Um, why 4th Amendment? They seem to have warrants and cooperation from the authorities of the other nations involved. Have you seen more details somewhere on this?BasharOfTheAges wrote:Should be an interesting case with some interesting 4th amendment violation claims coming from it.
Actually, it's pretty standard practice to go after hosting sites rather than users/downloaders. It's easier to meet the criteria for criminal infringement, and it's easier to prove intent. Users might get sued, but the FBI doesn't typically go after them unless they upload or own/operate the site, supply the original material to be cracked/copied, etc. As for the second part of your post, what they basically have to prove in court is that the people who ran megaupload had the intent to infringe - so they either had to encourage users to do it and/or have knowledge it was occurring and not take sufficient measures to stop it (which from what I'm reading is what the FBI is arguing). This could be pretty hard to prove, however, it really doesn't help their case that they benefited financially from infringing material through ad revenue and premium accounts, and they paid uploaders monetary rewards as well.EvaFan wrote:So it's finally gotten to the point that they are charging service providers instead of the users that commit the said copyright crimes? ffs...
Just because they provide hosting doesn't mean they provide hosting for copyrighted stuff. I'm sure they even have rules and regulations in their ToS, I haven't used megaupload in forever though and haven't read it.
The other issue here is that Megaupload has to disprove that the copyrighted material uploaded outweighed the legitimate uses that Megaupload had. Generally, the precedent set by Sony Corp. v Universal Studios is that if the service or product has significant legitimate uses, the company that produces/owns it is not liable for any infringement. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that this does not protect a company from liability if, as I said, they encouraged infringement, didn't do enough to stop it, and benefited financially from users uploading copyrighted material. It's going to be difficult for the prosecution to meet their burden of proof here probably, but it's not really clear cut enough to be able to say at this point who's going to win the case. The FBI is obviously doing this to make a point, though. With as large, high-profile, and misused as Megaupload has been it was really only a matter of time.
Also, the FBI seems to have email proof that there was money-laundering going on as well. They may very well be screwed on those charges.
