The hearing, which started Monday, heralds the end of a three year long legal dispute that has included two supreme court cases, 10 delayed hearings and seen Dotcom confine himself to his Coatesville, New Zealand, mansion in order to avoid extradition.
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He arrived in sunglasses and a cap, and pulled up in his Mercedes with the number plate KIM.COM.
The charges against Dotcom include fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Former Megaupload employees Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk are also now on trial.
The German insists he is a legitimate Internet entrepreneur, while United States authorities allege his now-defunct Megaupload empire promoted online theft on a grand scale.
Lawyers for Dotcom and his co-accused have filed applications asking to delay or drop the extradition altogether and want them to be cleared up before the substantive hearing begins.
Dotcom watched proceedings from his own leather armchair at the back of the court after being granted special permission to bring it in to try to ease a back complaint.
Speaking outside the court following the ruling, Dotcom said, “I think this is another case of harassment and bullying by the United States government in concert with the New Zealand government”.
The men are facing charges which, if they are found guilty in the U.S. , carry decades of jail time.
The site was shut down in by USA federal authorities in 2012, and prosecutors froze tens of millions of dollars in accounts in Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Judge Nevin Dawson is expected to rule within the next month whether the subjects of the so-called “Mega Conspiracy” will be extradited, which the defendants have fought against tooth and nail for years.
THE IMPLICATIONS: The case highlights the tensions between content creators, like the Hollywood studios who make movies and expect royalties for their work, and Internet sites that collect, curate or distribute content that others have made.
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Dotcom has held that he was running a cloud storage firm like any other, and had made efforts to remove infringing content. The seizure of his assets by prosecutors has hamstrung his legal defense, according to his backers.
