Judge Presiding Over Kim Dotcom Case: The U.S. Is The Enemy

Well…that’s unhelpful?

The presiding judge over Kim Dotcom’s case has just referred to the United States as ‘the enemy’ in a discussion about copyright law.

But before you go off the rails…read further.

The FBI has accused Megaupload owner of criminal copyright violation…the world’s biggest case of copyright violation as a matter of fact.

Although District Court Judge David Harvey has parts of the case against Dotcom’s case, he is not due to to hear the extradition case until next year but made his views known anyways at the launch of the “Fair Deal” campaign. 

The campaign?

The opposing of any changes to New Zealand’s copyright laws and the rise of the TPP. The terms of the negotiations are secret of course.

But one thing is in talks with the negotiations and that’s the stoppage of hacking around the DVD region codes which in turn means that players form New Zealand will not play DVD’s from other parts of the world.

“Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited… if you do you will be a criminal - that’s what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn’t criminalised. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown’s] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.”

Obviously, Judge Harvey’s remark is a play on the line “we have met the enemy and he is us” by American cartoonist Walt Kelly.

Crown Law, which is representing the FBI in the extradition case, could not be reached for comment on the issue.