His presence in the United States would now be an embarrassment to the organisation responsible for precipitating it
The reason is the shift in the United States political landscape in which the entertainment industry which is now indivisible from the news media sector has plummeted in Presidential and thus federal government favour.
This was underlined only recently when Motion Picture Association of America chairman-CEO Chris Dodd (pictured) — Hollywood's top lobbyist was stood down five months prior to his anticipated departure.
It was Mr Dodd who led the charge against Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload which the MPAA characterised as one of the world’s two major entertainment content piracy sites.
Another pointer to the current Washington administration’s jaundiced view of the entertainment sector is its determination to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.
Mr Dodd though remains the weather vane to the breakup of the Hollywood – Washington romance.
He was a dynastic heavyweight Democratic Senator from Connecticut. He was co sponsor of the Dodd – Frank Act on financial regulation.
The MPAA knew it needed someone less closely redolent of the East Coast Establishment Democratic Party, and thus turn down the heat as far as the in-power Republicans are concerned
Times, they are a changin’ in New Zealand too.
It is here that the new Labour Party – led government is under no pressure at all to offer up to the FBI, the Dotcom head on a platter.
For a start Time Warner the United States end of the Hobbit wide-screen series no longer has to be appeased, if only because it is preoccupied with Washington-imposed obstacles to its merger with AT&T.
Then there is the matter of the small screen version of the Tolkien saga being now outside the scope of the Motion Picture Association simply because it is under the control of Amazon.
.A problem for the New Zealand Labour government is that of simply serving up Kim Dotcom to the FBI which is emblematic of all the suspicions held by a very large proportion of Labour voters about the United States and its motives.
The IT developer has attained a Robin Hood status which saw him taking on the National Party in the penultimate general election.
The Labour government has everything to gain from its base by resisting any remaining United States efforts to extradite the burly technology showboater.
The episode with its colourful aftershocks has taken on the dimension of a Pacific retro Dreyfus Affair, with the new Kim Dotcom abode in the tonier regions of the South Island, an upscale mirror of Devils Island
There remains behind the stranger-than-fiction affair though troubling and persistent uncertainties.
There is the uncertainty surrounding who invited Kim Dotcom here? Was it part of a technology transfer scheme in which successful IT operators are encouraged here in the hope that their skills will rub off, i.e be transferred, to the local industry?
If so, what exactly were the elements of technology that might have rubbed off on the locals?
Was it for example loading acceleration so important to the data warehousing of Megaupload?
It appears now that Mr Dotcom has never set foot anywhere in the United States jurisdiction.
The extradition case rests on the presence in this same United States jurisdiction of the Megaupload servers.
From the outset of the public post-raid version of the Megaupload saga Mr Dotcom has had demonstrable access to much legal power.
If his United States-based servers, repositories, were in fact handling illegally acquired data in the form of digitised motion picture content, did he or his lawyers know about it?
If so they might reasonably have stayed well away from any country such as New Zealand which has extradition agreements with the United States.
Or, should Mr Dotcom have chosen, or been encouraged, to settle in New Zealand, might not the servers, which merely require access to low-cost power in order to cool the circuits, have been moved to such a non-aligned country, thus enhancing, if not ensuring, freedom from the attentions of organisations such as the Motion Picture Association, not to mention the FBI?
In the knock-down-drag-out world of the United States in terms of both the entertainment sector and Republican politics, it is hard to visualise other than one or two FBI station chiefs, anyone now who would relish the enforced appearance of Mr Dotcom.
Neither is it easy to visualise any political figure on the New Zealand governing Labour coalition side who might see themselves garnishing plaudits by waving away on his Stateside journey Mr Dotcom.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Tuesday 9 January 2018 |||
