Entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has won the right to live stream his extradition hearing to the United States. Dotcom is wanted in the country, for charges of online piracy on his file sharing service, Megaupload. Judge Murray Gilbert rejected the US’ attempts to stop Dotcom from livestreaming the hearing, in Auckland high court on Tuesday. The judge’s ruling allows Dotcom to stream the proceedings, but under strict conditions.
Dotcom’s live stream has to be delayed by 20 minutes, so that no restricted material is published. Further, all footage from the stream has to be removed from the Internet as soon as the hearing ends. Dotcom seemed ecstatic at the ruling, crediting New Zealand for being at the “forefront of transparent justice,” in a tweet.
His lawyer praised the court’s move, calling it “democracy at its finest”. Dotcom seems bent on exposing what he calls incompetencies in the whole process. Here’s another tweet he sent out.
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/770478405225680896
Dotcom was the owner of website Megauploadz, which has now been seized by the US authorities. The authorities claimed that users uploading and downloading content to Megauploadz caused loss worth millions of dollars to production houses and movie studios. Dotcom’s lawyers have argued that he should not be held responsible for what users on his website did.