Megaupload shut down and owners charged

Paul B

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
Who needs SOPA? ;)

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.

Investigators denied a link to recent protests against proposed piracy laws, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ged-four-arrested.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

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

Surprised it has taken them this long frankly.
 
Exactly they have been doing this for years . There are several boards now blocked in US through ISP companies in last few months . Few of them were closed without any notice . It's already happening SOPA is just excuse .
 
It had both legit and illegal uses, and I do know they were often quick to take down illegal material. Not sure if that will save the site, though. Although they've been challenged before and have won.
 
Deebs said:
I am all for copyright infringement laws but so far they are just so OUT of touch.
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I'm curious to hear how and what you believe should be different.

I think there is definitely a generation gap at play as part of this. A few days ago, I got a friend request on Facebook, which I rarely use and had it not sent an email, I would not have known. It was from my daughter's boyfriend.

He may consider that a perfectly acceptable, normal thing. From my point of view, it was inappropriate. Not only do I feel at this point, there needs to be a respectful distance between he and I, I also think there should always be a distance between myself and my daughter's relationship. If there are things about them that she wishes to share, that should only come from her.

Thats clearly a difference in viewpoint based on generation. So I'm curious to see if this is the same.
 
Let's take down any site that may be used to host or link to copyrighted content. Let's remove the right to be innocent until proven guilty. Let's give government the power to take down any website they do not like. Let's remove the rights to share and produce ourselves so everyone is turned into consuming slaves. If this is possible without SOPA, I dare not to think about what's possible with it. People who support this scare me more than anything.

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Fred Sherman said:
I'm curious to hear how and what you believe should be different.

I think there is definitely a generation gap at play as part of this. A few days ago, I got a friend request on Facebook, which I rarely use and had it not sent an email, I would not have known. It was from my daughter's boyfriend.

He may consider that a perfectly acceptable, normal thing. From my point of view, it was inappropriate. Not only do I feel at this point, there needs to be a respectful distance between he and I, I also think there should always be a distance between myself and my daughter's relationship. If there are things about them that she wishes to share, that should only come from her.

Thats clearly a difference in viewpoint based on generation. So I'm curious to see if this is the same.
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lol @ clicking on this thread to read about piracy and reading something from American Pie instead.
 
I'm sure all the other file upload sites will be next. Just goes to show the power of the MPAA (motion picture association). With SOPA and PIPA, your forum (and whole business) could be shut down as well if even 1 user posted a link to these file sharing sites.
 
my comment on a Yahoo! article on the subject...

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There were plenty of legit uses for Megaupload, I've had numerous friends and clients who used it to distribute large files for business purposes over it. Yes it was used for distribution of illegal material, but the website operators can't be held liable for this. What are they supposed to do, examine each and every file uploaded to make sure its legit?

This crusade against copyright theft is going too far imo. Another Megaupload.com will appear soon enough and this time the operators won't make the mistake of using a .com / .net / ,org domain, it'll be a top level domain, not owned or controlled by an American company, hosted on servers where the US government can't touch and the owners living in countries that don't have extradition treaties with the US.

In short, the US government should have worked with megaupload rather than shutting it down. Squash one site, many will spring up in their place - its the nature of the Internet and someone needs to educate the morons in the FBI.

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As others have said, they did take down links after complaints were made, so really I don't see how the site could have been taken down.

If they keep this up, every file sharing site will be taken down, just because 'they might have illegal files on them'.

Perhaps if the Industry focused on getting the price of films distributed electronically down (i.e. don't charge anywhere near the cost of the physical copy) they may find out people actually buy stuff instead of downloading it.

That's what I did with MP3s. As soon as they got to a reasonable price (basically when Amazon's UK MP3 store opened), I stopped downloading MP3s. - That said, I didn't make a habit of it anyway, the vast majority of my collection came from ripped CDs that my wife and I had. Thinking about it, I've probably re-purchased most of the downloaded tracks over time get to a decent quality version in any case.

But the rule still applies. Make them cheaper and you'll get more sales. Perhaps people are fed up of seeing movie stars being paid millions for films and singers living the life of royalty.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be well paid, but e.g Johnny Depp being paid a rumoured $30m for one film?
 
Fred Sherman said:
I'm curious to hear how and what you believe should be different.

I think there is definitely a generation gap at play as part of this. A few days ago, I got a friend request on Facebook, which I rarely use and had it not sent an email, I would not have known. It was from my daughter's boyfriend.

He may consider that a perfectly acceptable, normal thing. From my point of view, it was inappropriate. Not only do I feel at this point, there needs to be a respectful distance between he and I, I also think there should always be a distance between myself and my daughter's relationship. If there are things about them that she wishes to share, that should only come from her.

Thats clearly a difference in viewpoint based on generation. So I'm curious to see if this is the same.
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Firstly, no country should have the power to disrupt or take down a Business running on equipment located outside of their own country. Secondly, just having a single link to questionable content is enough to have your site censored or shutdown (if using certain domains).

What the industries need to do is sit down and bring their business practices into the 21st century with pricing to reflect. As much as want change there are certain things that will never change, 1, we are a war faring species, 2, we are a species that does not like to be told what to do and want our freedoom of speech.
 
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