He was convicted for insider trading, but that has nothing to do with this article.
You can't base current convictions on old ones and say oh he must have been doing illegal things look at his history.
The fact is he was illegally arrested due to media lobbyists and he's got a pretty damn good chance of winning this thing. They didn't follow the law whatsoever when they apprehended him and took his assets.
With the video of his raid recently released you can clearly see the excessive force used in his arrest, not to mention they had no jurisdiction to arrest him.
While the man has been convicted before, you should be rooting for him to succeed in this case because if he doesn't it shows the media lobbyists don't need to follow the law.
Why do you think they are trying to lock down the internet with spying movements like ACTA/CISPA/SOPA etc.... They don't want to lose their grip on propaganda and money.
If you honestly believe that a long history of illegal acts that a person is convicted of has no bearing on their future actions, then we'll have to agree to disagree. I believe that the absolutely have a bearing. In a court of law? Not at all. But in reality? Absolutely.
All of us speculating about his guilt or innocence are basing these judgments on our own feelings and past evidence. I think he is guilty because he has proven in the past to be an unethical person who will commit crimes to get money. Based on your post, you seem to think he's innocent because of the tactics used by the RIAA and the NZ gov't to arrest him.
You are basing your opinion on the matter based on the same non-admissible evidence that I am. You just happen to be on the opposite side of the fence from me. but you're assuming that your subjective feelings on the matter are somehow more valid than mine.
I am not disagreeing with you that the RIAA is a shady organization that is trying to hold on to an outdated business model. But at the same time, I think that he willingly broke the copyright laws that are currently in effect. He may have thought that by paying lip service to the law he was following it, but that remains to be proven or disproven in a court of law.
That's what this boils down to. The law. Not whether or not me or you think the law is valid, but whether or not the law should be followed. Once you agree that the law should not be followed because you feel that the people who promulgated the law were not in the right, what stops other poeple from breaking other laws they they feel are incorrect?
This is obviously a discussion way outside the scope of message boards, but ultimately that's what it boils down to, who gets to decide which laws are just and which are not. And while you may think that this law is not just, what is stopping from someone else from violating the law in such a manner which you think is not just, but from their perspective is valid because they happen not to agree with it?