The German national is being pursued by U.S. authorities because of his cloud storage service Megaupload, which was closed down in early 2012.
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In December, a judge ruled there was “overwhelming” evidence the 42-year-old tech entrepreneur and his three co-accused – Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk – had criminal charges to face in the United States over their part in running file-sharing website Megaupload.
The FBI, which has jurisdiction over copyright infringement, alleges Dotcom and his co-conspirators deprived the owners of movie and music rights of more than $500 million (443 million euros) while pocketing over $175 million in ad revenue and premium subscription sales from Megaupload, once the 13th most popular site on the internet.
The High Court ruling is unlikely to be the end of the story though, with both parties open to appealing and Dotcom saying he would take the case all the way to the Supreme Court if it didn’t go his way.
Dotcom lawyer Ron Mansfield said there were “unprecedented issues of public and worldwide interest” and suggested a ten minute delay to ensure sensitive details were prevented from broadcast.
“US defends mass surveillance programs with “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” but opposes live streaming of my hearing”, he also tweeted, before pointing out that local media won’t mind if the court hearing was live streamed. Furthermore, he added, streaming has been permitted in previous court cases and inquiries in New Zealand. “US wants to stop it”.
“Livestreaming has been used successfully in New Zealand in cases of significant public interest”.
Justice Murray Gilbert, the New Zealand judge hearing the appeal, criticized Dotcom’s request for coming at the last-minute but said he’d let other media discuss it before making a decision, the National Business Review newspaper reported.
This sentiment was echoed by Dotcom with another Tweet, in which he lamented the way the United States authorities had closed down his cloud storage service, a move he argued that destroyed legitimate material and content.
During the 10-week extradition hearing past year, lawyers for the U.S. argued Dotcom and his associates had earned $US175 million ($NZ239 million) by running a website funded largely by revenue from publishing copyright-infringing files.
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A spokeswoman for New Zealand government prosecutors, who are representing the United States, said it was not appropriate to comment while the matter was before the courts.
