Soulless65
VIP Member
Interesting news isn'tMore than four months after federal agents shut-down the file-sharing service Megaupload and ordered a raid on the New Zealand mansion of its founder Kim Dotcom, attorneys are asking a US court to dismiss the case against the website.
Ira Rothken, the California-based attorney of both Megaupload.com and Dotcom, is calling for a US federal court in Virginia to dismiss the criminal case against the website. According to Rothken, the websites Fifth Amendment rights were violated when the FBI ordered for Megaupload to be taken off the Internet earlier this year. As a result of the agencys demands, Megauploads servers were seized and millions of files uploaded to the website including those owned by paying subscribers were made unavailable and are still inaccessible today. Now Rothken says that the prosecutors in the case failed to guarantee due process for his clients and is asking the court to dismiss the charges. Since Megaupload was hosted overseas, argues the sites attorney, the Department of Justice has acted improperly in its attempts to prosecute.
Both prongs of the procedural due process test are plainly met here. The Government has seized Megauploads property and domain name, ruined its reputation and destroyed its business pursuant to an indictment which is fatally flawed as a jurisdictional matter. Megaupload now finds itself in a state of abeyance, with no end in sight, writes Rothken in a newly released statement.
As a result of the Governments inability to properly serve the summons on Megaupload, this Court lacks jurisdiction over the company. In the absence of effective service of process, criminal proceedings against Megaupload cannot commence, and as the Court has aptly noted, we frankly dont know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter.
Megaupload has no rights? US broke its own rules by going after Internet giant — RT