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MegaUpload attempts to freeze labels’ attempt to freeze MegaUpload unfreeze

By | Published on Friday 6 June 2014

MegaUpload

No surprise here, really. Lawyers for Kim Dotcom and the defunct MegaUpload have hit back at attempts by the US music and movie industries to derail their attempts to reconnect their clients with assets seized in Hong Kong and New Zealand back in 2012.

As previously reported, the Motion Picture Association Of America and the Recording Industry Association Of America have both filed civil litigation against Dotcom et al over allegations the Mega men enabled and encouraged rampant copyright infringement via their former business. Team Mega, though, has asked for those cases to be postponed until criminal action over the same allegations has run its course in the US.

The music and movie industry reps don’t especially object to that proposal, but have requested that the defendants’ assets, taken when the US authorities shut down MegaUpload in 2012, be kept frozen until any civil action is done and dusted, to stop Dotcom and co putting MegaUpload money beyond the reach of the American courts.

This request comes as a New Zealand court has said that there is no case for extending the order that allowed MegaUpload assets to be taken there, and as Dotcom’s lawyers submit arguments calling for the former company’s assets to be returned in Hong Kong too.

And now said lawyers have made a court filing in the US disputing the movie studio and record companies’ efforts to top their clients from getting their assets back, arguing that the content industries have a vested interest in the former MegaUpload directors not getting access to their former wealth, because it makes it harder for them to fight the criminal and civil cases against them.

Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken told Torrentfreak: “The recording and film studios are engaging in a procedural game to try to freeze Kim Dotcom’s assets so they and the US Department Of Justice can win on procedure and not on the merits”.

He went on: “These copyright cases cost tens of millions of dollars to defend. The studios and the DOJ have a healthy concern that if Kim Dotcom can have the funds and evidence to mount a fair defence, he and the others will prevail”.

“MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom are entitled to assert the same copyright safe harbours that YouTube recently used to defeat similar claims, and that ought not be meddled with in a single hearing based on a flimsy record, with evidence locked away, and prior to a civil trial on the merits”.



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