The United States on Friday won a court appeal in its battle to extradite Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom from New Zealand.
A New Zealand appeals court overturned an earlier ruling that would have allowed Dotcom broad access to evidence in the case against him at the time of his extradition hearing, which is scheduled for August. The appeals court ruled that extensive disclosure would bog down the process and that a summary of the US case would suffice.
Dotcom founded the file-sharing site Megaupload that the US shuttered last year after accusing him of facilitating copyright fraud on a massive scale. Dotcom says he’s innocent and can’t be held responsible for those who chose to use the site to illegally download songs or movies.
Paul Davison, one of Dotcom’s lawyers, said on Friday he planned on appealing the case to New Zealand’s Supreme Court. Under New Zealand law, Dotcom’s legal team must first submit an application to the court which will then decide whether an appeal has enough merit to proceed.
In its ruling, the appeals court found that full disclosure of evidence was not necessary at the extradition hearing because the hearing is not the venue to determine guilt or innocence. The court pointed out that the legal obligation on the US is simply to prove it has a valid case to answer.
The court also found that extradition treaties are essentially agreements between governments: “even though courts play a vital part in the process, extradition is very much a government to government process,” the court ruled.
