Lawyers in the US are trying to get some of the charges against Megaupload
thrown out, as Crown lawyers ponder appealing a district court decision allowing
its founder Kim Dotcom greater access to evidence against him.
Lawyers for Megaupload have filed papers in the US District Court seeking to
have charges dismissed, saying the company and its officers can't be held
criminally responsible for copyright infringement by its users.
They also said the company couldn't be charged in a US court because it was
based in Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported.
They didn't seek the charges to be dropped against the individuals - Dotcom,
Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram Van der Kolk, but they do want frozen
assets released to help prepare their defence.
Dotcom and his three co-accused, who are based in Auckland, won a court
battle on Tuesday when Judge David Harvey of Auckland District Court ruled they
should be able to access some of the information set to be used against him in
an extradition hearing by the US government, for which the Crown is acting.
The information should be disclosed within 21 days, Judge Harvey said.
"A denial of the provision of information that could enable a proper
adversarial hearing in my view would amount to a denial of the opportunity to
contest," Judge Harvey said.
A spokeswoman for the Crown Law Office, which is acting for the US government
in New Zealand, understood an appeal was being considered but didn't know if
they'd decided to lodge one.
A separate decision on Tuesday allowed Dotcom back into his luxurious mansion
in Coatesville on Auckland's North Shore and removed his electronic
monitoring.
Dotcom is also waiting on a decision on a High Court judicial review seeking
the return of 135 computer and data storage devices, challenging the legality of
the search warrants used to seize them.
NZN