14 DAY TRIAL // It's going to be a long while before Kim Dotcom can get to his old life back, even if he is found not guilty, as the case surrounding MegaUpload keeps on crawling along.
The most recent developments come from the US side, where MegaUpload is trying to prove that at least some of the evidence used against it was "planted" by the Department of Justice.
Said Department of Justice is now answering back by saying that such accusations are baseless, at the very least.
A few years back, the DOJ was investigating another copyright infringement case, against NinjaVideo and other sites. Those sites linked to some content hosted by MegaUpload, seemingly uploaded by the admins.
The FBI wanted to prove that, so it needed to get ahold of those files. But it didn't go to MegaUpload for that, instead it went to its hosting provider Carpathia and asked it to make sure those files are not deleted as they could be evidence.
The government instructed the hosting company not to tell MegaUpload about this, but Carpathia was forced to if it wanted to ensure the files were not removed.
So MegaUpload held on to the files which it knew were part of an investigation. The DOJ then used those same files to get a warrant against MegaUpload and to prove that Dotcom was aware that there were infringing files on his site.
Never mind that simply knowing that there are infringing files doesn't make you accountable for them under US law.
That's the core of the current dispute and you can see how the DOJ's actions could be seen as misleading. The DOJ is not worried though, it's got its bases covered as far as it's concerned.
It told the court that it never once contacted MegaUpload and, as such, it couldn't have asked it to hold on to the files for evidence. What the DOJ forgot to tell the judge though is that it did contact Carpathia Hosting over those very files.
The case against MegaUpload is getting weaker and weaker as new details emerge and it's becoming clearer and clearer just how desperate the US government was to get anything on the site and how sure it was that it could get away with it.