Federal Government Shuts Down Megaupload

[Mr. Fuzzyflippers]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Lat ... Megaupload

One of the world's largest file-sharing sites was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several company executives were charged with violating piracy laws, federal prosecutors said.

An indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart online piracy.


The Justice Department said in a statement said that Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and three others were arrested Thursday in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials. Two other defendants are at large.

What are your thoughts on megaupload being shut down?

[AceD]

Anonymous are currently attacking Universal Music and the department of justice over this

[BasharOfTheAges]

Should be an interesting case with some interesting 4th amendment violation claims coming from it.

[AceD]

MPAA and RIAA been taken out as well now lol

[Brad]

Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz

This...


But in any event, this is one of those situations where timing is everything. I can't imagine that reaction to this news would be nearly as bad had it not been directly on the heels of the SOPA/PIPA controversy. The DOJ has most certainly had a hand in taking down several piracy-driven sites before (namely torrent sites) in the past, and most people just said "Well, guess that was inevitable." Though one big difference here is that MegaUpload, ON THE SURFACE was certainly not set up to be a "get your pirated content HERE!" sites. It was simply a file upload service, that got considerably abused. Now granted, I hope nobody's naive enough to believe that the site owners didn't know fully well that the majority of the files they were serving were illegal. Nevertheless, a better course of action would probably have been to send some form of C&D or something to them, demanding any infringing files be taken offline. If those orders were then ignored (and it's possible that IS what happened and I just don't know about it) then law enforcement would then be required to step in.

The weird thing about this situation though is the fact that this (and most of these sites) are operated outside of U.S. jurisdiction. I don't really know how the law works in regards to foreign businesses breaking U.S. laws, though the article does say that the arrests were made by New Zealand law enforcement. So it would stand to reason that the site was also taken offline by whoever operated their servers/internet connection in NZ.

So yeah, I dunno. It's weird. I'm not outright PRO-Piracy (it'd be hypocritical of me to say), but at the same time, if due process WAS taken and warnings were issued and protocol was followed all along the way, then I just don't see how people can be overly upset about this. The big problem with SOPA/PIPA is that they're taking due process off the table, and any site which gets a complaint from copyright holders can be taken down without the site's owner being questioned. If that's what happened here, then yes, I take major issue with that.

(if all my questions have been addressed in formal articles, forgive me. Still at work, haven't taken the time to research the story fully)

[Chained(E)Studio]

https://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews

You can follow "Anonymous" on Twitter if you aren't already, lol. Apparently they've taken down more sites?

[CodeZTM]

I just hope that this doesn't hurt all the SOPA protests with anon's attacks.

[Chez]

unsure of where this will go now that anon is involved I understand why they are taking action now, but if it helps is the question that should be asked. Time will tell just set back and watch the lawls.

[HalOfBorg]

Ach, me poor, wee AMVs sitting there with nowhere to go now.

[Chained(E)Studio]

https://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-doj-u ... -sopa-235/

http://gizmodo.com/5877679/anonymous-ki ... gaupload-r

Don't know how legit these are XD But an update at least.