What he did was, at its heart, theft. Megaupload made vast sums by facilitating the large-scale distribution of other people’s copyrighted films, music and material. The United States says the losses to rights holders exceeded US$500 million. Dotcom and his colleagues generated more than US$175 million in revenue. Calling it “file-sharing” does not change the reality: it was commercial-scale taking of other people’s creative work without permission or payment.
Extradition is a process that only applies to criminal matters. The argument that this was somehow only a civil matter in New Zealand was examined and rejected. The Supreme Court held that the relevant conduct was capable of amounting to a criminal offence under New Zealand law at the time. That central prop of the defence was torn down. Yet the case has continued. I expect those involved from the United States will be incredulous. If you ever need a country to hide in to avoid extradition, New Zealand appears to be an excellent choice.
Our extradition process is structured in a way that almost invites this outcome. The courts first decide eligibility. That decision can be appealed. The Minister then decides on surrender. That decision can be judicially reviewed. The review decision can be appealed. Leave can be sought to go higher still.
The New Zealand Law Commission identified exactly this problem in its February 2016 report. It warned of “considerable opportunity for delay and multiple considerations of decisions” and of a “multiplicity of appeals, judicial reviews, and habeas corpus applications”. It proposed a cleaner process with a single, clearer appeal route. Nothing meaningful has changed. The same labyrinth remains in place for Dotcom to navigate or, more accurately, to exploit.
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These are not sentencing decisions sending or incarcerating a person. They are decisions that a person faces criminal allegations in another country which wishes to put them on trial to decide guilt or otherwise. This should be a straightforward, simple decision. International law and the principle of comity require us to show proper respect for the legitimate criminal processes of other states with which we have extradition arrangements.
A better approach would be for the relevant Minister to decide both eligibility and whether the person is to be extradited, with the legislation providing only for limited judicial review to safeguard against a Minister going seriously wrong. If someone should not be in the country because they need to face a justice system elsewhere, they ought to be given the boot reasonably quickly – not allowed to exploit New Zealanders’ generosity year after year.
Compare this with other jurisdictions. In the United Kingdom and Australia there are tighter statutory timeframes and more constrained routes of challenge. Complex cases can still take years, but the open-ended layering of review upon review that New Zealand has permitted is not the international norm. The average extradition involving the United States takes no more than a year from request to surrender. None of the reported copyright cases resemble a 14-year marathon of the kind New Zealand has produced. We are a small country. We should be able to manage a single extradition request with competence and reasonable speed. We have not.
The cost has not been abstract. Crown Law has spent at least $5.76 million of public money on the extradition proceedings, according to reporting in 2026, with the meter still running. That is taxpayer money. Dotcom’s own substantial legal costs have been met in large part from court-ordered access to frozen assets – money linked to the very enterprise that generated the allegations against him. New Zealanders have paid to litigate against a rich man who has been able to draw on the proceeds of the disputed activity to keep fighting.
On top of all this sits the character of the man New Zealand has hosted for so long. During his years in the Queenstown area his online output increasingly featured material that critics have described as antisemitic. In August 2024 he posted a lengthy thread extensively quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious antisemitic forgery, and presented it as an explanation for current world events, while denying he was antisemitic. Earlier, in 2015, he tweeted that US actions reminded him of Nazi Germany and added that it was “ironic” Hollywood was “run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs”. In 2014 he confirmed ownership of a rare, signed copy of Mein Kampf, drawing sharp criticism from the New Zealand Jewish Council. These are not obscure footnotes. They are part of the public record of the man who has consumed so much of our legal system’s time and resources.
He has had the benefit of highly capable counsel, including Ron Mansfield KC, and has taken every available procedural point. That is his right under the law as it stands. But the cumulative effect is plain: a determined strategy of delay that has kept him in New Zealand for a decade and a half after the original raid, long after every major decision-maker had ruled that he should face the charges in the United States.
The court decisions that Dotcom was eligible for extradition do not eliminate the courts’ shortcomings of unacceptable delay. There is no doubt the courts have repeatedly decided the issues put before them and that they cannot refuse to hear properly brought proceedings. The dominant cause of the overall length is the structure of the Extradition Act itself, which is clearly in Parliament’s square. But by way of example, the Supreme Court hearing of the main extradition eligibility appeal proceeded in the week of June 10, 2019. The judgment was not delivered until November 4, 2020 – roughly 17 months later.
A smart extradition process won’t kickstart growth or start a magic money tree. It won’t change lives or incomes in the long term. But it can affect public morale and the sense that we have a justice system that works even against someone with unlimited financial resources. One that takes charge rather than being buffeted by endless procedural challenges.
As for those who have supported Dotcom and I am not sure if any remain, the kindest thing that can be said is that they are confused. To support a rich man who has allegedly ripped off other creatives by essentially theft, and a German national who has publicly acknowledged acquiring a copy of Mein Kampf, is something to be doubly ashamed of. This man is no champion of anything worth defending.
The plane cannot come soon enough. New Zealand’s inability to resolve this matter with anything approaching reasonable despatch is a national embarrassment. The Law Commission saw the structural problems a decade ago. Parliament did not fix them. The result is a process that has looked, to many ordinary New Zealanders, like a system unable to finish what it starts.
It is time it finished.
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