A police raid is no laughing matter. People die all the time, so it's fortunate nobody got hurt.
Ordinarily for white collar crime, you'd expect a knock on the door and to be handed a summons, not full terrorism mode. You'd also expect your government to follow its due process, again not denying rights in full terrorism mode.
NZ cops do carry guns, just typically not on their person. They're locked in the boot of their vehicles. I have seen an NZ officer with their firearm on them and it's weird enough that everyone takes notice; like seeing litter in a mall in Singapore.
How many full tactical anti-terror assaults, including 9 operators deploying from helicopters in assault landings, has NZ done? Besides the raid on Dotcom, that is.
Seriously? They're doing 3 anti-terror assaults every day of the year? Can you point me to some statistics? I had no idea NZ had such a terrorism problem.
Why the laugh? The State caused him injury. Would it be better to leave the injustice alone? Just say sorry? If this were a civil case he'd certainly be awarded monetary damages.
Add two zeroes. In commom common law, defamation damages are all, but damages: they are a sum of assumed and punitive damages. If accused is a corp., already large punitive damages are scaled to its size.
Ironically, this whole case seems to have turned him into a modern day Robin Hood. I'd say this disaster of a situation has done far from cause him loss of dignity and injury to his feelings. I'd say it's cemented a status that many aspire to and very few ever achieve. His personality has been magnified many times more than it ever would have been by this whole debacle. So to be awarded NZ$60K for this is hilarious. Award it to him for "inconvenience to his life" or "defamation", "libel" or "slander" or whatever, but "loss of dignity and injury to feelings" is disingenuous at best. The guy's infamy has reached heroic proportions.
>this whole case seems to have turned him into a modern day Robin Hood.
This dude is a professional troll and you comparing him to Robin Hood means you are falling for his schtick. The most recent example of his trolling is the fact that he has become one of the biggest public supporters of the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was behind the DNC leaks and not Russia.
Um... Robin Hood was a fictional character. The schtick is what makes the legend. Without the schtick, he's just some schmuck that got busted for trafficking illegal copies of files. Don't confuse "being thoroughly amused by" with "falling for."
At the heart of the story Robin Hood is about a good person who was breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy. Kim Dotcom wants you to think he is breaking unjust laws to fight for the little guy but he is actually doing it for his own personal enrichment either financially or egotistically. That it the distinction I want to make that I think was missing from your initial comment.
Agreed, but I will admit I chuckled when I read "loss of dignity" and "injury to feelings". They could at least call it emotional damages. I don't think he was laughing at the amount or at Kim but at the legal title of the relief.
Ordinarily for white collar crime, you'd expect a knock on the door and to be handed a summons, not full terrorism mode. You'd also expect your government to follow its due process, again not denying rights in full terrorism mode.
Oligarchy at work.