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| Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Refuses to Give Up Passwords Posted: 23 May 2012 03:40 AM PDT
This week Dotcom and his legal team were at Auckland’s High Court to request a judicial review of the legality of the search warrants that were used to raid his Coatesville mansion in January. During the hearing Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison demanded access to the data stored on the 135 computers and hard drives that were taken into custody. The lawyer argued that the data is needed to mount a proper defense. Not only to fight the extradition, but also to show that “excessive police action’ was used during the raid. The raid was captured by CCTV data which is stored on the computers in question. The FBI, however, is objecting to the data handover because some of the files are encrypted. Megaupload’s founder is refusing to hand over the passwords to these files before he’s guaranteed access to the data himself, supervised by the court if needed. During the hearing Dotcom and his legal team also learned that the data stored on the computers has already been sent to the U.S. authorities. Previously the court had offered assurances that this would not happen without prior warning. Davison responded to these revelations by saying that the process was “off the rails” and that the rights of Megaupload’s founder have been “subverted”. Talking to Radio New Zealand, Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken suggests foul play, and alleges that the U.S. Government is trying to get valuable evidence out of New Zealand to obstruct a successful defense. “Our concerns are that the United States will have New Zealand take all the data and all the hard drives that have been confiscated and remove them from the New Zealand jurisdiction, essentially making it so the New Zealand judiciary cannot exercise New Zealand’s views, New Zealand’s values in fairness and due process, and bring it all over to the United States so that it cannot be used in the extradition hearing.” The hearings had an emotional affect on the Megaupload founder. When his lawyer recalled how Dotcom was “ripped from his family” in January in a raid which may not have been legitimate, he had to wipe tears from his eyes. Outside the court Dotcom commented on his emotional reaction. “It’s just remembering what happened to us which I think was unfair and over the top. It just got to me. I’m just a human being, you know?” he told reporters. Now that the hearings are over it is up to Judge Winkelmann to decide whether Megaupload’s founder can have access to his personal data, and to decide on the possible judicial review into the legality of the search warrants. Meanwhile, the U.S. criminal case has gone relatively silent. Dotcom told TorrentFreak that his legal team is working hard on a reply to the indictment where the “Mega Conspiracy” is accused of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement. Whether Megaupload will have to defend itself in the U.S. is still uncertain though. Last month Judge O'Grady informed the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen because it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges. Source: Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Refuses to Give Up Passwords
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| Pirate Bay Simplifies Circumvention of ISP Blockades Posted: 22 May 2012 11:18 AM PDT
The music companies who asked for the blockade hope it will decrease piracy significantly, but it is doubtful whether this wish will come true. Already we’ve seen a massive increase in traffic to proxy-websites from the UK, and this is only expected to increase during the coming days. In addition, The Pirate Bay team isn’t sitting still either. They’ve now rolled out a new site which circumvents the UK measures before they’ve even started. In most countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked it’s done by a domain and IP-address filter. But, since TPB added a new IP-address at 194.71.107.80, blocked subscribers can access the site again without problems. At least for now that is, since in some cases the copyright holders have the power to add new domains and addresses upon request. The Pirate Bay team is no stranger to this. However, circumventing the blockades directly is not the main reason the IP-address was added. Regular users of TPB will notice that the site hosted on the new address is slightly different from the standard site. The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that the new site is setup to guarantee maximum compatibility with the many proxy sites that are out there. “It is made so the people who setup proxies can use the new IP-address instead of coming up with complicated rewrites for static content and stuff. Instead of pointing their proxies to thepiratebay.se they should point it to that IP-address,” we were told. Aside from making it easier to setup a proxy, the new page is also optimized for proxies in other ways. It will only show links to magnet files for example, and the login, register, comment and upload functions are disabled for security reasons. So, even if the new IP-address is added to the various blocklists, the new site still functions as a basis for proxy sites. The above once again shows that it’s virtually impossible to completely prevent people from accessing The Pirate Bay. There are simply too many options for people to route around the block. From visiting a proxy, to simply adding a few lines to their “hosts” file to access the site directly. It appears that the only working option to stop people from accessing the site is to DDoS it into oblivion. But then again, that’s not really sustainable. Source: Pirate Bay Simplifies Circumvention of ISP Blockades
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Megaupload continues its legal battle, both in the US and New Zealand. 
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