Megaupload shutdown

[Esau.]

First of many I'm guessing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16642369

Megaupload, one of the internet's largest file-sharing sites, has been shut down by officials in the US.

The site's founders have been charged with violating piracy laws. Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material.

The news came a day after anti-piracy law protests, but investigators said they were ordered two weeks ago.

The US Justice Department said that Megaupload's two co-founders Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand along with two other employees of the business at the request of US officials. It added that three other defendants were still at large.

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime," said a statement posted on its website.

Third-party sites

The charges included copyright infringement, conspiracies to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering.

A federal court in Virginia ordered that 18 domain names associated with the Hong Kong-based firm be seized.

The Justice Department said that more than 20 search warrants had been executed in nine countries, and that approximately $50m in assets had been seized.

It claimed that the accused had pursued a business model designed to promote the uploading of copyrighted works.

"The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicised their links to users throughout the world," a statement said.

"By actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicise infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicise such content on the Megaupload site.

"Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users."

Before it was shut down the site posted a statement saying the allegations against it were "grotesquely overblown".

"The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay," it added.

"If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch."

Blackouts

The announcement came a day after thousands of websites took part in a "blackout" to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa).

The US Chamber of Commerce has defended the proposed laws saying that enforcement agencies "lack the tools" to effectively apply existing intellectual property laws to the digital world.

Industry watchers suggest this latest move may feed into the wider debate.

"Neither of the bills are close to being passed - they need further revision. But it appears that officials are able to use existing tools to go after a business alleged to be inducing piracy," said Gartner's media distribution expert Mike McGuire.

"It begs the question that if you can find and arrest people who are suspected to be involved in piracy using existing laws, then why introduce further regulations which are US-only and potentially damaging."

[bradm]

Retaliations have started

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

Aloha,

Brad

[Esau.]

You know Brad, I posted similar links for that stuff in OP, but every time I hit enter I got "forum not active" error message. Removed them and it worked. Weird.

But thanks for posting it, I was just about to.

I also noticed my blog was gone. Checked my email that I use with it and sure enough wordpress cited "copyright infringement" as the reason for the deletion a few days ago. I only had live recordings on there and ones in (or that were) mass circulation on the usual torrent sites (Dime, TTD, HC etc). Not that it matter anyhow as a lot of my files were hosted at megaupload. lol

[edit to add]I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that this happened when it did AND only two days after I added the "protest SOPA/PIPA" ribbon banner wordpress offered bloggers to post (in dashboard settings for those wondering).

Edited January 19, 2012 by Guest

[Hartamophone]

I love that the founder of Megaupload had legally changed his last name to Dotcom.

[Northern Wish]

Bye bye Phish spreadsheet.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I'm going to have a minute's silence right after a 30 second waiting period

[bouche]

I also noticed my blog was gone. Checked my email that I use with it and sure enough wordpress cited "copyright infringement" as the reason for the deletion a few days ago. I only had live recordings on there and ones in (or that were) mass circulation on the usual torrent sites (Dime, TTD, HC etc). Not that it matter anyhow as a lot of my files were hosted at megaupload. lol

[edit to add]I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that this happened when it did AND only two days after I added the "protest SOPA/PIPA" ribbon banner wordpress offered bloggers to post (in dashboard settings for those wondering).

whoa! Are you able to get it back? who's judging whether your content was infringing or not? that's the problem with SOPA and PIPA. where's the line?

[Esau.]

whoa! Are you able to get it back? who's judging whether your content was infringing or not? that's the problem with SOPA and PIPA. where's the line?

No idea. I personally can't retrieve it, my wordpress account is still there, just no blog. I sent an email yesterday asking to specifically point out what material was infringing, but I haven't heard back from anyone yet.

Last year I was asked to remove a Dylan show, and the d/l link was deleted (last year) by megaupload themselves, but other then having the majority of my d/ls on their site I really don't know what the offending material was yet. A blog friend thinks it was due to linking to megaupload but I don't know about that.

As for where is the line, I have no idea. But here's an example of what can happen (even without SOPA/PIPA) with these money mongers using programs and poor research to enforce their rules. Check out this crap.

http://thepopcop.co.uk/2012/01/why-sopa-pipa-spell-trouble/

SOPA/PIPA is a scam, the arrest of the megaupload folks proves the US doesn't need these laws. They already have the ability to enforce this crap. All these laws will do will allow the US gov't to abuse and censor what they don't want their people saying or hearing. At least that's how I see it.

[jaybone]

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/21/megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom-by-the-numbers/?iid=biz-main-mostpop2

I thought this article on Dotcom was pretty crazy.

That dude is rich!!

[Davey Boy 2.0]

the tennis court looks virtually untouched

[jaybone]

Dotcom is pretty good at video games.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/21/kim-dotcom-modern-warfare-3/

[Kanada Kev]

More have gone down this weekend/today:

http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65920166.html

They all tend to have "reward" programs for uploaders whose files get accessed a lot. Rapidshare (who fought in the courts a few times) seems to be the most solid at the moment.

Alternatives will arise. Also, there's a movement afoot for a call to action in March:

Black March

[ollie]

So a bunch of people who already don't pay for music are going to protest the music industry by continuing to not pay for music? And all in the name of anti-censorship? That is some fucked up leap of logic.

[bradm]

Furious freetards blitz the wrong SOPA

Aloha,

Brad

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

Is this really any different from when we went from FTP sharing to Direct COnnect/other P2P to torrents to these types of sites? Just means another method to allow this to happen is coming shortly.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

i'll be coming shortly if you don't change your avatar

[Esau.]

So a bunch of people who already don't pay for music are going to protest the music industry by continuing to not pay for music? And all in the name of anti-censorship? That is some fucked up leap of logic.

The fucked up logic here is assuming everyone who uses those type of sites are pirating music/movies. It's the same logic the people wanting these laws already have. People seem roll their eyes at these laws as not much to worry about, but I imagine when the USA's censorship starts to effect Canadians, people might see it differently - Imagine logging on your computer and seeing this website blocked due to URLs posted here that the USA deems piracy. (and this site would be blocked).

That's the big issue for me, censoring me with US laws or in my case directly, deleting my blog based ONLY on where I choose to host my files (legal shared files btw).

These arrests/busts/shut downs etc are proof the US doesn't need to censor content to enforce the copyright laws - it's just a veiled way to gain sympathetic support to police the internet for anything the gov't doesn't want their people to have access to. Another year or so and I wouldn't be surprised we'll see the same suggested or happening here in Canada.

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

Absolutely - the only thing I had on megaupload was all the mixes I had made and the live shows I recorded...treated it like dropbox really...can't say I didn't grab the odd tune or movie from there but that's true across the board on all of those sites- filesonic, oron, rapidshare, mediafire, upload etc etc...

[bouche]

Imagine logging on your computer and seeing this website blocked due to URLs posted here that the USA deems piracy. (and this site would be blocked).

that's one of the points I've used, comparing a possibility like that to the taste of it that I had back when google automatically shut down adsense because there were some links it deemed inappropriate.

[Kanada Kev]