which the police had conducted the raid. The U.S. Department of Justice considers that Megaupload has cost more than 500 million dollars in violation of copyright to the movie studios and record labels. She describes this case as among the biggest criminal cases in violation of copyright. 

Beyond the case of Megaupload, the decision will have a major impact on the future of content distribution over the Internet and could force the majors to completely rethink their methods of distribution. Recall that Mr. Dotcom founded a new service called Mega earlier this year, but the success of this new initiative is incommensurate with what had been achieved with Megaupload.