Without SOPA or PIPA needed, Feds bust MegaUpload and close it

Here in spain is not available. But if somebody know how I can get it, I will check it. I need subtitles as I don’t speak/understand english voices (but the subtitles can be in english, as I can read english).

There are very large communities that make japan and usa series available on the internet, in the case of japan series even writting the translation (what I suppose is not easy), also serve as filter so you only receive the best series, and not all the cruft.

Yes, i was about to say the same thing.

If we shut down companies because their services are also used by pirates, it seems kind of silly we wouldn’t want to do… well, anything about guns.

Someone using megaupload to download Recettear (A great game which i suggest buying if you enjoyh quirky store manager games and/or Freedom) while bad is nowhere near as bad as someone buying a gun from Smiling Pete’s Arms and Tobac and then randomly shooting a bunch of people.

Anyway, the pirated stuff will just move over to the 20 other similar sites. These file sharing sites like megaupload or rapidshare are indeed very scummy, but sadly they are sometimes the only place to get some files.

I am kind of interested if megaupload management was directly involved in the piracy or they are just taking the fall for not being quick enough in removing anything our multimedia overlords notified them about though. Neither one would surprise me at all really.

That’s the whole point. But unlike filesharing, the gun issue has been “decided”, for better or worse, already. Filesharing, not so much. There is no Second Amendment “right” to filesharing, just like there is no Second Amendment right to a lockpicking set.

I suspect MegaUpload had a duplicate file consolidater so that the 6000 users uploading hot.mp3 only actually took up one file on their servers. Each user however could get back a unique URL.

So when big content approached and said take down the file at XYZ URL Megaupload would only take down that single reference, leaving the other 5999 up still. If Megaupload was sincere they would take down the file itself, ruining every reference to it.

Ars weighs in here:

GOOD MORNING EMPIRE EARTH!

We interrupt this program with a special bulletin:
America is now under martial law.
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact love ones, insurance agent or attorney.
Shut up.
Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 PM sharp after work.
Anyone caught outside of gates of their suveillance sectors after curfew will be shot.
Remain calm, do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine examples in the morning.
Anyone caught intefering with the collection of urine examples will be shot.
Stay in your homes, remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is questions.
National security is more important than individual will.
All sports broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs described by your boss or supervisor.
Shut up, be happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comfort you demanded is now mandatory.
Be happy.
At last everything is done for you.

Welcome to Fascist United One Empire Earth.

I guess you didn’t read the Ars article.

You and Jakub should make babies.

Wow, kind of shocked seeing this happen. Megaupload fully complied with the DMCA and removed copyright content as it was reported, so they might as well go after Youtube next because there’s plenty of copyrighted material on there that users upload all the time.

What is funny about this is that there are literally hundreds of Megaupload clones on the internet that people will flock to in its absence. It reminds me of the takedowns that were happening with bit torrent sites years ago.

And I have to feel for those that purchased an account and used Megaupload legally to store their personal, and likely valuable, files.

Read the Ars article linked upthread.

I don’t like this article much. It reads like someone’s been fed Gov’s toilet rolls PR sheet.

To play Devil’s Advocate:

The US government dropped a nuclear bomb on “cyberlocker” site Megaupload today…the site earned more than $175 million since its founding in 2005, most of it based on copyright infringement.

While I don’t doubt the claims it served to traffic in copyrighted materials between offenders, I highly doubt this was its stream of revenue.
People pay for accounts. That’s about it. What they use their accounts for does not affect whether or not there’s revenue or increases revenue directly.

As for the site’s employees, they were paid lavishly and they spent lavishly.

All the fluff that followed here seems to me an obvious attempt to colour them, against the backdrop of “Occupy” movements and general poverty as some sort of Wallstreet 1% bad guys.

It has registered a DMCA agent with the US government.

Funny how THAT guy wasn’t arrested for massive malpractice, failure to notify the authorities and slapped with extreme negligence to enact his duty to maintain compliance with DMCA standards.

So either all this time he reported “All’s good” or all this time he just cried and no one listened until…the SOPA/PIPA comes under massive flack fire?

Yeah, right…

the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other.

Where are these emails? Show me! I want to know.
Don’t tell me “we’ll reveal in court”, you obviously have no problem quoting tidbits of some emails that you WANT to show because they come off badly without proper context.
Gov press leakers…

The “Top 100” download list does not “actually portray the most popular downloads,” say prosecutors

My grandma has wheels to go 100mph and can rocket to the moon, say Foxstab.
Proof? What? Who needs. Hey, I can sue bloggers for saying bad things about gov officials. But who sues gov officials for saying bad things about anyone they wanna martyr and smear?

they claim that Megaupload purposely offers no site-wide search engine as a way of concealing what people are storing and sharing through the site.

And I claim that to avoid becoming the next PirateBay and to avoid having to bother with implementing sophisticated search engine censoring techniques and keeping the site true with its spirit as a filesharing service, not having a public search engine is a good idea!

When making payments through its “uploader rewards” program, employees sometimes looked through the material in those accounts first. “10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez),” said one of these notes. (The DMCA does not provide a “safe harbor” to sites who have actual knowledge of infringing material and do nothing about it.)

I find it quite suspicious these notes don’t go onto further detail as to what this uploader has gotten in return. Was he rewarded? Was he warned? Content deleted? Allowed on site? Was the account closed and user banned?
Funny nothing further is said except exact bits to make megaupload look bad.

n a 2008 chat, one employee noted that “we have a funny business… modern days [sic] pirates :),” to which the reply was, “we’re not pirates, we’re just providing shipping servies [sic] to pirates :).”

And I contend that if Anonymous breached the FBI wikileaks will have a MOUNTAIN of SPECIFIC agents being highly vulgar about the public they’re defending and what not rather than an anecdotal questionable emails that aren’t being named to their sources or those concerned positions within the company.

Employees send each other e-mails saying things like, “can u pls get me some links to the series called ‘Seinfeld’ from MU [Megaupload]," since some employees did have access to a private internal search engine.

“Hey, Paul, I heard there Sienfield series is making the rounds on our service, can you please fetch me the links…
…so that I could treat it proper and close them as per our protocols?”

Time Warner was allowed to use the abuse tool to remove 2,500 links per day. When the company requested an increase,[skipping to the actual relevant bit, past the bad PR fluff purposely injected] im Dotcom approved an increase to 5,000 takedowns a day.

GASP! No way. Megaupload actually COMPLIED with Media Corps requests? HERESY!

One report showed that a specific linking site had “produce[d] 164,214 visits to Megaupload for a download of the copyrighted CD/DVD burning software package Nero Suite 10. The software package had the suggested retail price of $99.” The government’s conclusion: Megaupload knew what was happening and did little to stop it.

My conclusion: People downloaded Nero Suite. They also probably downloaded some sort of key generator somewhere, because to get the full $99 Suite you need to register with the developer with a key you buy from them. Or maybe they just went and bought the key from the company. I haven’t an idea.
I don’t have access to facts as much as the Government does.

The allegations state that Megaupload has cost copyright holders a loss of over $500 million (£320m) in revenue from pirated films and other media.

Utter bullshit. We know it. It’s same as game piracy.

A statement posted on the FBI’s website read: “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.”

Funny that it only took you one day after the SOPA/PIPA shit, eh?

The Motion Picture Association of America recently alleged that the vast majority of files used on Megaupload are in violation of copyright laws.

Surprise surprise.

So, how does it work? You give a buncha senators/governors/whatever suitecases full of dollars and then you can order take downs?

Great, BRB gonna get some job in Goldman Sachs (cuz I’m jewish and all) and order the MPAA shutdown for some BS or another we’ll slap on it. Don’t worry, I’m sure we can come up with something.

I also like how they try to smear the CEO Mr. Dotcom (yes, you’re very clever for that name, mister…not) by mentioning whatever criminal scam BS he was previously involved with.
As if not OVER HALF the big corp bosses in the USA are not recycled garbage that hop from one scam to the next.
Ocean Marketing, hello?
Infinity Lab/Infinium Console, hello?
So on so forth, hello?

Hey, John Riccitello if not so swimming in money he probably bought 50 never step in police station tickets would get raped over that elevation partners/EA Bullshit, hello?

Yeah…

Corruption Capitalism is America’s biggest business/export.

Without Napster, et al, nothing like this would ever have been possible. If it were up to the RIAA, we would still all be buying price-fixed CD’s. I am not saying I support specific piracy but without the “information wants to be free” crowd, the internet would be a very different place. It’s the only pressure on the content makers to provide a good customer service experience to paying customers.

By the way, Megaupload is up.

http://109.236.83.66/

Apparently, they’re doing that DNS killing shit they wanted to have PIPA/SOPA grant them legal back to do.

No. I guess YOU didn’t.

Actually, I’m not yet DONE reading it since I read several sourced articles at once.

And just as I started the next line in that article…

Yet the indictment seems odd in some ways. When Viacom made many of the same charges against YouTube, it didn’t go to the government and try to get Eric Schmidt or Chad Hurley arrested.

It’s also full of strange non-sequiturs, such as the charge that “on or about November 10, 2011, a member of the Mega Conspiracy made a transfer of $185,000 to further an advertising campaign for Megaupload.com involved a musical recording and a video.” So?

The money probably paid for a video that infuriated the RIAA by including major artists who support Megaupload. Megaupload later filed claims in US courts, trying to save the video, which it says was entirely legal, from takedown requests. (The RIAA has long said the site operators “thumb their noses at international laws, all while pocketing significant advertising revenues from trafficking in free, unlicensed copyrighted materials.”)

Given that the site was already using US courts to file actions; given that the government had Megaupload e-mails talking about using US lawyers to file cases against other “pirate” sites; given that the site did at least take down content and built an abuse tool; and given that big-name artists support the site, the severity of the government’s reaction is surprising.

Nice block, but it’s also nice read. Try it Chet. Might be good for you.

Oh I agree. But my impression is that Teiman was saying that he really wanted to give his money to the show producers instead of people like Megaupload (a noble sentiment to be sure) but he couldn’t because the content producers didn’t want to sell there stuff. I was pointing out that at least in the US things have gotten better. We can get a lot of this stuff legally now – something I’m very happy about.

I do wish that so much of it wasn’t platformed locked though. I’ve now probably got almost $1,000 of iTunes TV shows that I couldn’t watch if I ever switched to Android. I am very happy though that it is all backed up on the cloud for free – now if they would only do that with the movies!

I’m not sure I understand why it’s a good idea to ask for money per copy anymore?

To give a tangential, simplified example, Denmark makes people pay for the national TV stations if they have an internet connection. That seems to work pretty well for the TV stations, and I’m pretty sure piracy is a non-issue for them.

I realise there’s a ton of things that can’t work exactly like that, but it seems to me stuff like films, TV shows and music can. I mean, if a portion of the connection cost for people pays for those things, why would people bother pirating or redistributing stuff in non-fair use ways? Doing it would just be an insanely round-about equivalent of distributing the url of the original source.
All that’s really needed is a “content tax” on connections, some independent entity to monitor how much various things are consumed, and some clever bloke with a calculator to create a compensation system that doesn’t unduly screw anyone.

Interesting. So the mistake that doomed them was to implement a hashing system when the law encourages ineffiency and ignorance.

We use Dropbox at work as an easy way of sharing documents (since the web-based solution developed internally is horrible). I’d never even heard of MegaUpload, I guess I’m falling behind the times.

Yes, the law will get you if you’re efficient about how you encourage folks to download copyrighted material. We’ve really blown the lid off that one here.

Since shutting down napster and bit torrent trackers proved to be so astonishingly effective in eradicating all piracy from the internet, it’s no wonder they are trying to replicate that success story.

Can we avoid this ‘big content’ label? I’ve used the DMCA to get my copyrighted content removed from MU about 100 times, and I’m a one man company :D
The same links get posted the next day, by the same user, with the same filename. MU never gave a damn.