Court of public opinion: Kim Dotcom to have his extradition trial livestreamed on YouTube

YouTube already features a number of serious court proceedings and legal landmark cases, but it’s about to get one more, as Kim Dotcom’s extradition trial will be livestreamed online. The notorious internet mogul won the right to have the entire case be livestreamed, though the feed will be on a 20-minute delay.

Kim Dotcom became famous as the founder of file-sharing site Megaupload, which has been for years now the subject of a number of copyright infringement cases. Media companies, alongside the US government allege that Kim Dotcom and his former partners at the company got rich to the tune of $175 million, by encouraging piracy and storing copyrighted material on Megaupload’s servers. For years the US government has tried to have Dotcom extradited from New Zealand, where he currently resides, to face trial in the US.

Now Dotcom is appealing the extradition decision in a six-week hearing that began this week. Ira Rothken, Dotcom’s lawyer, managed to convince the court that the case was of “public interest” and so got the right to livestream the proceedings. He explained:

It"s very important that the entire world gets to see the courtroom. The Internet isn"t run by any one nation, so we thought the solution itself would come from the Internet.

The case, which is deemed to be New Zealand’s first court case to be livestreamed on YouTube, will appear Wednesday, against the wishes of the prosecution. However, as noted above, the stream will be on a 20-minute delay, and the judge asked that the stream should be taken down after the trial ends. Though we all know that’s not exactly how the internet works.

Meanwhile, Dotcom is getting ready to unveil a brand new file-sharing service. The entrepreneur hinted at the new service a number of times, suggesting it might launch this upcoming January, on the 5^th anniversary of the FBI raids on Megaupload.

Source: Reuters