The Megaupload accused in 2012 - Bram van der Kolk, Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann and Finn Batato. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Kim Dotcom and his fellow extradition targets get the chance to appeal to the Supreme Court next week for possibly the final chapter of the New Zealand edition of the Megaupload copyright saga.
The four-day hearing is a mammoth scheduling event for New Zealand's highest court yet fits with the extradition case's ability to expand and fill each jurisdiction it has visited.
Dotcom and co-accused Matthias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato are expected to be present for the hearing.
It is also expected Dotcom's wife, Liz, who recently qualified as a lawyer and was accepted to the bar, will have a presence among Dotcom's legal team.
READ MORE;
• Kim Dotcom interview: Extradition on cards as claims 'major victory' in court
• David Fisher: Who really won the Dotcom case?
• Mrs Dotcom speaks on life, love and babies with Kim Dotcom
• The Big Read: Megaupload and the case of Finn Batato
The hearing is the end of a lengthy legal process which began with the FBI-inspired police raid in January 2012 on Dotcom's north Auckland mansion.
It was Dotcom's birthday and Megaupload's inner circle had been invited to celebrate. They woke to the sound of helicopters carrying New Zealand's elite counter-terrorism unit.
Those arrested face the prospect of decades in a United States jail. The charges in the Eastern District of Virginia courtroom are serious - racketeering, money laundering and, of course, copyright infringement.
Alleged copyright violation lies at the heart of the alleged offending, and at the centre of next week's appeal.
Lawyers for Dotcom, and others, have argued copyright as alleged was not an extradition offence. They have also argued the misdeeds by the US and the Crown in prosecuting the extradition were sufficient to stop the extradition.
It was also claimed Megaupload - at one time channelling 4 per cent of the world's internet traffic - was an internet service provider and covered by the "safe harbour" provision.
It's an exception which allows the internet to function as a modern equivalent of the postal service. Mail would be delivered at a glacial speed if the postie was liable for every piece of contraband carried from sender to mailbox.
Various arguments have found traction at various stages of the court process but not enough to stop its journey from the district court to the Court of Appeal, and now the Supreme Court.
The US - or rather, New Zealander taxpayer-paid lawyers acting on its behalf - have successfully argued a simpler case.
It asked the court to look to the nature of the deeds and not the letter of the law said to have been broken.
Consider also, they said, what those deeds look like when laid across the legal landscape created by our extradition treaties with the US.
They argued the actions of the accused aligned with multiple justifications for extradition. If copyright, for example, was not one of those reasons then the alleged offending ticked other boxes which also justified extradition.
They also urged the court to resist calls to examine the strength of the US case for extradition. It wasn't New Zealand's job to find guilt, but to find whether an accusation was fairly made and for the US courts to determine guilt or innocence.
It has been a Herculean struggle for those Crown lawyers, with each legal case appearing as if the head of a hydra. When severed, each seemed to spawn two in its place.
The initial search warrant was challenged in the High Court, which led to the discovery of unlawful spying by the Government Communications Security Bureau and a new case against it and police seeking payment of damages.
There have been legal challenges for documents, success before the Human Rights Tribunal over stymied access to information which was then overturned at the High Court and then an appeal to higher courts. Every strand of the case has seen appeals upon appeals.
By 2017, Crown lawyers had expended 32,000 hours of effort on the case. It has been reasonably estimated Dotcom's legal bills are around $20m.
Amid all this, Dotcom set his sights on the highest court in the land and formed the Internet Party. In politics and through the seven-year battle, Dotcom has raised a flag to rally support for one cause or another - unlawful spying, intrusion into privacy, New Zealand's diplomatic independence.
Each cause has a common root - his perceived persecution and eventual hoped-for freedom.
Next week, the sideshows end and the inexorable path laid down in 2012 reaches its end. Sort of.
The Supreme Court offers a number of outcomes. The least likely is a dismissal of the case entirely. The most unwelcome would be a return to the district court, which heard the original case for extradition and, if the case is a dud, might be obliged to do so again.
The weight of recent judicial history suggests the most likely path to be an endorsement of extradition.
It would then fall to Minister of Justice Andrew Little to sign the extradition papers. With the weight of the court's considerations, international obligations and diplomatic realities, Little's options are limited. His signature is an almost certainty.
The extradition document will most likely then be subject to a request for judicial review at the High Court. And from there, expect further appeals.
In the seven years since the raid, Dotcom has moved on from the $30 million Dotcom Mansion. He now lives a comparatively demure life in Queenstown, close to the five children he is raising with former wife Mona Dotcom and settling into marriage with the new Mrs Dotcom.
Ortmann and van der Kolk remain much as they were - world-class genius coders who rarely lifted their eyes from a keyboard to see the orange jumpsuit and federal police cell beyond it. They have fallen out with Dotcom.
And there is Batato, Megaupload's marketing man. He is said to have thrown the best parties. Suave and witty, the handsome owner of a charming smile, he was Dotcom's friend since teen years.
Batato came for Dotcom's birthday party in 2012 and then remained in New Zealand. If forced to the US, he leaves children and a life built while exiled by circumstance.
There were three others named on the US indictment. Two live beyond the reach of US law - Julius Bencko lives in Slovakia running a successful design start up and Sven Echternach appears to be in Germany, where he is listed as running a company which buys broadcast rights for video on demand.
The only one of the original seven indicted to be free of the FBI is Andrus Nomm. He cut a deal with the FBI, served a year in prison and was released in 2015.
In negotiating his time served, Nomm offered testimony supporting the US case, alleging "his co-conspirators were aware that they were making money directly from reproducing and distributing copyright infringing content".
The FBI have an inside man, emails and seven years to get ready. If there is a first chapter of the US edition, it could well be a shorter tale.
