Geoff, find me a left wing commentator or journo who has not drunk the Dotcom Kool-Aid. (Russel Brown appears to have spat it out)
It is the best example of "my enemies enemy is my friend" we have ever seen in NZ.

And his using the old "I know I did but they are worse" excuse for plundering hundreds of millions of dollars off the backs of creatives should make him public enemy number one. Which is what he would be if we still had a left wing government in power.
And anybody claiming the cops would not have acted this way if Clark was in power needs to smash the word urewera into the search engine with their head.

It is heartening to see that somebody from the left actually understands the issue. The Kim Dotcom opera seems to have divided most of us down political lines with many on the left descending into breathless fanboy lapping up and faithfully regurgitating his every utterance. That sadly is to be expected. Giving the govt of the day a bloody nose will always be wildly popular with the opposition and its agents.
However.
Nobody can sensibly argue that megaupload was not a file sharing business that provided users with an alexandra library of free copyright material.
His new venture will be the same.
To now claim to be democratising the internet by squatting on publishers ad space should have every website publisher in the world sweating conkers.
IS might be happy to fore-go any payment for his work but many/most others will not be so calm about it. I imagine David Fishers employers would be aghast at the copy in their paper if they actually understood the threat to their diminishing revenue.