Process arguments aside (and there may be process arguments that demolish the US case here, and I care about process too, especially if they involve getting evidence in bogus ways): The US has Kim Schmitz dead to rights in this case. There's a whole mythology about what MegaUpload actually was, and it gets partial anecdotal support from people who, for instance, used it or had friends who used it solely as a sort of…
It really grinds me that he is portrayed by some as an unjust victim of US gov malice and a champion for internet rights issues when he is nothing more than a thief, liar and conman. It doesn't help that people like Snowden, Greenwald and Assange associated themselves with his cause when they appeared at his election event in Auckland where he promised a bombshell against the government but produced what were likely…
When I silently wish for the extradition effort to fail, I'm not backing him. I really just want to see a sovereign allied anglophone nation tell the US to see that its jurisdictional claims stop at the 12 NM limit, and to please mind its own business. I don't want to see US playing at world police, except for crimes heinous enough that every nation should be combating them wherever they may occur, like war crimes, terrorism, international financial fraud, and hijackings of international shipping vessels.
Why should Dotcom get so much effort? What risk does he pose to US citizens to justify transporting him out of NZ? Whatever that may be, the risk of allowing the US to assert intellectual property jurisdiction over the whole Internet is far worse.
I'd like Dotcom to eventually get comeuppance, but not in a way that establishes an undesirable precedent.