From the what if dept.: Wasn’t Norm Zada dating Joan Rivers? He could have become Steve Hirsch’s father-in-law.
from www.stuff.co.nz – A wealthy Californian pornographer who sued Kim Dotcom for infringing copyright on thousands of nude images says he is delighted the FBI and New Zealand police have smashed Dotcom’s Megaupload file-sharing business.
But Norm Zada [pictured], owner of soft-core porn website Perfect 10, said he would be happier still if the US government was instead attacking the search-engine giant Google, which he considers the worst copyright offender online as it provides the links that direct illegal downloaders to sites like megaupload.com.
Late last year Zada filed a $5 million lawsuit against Megaupload in the United States, before reaching a confidential out-of-court settlement.
In the past he has laid suits against Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Visa and MasterCard over the theft of his copyright material, in several instances receiving settlements.
Although Zada was “violently against those who steal other people’s property without compensating them”, his personal dealings with Dotcom had been amicable, and amid their legal wrangling the German giant had even invited Zada to visit his Coatesville mansion. “As part of the invitation to New Zealand he invited me to a boxing match between himself and myself, which I gracefully declined.”
Dotcom and three of his Megaupload associates – Finn Batato, Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann – were arrested in a large-scale raid on Dotcom’s rented $30m home just north of Auckland nine days ago, as part of an international operation led by the FBI, which is seeking extradition of the men to the US to face charges involving racketeering, money laundering and copyright violation.
A New Zealand internet law specialist says the court action against Dotcom breaks new legal ground – and also hints at the possibility of more punitive New Zealand online law.
Rick Shera, a partner at Auckland firm Lowndes Jordan, says the case is the first legal test of the responsibilities of the owners of “file locker” sites, where users can swap and store files. An American court will be eventually asked to decide whether Dotcom’s Megaupload took enough care to remove illegal files from their site.
It’s also the first real examination of America’s aggressive approach in cases of alleged internet copyright violation, where the FBI seizes servers and blocks websites before court action commences. “In other instances, it has been overseas sites with absent owners,” says Shera.
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He says blocking websites which, it could be argued, are the object used in the commission of a crime, “seems a little different from seizing the hammer used to stave someone’s head in”.
New Zealand could be asked to adopt a similarly confrontational approach if we sign up to an American-led free-trade treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which includes a section on copyright. “We would have to put those sorts of provisions into our law,” said Shera.
“It’s a little concerning that the authorities have the ability to take down websites before the matter has been properly argued – and in some cases in the US, taken down even before the person knows they are under investigation; then the docket is sealed and the person can’t even know what they are under investigation for.”
Shera says the impact on innocent users of such sites, denied access to their files and any recompense, has been ignored.