Megaupload shut down and owners charged

Is it me, or do the grammar mistakes in there suggest its not totally legit. After all, you'd expect them to be able to structure a sentence correctly, not to mention spell Phishing right.
 
Bloody great news :) Thanks to everyone that made a noise:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16655272
The "bloody great news" doesn't mean diddly squat. In fact, it's worse because all it means is that they're postponing it until the hype dies down, Americans are convinced that it's "off the table" (presumably permanently) and then they're going to bring it back onto the table and pass it without us being aware until after the fact.
 
Is it me, or do the grammar mistakes in there suggest its not totally legit. After all, you'd expect them to be able to structure a sentence correctly, not to mention spell Phishing right.
The founder goes by the alias KimDotCom and is from Hong Kong. My guess is he sounds and spells like the Chinese gangster/hacker in The Hangover 1 and 2.
 
Firstly, no country should have the power to disrupt or take down a Business running on equipment located outside of their own country.

wikipedia said:
On January 5, 2012[36], indictments were filed in the US against Schmitz on criminal copyright infringement charges along with Július Benčko and 5 other associates. On January 19, 2012, Kim Schmitz, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities. New Zealand authorities were cooperating with the United States' FBI and Justice Department, Hong Kong Customs and the Hong Kong Department of Justice, the Netherlands Police Agency and the Public Prosecutor's Office for Serious Fraud and Environmental Crime in Rotterdam, London's Metropolitan Police Service, Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt and the German Public Prosecutors, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Department of Justice in the investigation preceding the arrests.[37][38]
There hasn't been an international coalition like this since the first Gulf War. Doesn't sound like a single country acting on its own to me.

Secondly, just having a single link to questionable content is enough to have your site censored or shutdown (if using certain domains).

The US Justice Department's indictment against the Megaupload defendants reveals a long list of assets to be forfeited as part of today’s arrests.
It also gives details on how Megaupload conducted its file sharing business, including a strategy whereby users were offered cash or other financial incentives to upload popular content, often under copyright, to the website.

Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/Megauploads-Kim-Schmitz-arrested-in-Auckland-site-shut-down/tabid/412/articleID/240007/Default.aspx#ixzz1k8D6WSig
He's not being taken down for a single link, either.

What the industries need to do is sit down and bring their business practices into the 21st century with pricing to reflect.
I don't understand what you mean by this.

I can already download ebooks for a fraction of the cost of a printed book. I can download music at less cost than buying a CD and only have to get the songs I like, not a complete CD. I can download movies. I can even rent them so that I only have access to the streaming video for a limited time. Rented is less than owning and downloading is less than a DVD.

What more needs to be done to improve digital delivery of products and services? We already have instant access, on-demand, pay per use streaming. Short of free, which is theft, I don't see what more should be done.
 
The owner was living the good life...who said crime doesn't pay?

megaupload4.webp
 
I can already download ebooks for a fraction of the cost of a printed book. I can download music at less cost than buying a CD and only have to get the songs I like, not a complete CD. I can download movies. I can even rent them so that I only have access to the streaming video for a limited time. Rented is less than owning and downloading is less than a DVD.

What more needs to be done to improve digital delivery of products and services? We already have instant access, on-demand, pay per use streaming. Short of free, which is theft, I don't see what more should be done.


I mean ...the guy is a criminal...period...and I have to agree with Fred on this one...it was not just the US at all that wanted him. He is an international pickpocket on a grand scale and has proven over time that if you give him an inch he will take a foot and proceed to use that foot to kick you in the ass while he steals your chit. What I want to know is how a guy like this got away with only probation as a sentence
wikipedia said:
Insider trading and embezzlement

In 2001, Schmitz purchased $375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company LetsBuyIt.com and subsequently announced his intention to invest EUR 50 million in the company.[18] Unknown to others, Schmitz did not have the funds available to invest, although the announcement caused the share value of LetsBuyIt.com to jump by nearly 300%.[19] Schmitz quickly sold the shares and profited $1.5 million as a result.[18]

Schmitz had also arranged and obtained an unsecured loan of €280,000 from Monkey AG, a company for which Schmitz had served as Chairman of the Board. The funds were to be paid to Kimvestor AG. As a result, both Monkey and Kimvestor went bankrupt. Schmitz expressed remorse, stating that he had been "dazzled" and had not recognized that he would be unable to repay the loans.[20]

In January 2002, Schmitz was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, deported to Germany, and sentenced to a probationary sentence of one year and eight months, and a €100,000 fine, the largest insider-trading case in Germany at the time.[21] Schmitz also pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and received a two-year probation sentence.[22]

On the note of what more can be done for digital delivery...I have the greatest idea for that...it would cost less from a production standpoint and could be accounted for in a legal sense and it would offer a lot of people a reason to be completely legit with their media purchase/storage/usage...sadly the people that would benefit listening to it will never hear it so they and everyone who would benefit from a proper logical solution will never get it from me.

It is like they are intent on making law and practice out of things that just don't compute in any way as far as reality is concerned...for instance..the supposed regulations in place already currently allow you to make one copy of your digital media for backup/storage purposes...there is nothing however that allows you (in the US anyways) to bypass the disc protections in place that you would need to in order to render a 1:1 copy of said media. It's totally ass-backwards. If they minded the consumer with a better regard and took into account what different end users actually need as a big picture they would have the answer. That is not going to happen however...it never does.




Back to the topic....honestly with not an iota of bs...if I knew the site was run by that guy...I would have never even slightly frequented that place or even visited the domains. I would not support that criminal's site. When I first started reading about the site getting shut down I was mad...most of the reason I hung on to a computer until I got into things web and server related was modding games and MU was a great place to upload a game patch for some texture mods or some new game functions.

I think to myself...it is not my fault that stupid people think uploading protected works to a public sharing bin is a good idea. I mean I have purchased people digital things and sent them the files, I have a piece of paper stating POP and I am granting them non transferable ownership of that copy and I was just a purchaser but then I compare the two acts and say...I directly gave them the works and I gave them in a way that prevents some random person who is not intended to be using the works from getting them from me verses stupid people abusing a public file sharing bin and ruining a good thing if it turns out that he didn't have something to do with some of the uploading himself (the owner).

But after a lot of thinking about it I have to say that the guy has a history of the P.R.L. MO and I as a person with an interest in that site staying up has to say that I can't help but think this guy is all about trying to make money while breaking as many laws as he has to that wont land him hard time if caught. That is a signature of a career criminal IMO and honestly all these thoughts and more that I wont say leads me to confirm that I have no reservations that would keep me from saying justice was served here and even if he walks and the site stays up I will never visit it again.


The owner was living the good life...who said crime doesn't pay?

View attachment 23887
ohh crime does pay...it's all a matter of who is picking up the tab....in this case...people like him put a load on the general population's shoulders who have to decide which movie or game to buy because they can afford but 1 while he walks through a maze to go play some beach volleyball in his backyard. Hopefully with him things flip-flop and the return is paid in full.
 

So, do forums really have anything to do with this incident? Or is it just file sharing sites like MegaUpload that are screwed. Because this topic is insanely popular and many people have enabled that one CloudFlare app that shows that they're against the SOPA act. I still don't understand how forums can be affected because many forums frown heavily on sharing illegal crap like music, pics whatever, and there are a good amount of hosts out there that will shut down your site if you decide to post illegal files. I wasn't really scared, to be honest with you. We don't allow illegal downloading, warez, or any of that garbage, so I knew our forum would be pretty safe.
 
So, do forums really have anything to do with this incident? Or is it just file sharing sites like MegaUpload that are screwed. Because this topic is insanely popular and many people have enabled that one CloudFlare app that shows that they're against the SOPA act. I still don't understand how forums can be affected because many forums frown heavily on sharing illegal crap like music, pics whatever, and there are a good amount of hosts out there that will shut down your site if you decide to post illegal files. I wasn't really scared, to be honest with you. We don't allow illegal downloading, warez, or any of that garbage, so I knew our forum would be pretty safe.
It's the power that the government would have that is most frightening. Anybody who appreciates the freedom of the Internet should be and pretty much is against SOPA/PIPA and any spinoffs of such. You'll see that many people are using their own sites to voice their opposition although they don't necessarily fear that that particular site would be threatened.
 
It's the power that the government would have that is most frightening. Anybody who appreciates the freedom of the Internet should be and pretty much is against SOPA/PIPA and any spinoffs of such. You'll see that many people are using their own sites to voice their opposition although they don't necessarily fear that that particular site would be threatened.

Well, like many forums, we too enabled the CloudFlare app to show our disgust about this, but as I said, despite being a general chat community, we are tighter than a nail when it comes to things like sharing illegal files, so the fact that this would have an impact on forums at all is interesting by itself.
 
Well, like many forums, we too enabled the CloudFlare app to show our disgust about this, but as I said, despite being a general chat community, we are tighter than a nail when it comes to things like sharing illegal files, so the fact that this would have an impact on forums at all is interesting by itself.
It doesn't really impact forums. It just so happens that those of us who have forums, are 1) fairly well-informed of things like this (related to technology and the Internet), and 2) willing to put forth effort to voice our opinions on the matter. Therefore, since we have our own websites, why wouldn't we want to use them to our advantage to help spread the word? We're basically going an extra step forward than those who simply spread the word via Facebook and Twitter... because we have that advantage. The legislation isn't going to effect Wikipedia but they did a whole gig too.
 
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