A Kiwi judge has overruled the wishes of the US Government and granted internet millionaire Kim Dotcom the right to information gathered by the FBI in the copyright case against him.



The US had stringently opposed the piracy-accused's application for "disclosure", citing its treaty agreements with New Zealand which meant the process was not mandatory.



In making his decision, in the Auckland District Court yesterday, Judge David Harvey said Dotcom's right to a fair trial was at risk if he was not given disclosure.



"A denial of the provision of information that could enable a proper adversarial hearing, in my view, would amount to a denial of the opportunity to contest and that would effectively mean that the process is one sided and in reality becomes more of an administrative one," Judge Harvey said.



Dotcom, 38, is currently on bail awaiting an extradition hearing.



Authorities say he and his three co-accused - Mathias Ortmann, Fin Batato and Bram Van der Kolk- used Megaupload and its affiliated sites to knowingly make money from pirated movies and games.



Dotcom is charged with multiple copyright offences.

Yesterday's win was the second in a day for the Megaupload founder, who was also told he will be allowed to return to live in his $30 million mansion for the first time since his arrest in January and that his bail conditions would be relaxed so that he is no longer subject to electronic monitoring.



During the disclosure hearing, the court heard arguments from Dotcom's lawyer Paul Davison, lawyer for the other defendants', Guyon Foley, and the Crown lawyer on behalf of the US Government, Mike Ruffin.



The Megaupload lawyers argued that a lack of disclosure would unreasonably deny Dotcom and his co-accused natural justice and would leave him unable to prepare a case to fight his extradition.



Ruffin cited an agreement under the USA and New Zealand extradition agreement called the "record of case" which meant, given the trust between the two countries, full evidence and witness statements did not have to be disclosed during extradition, to speed up the process.



Judge Harvey acknowledged Ruffin's point, but said the importance of a fair hearing must be taken into account.



''There must in all this consideration be some weight placed upon the rights of the individual rather than allow them to be absolutely trumped by principles of international comity."



Judge Harvey said because the United States had utilised the New Zealand process it brought itself "within the ambit" of New Zealand procedural requirements.



Dotcom must receive copies of information relating to each charge he faces - criminal breach of copyright, money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud.



The documents must be provided within 21 days.



CUSTOMERS FIGHT FOR FILES



A former customer of Dotcom's internet site, Megaupload, has asked a US federal court to return his personal files from the FBI's seized evidence.



Video maker Kyle Goodwin and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the motion last week stating it was the court's job to champion the cause of innocent parties caught up in the legal battle between the US government and Dotcom.



While some of the content stored on the seized Megaupload servers did contain material that might be ruled as copyright infringing, a portion was original work created by the site's customers, like Goodwin.



The switching off of all the site's content meant customers lost access to their personal content without warning.



In filing the legal documents the EFF said it "is of paramount importance" people like Goodwin were reunited with their data, "not just to preserve Goodwin's rights, but to address the government's apparent disregard for the effects its increasing use of domain and other digital seizure mechanisms may have on the innocent users of cloud computing services".



The campaigning group added: "Given that the use of cloud computing services is already widespread and poised to grow exponentially in the next few years, this court should establish procedures to ensure that such innocent users do not become regular collateral damage."