Megaupload SHUT DOWN ... More to follow?

[JenniferParisHusband]

Rally, there's tons of precedent for charging a company like Megaupload for it. Chevy and Ford are just the wrong example. The reason they can go after a Megaupload, as they did with Napster, Limewire, etc. is that the primary focus of the application relates to the illegal act, file sharing. Complicity is guaged by whether or not the company would 1) have a use that is outweighs the risk of the criminal activity, and 2) did the company actively take steps to reduce the illegal act. Simply posting a warning not to share copyrighted works isn't enough anymore, the company, once they possess knowledge of the illegal activity, must actively take steps to quash the illegal activity, or they risk becoming intertwined with it. Thus, when the indictment states... "that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download," the government is alleging that not only is the site's primary goal the conduct of illegal activity, and that the alleged named defendants did not take steps to quell the illegal activity, they instead encouraged it (by way of not monitoring the activity, the alleged money laundering via the rewards programs, etc). This encouragement even takes the form of the website itself having no reasonable utility beyond the illegal activity.

This is the US Government, and they've been known to blow big cases before, but if you know your white collar crime statutes, this sounds like the indictment is a slam dunk for the Feds. I'm sure at some point this will also be amended to include Wire Fraud, which is a big fall-back for the Feds in cases like this. The hardest part will be getting some of these guys to the US for their hearings. The civil suit with Perfect 10 is one thing, a criminal case is a whole other matter. Good luck getting someone here from Estonia. Those guys from Auckland are screwed though.

[Nowhere]

The difference is that the SOPA and PIPA laws specified, if you read deeper into the long long report of pages containing all the specifics, they enable the government to just shut down anything they want to, whether in regards to "piracy" or just "the government finds this material offensive" (things like political debate, blogs, dissent, pornography (or porn classified as "obscene or indecent") or other things that may be "offensive" to those big giant lobbying corporations like poor movie reviews, shitty ratings, commentary and whatever else the MPAA or RIAA may view undesirably effecting the content they produce and release.

Agreed completely, I was just showing how their arguments for the bills are utter BS. They're designed so that all the media companies and sponsoring organizations will kill independent competition, both now and in the future and so that they can censor anything any everything they want.

[kittyKaiti]

i went to the library, people that checked out specific books were put on a list.

Knowlegde is power, only the ones who can handle it should have access to it right ?

I find myself asking what good has the internet brought,

Maybe these bills are s step forward to making a solid law to make the internet good to use? I do not know, What is everyones thoughts?

These are things the government and top rich elite CEO lobbyists and corrupt religious right wing want/believe in. Laws like these are already in place in nations like Egypt who have the ability to shut down anything they find offensive or threatening to the governments. During the Arab Spring, this kind of bullshit enabled various countries to track protesters, shut down communications, disrupt vital services and suppress news to the outside world. SOPA and PIPA and previous attempted laws like ACTA and many others are attempts by those in power to strip Americans of their rights, one by one, under the guise of trying to "protect the people".

[kukm4]

as posted in a diff thread.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

[kittyKaiti]

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!

FBI raids and destroys MegaUpload....hours later, Anonymous, hackers and awesome dudes just make a NEW MegaUpload. LOLOLOLOLOL

http://109.236.83.66/

MegaUpload 2.0's new website!

FUCK SOPA/PIPA. o/ ANONYMOUS

Edit: Site is on and off due to Federal DNS blocking. Using IP address as a URL instead of the actual site address gets around DNS blocking.

[GroobySteven]

Lot's of mis-information in this thread as expected.

Megaupload, knowingly allowed pirated content to be uploaded. They did follow the DMCA laws but could take days to delete the content even when DCMA'd. They are not a company like Youtube or other such social style companies, they existed to make money via an affiliate program built upon stolen content and the amount of stolen material on their servers vastly out-weighed the few bits of user uploaded legal material. It's unlikely that they will ever end up in jail but with their site off-line and arrest warrants on the owners and employees, then it's only good news.

The current DMCA laws as they stand are in-effective and archaic. Designed to protect legitimate sites such as Youtube and server companies, not wholesale piracy.

There are lots of other file locker sites. Some such as Filesonic give producers access to delete contact instantly when found. Nevertheless, they function in much the same way as Megaupload and are probably looking at their business models closely.

Tube sites are relevent but not as bad as File Locker sites which are harder to trace. We can go to a tube site, see our content easily and DMCA it. The content is usually shown in low quality format and clips or scenes. This is not to say it isn't a problem, it is, but unlike tube sites, File Lockers can show complete site rips, full scenes, in massive original files. Links are renamed and hidden and then shown from different forum sites. We spend roughtly 30 man hours a week tracing these links at a substantial cost to outselves.

To say the people who download pirated content would never have bought content is a convenient excuse from those who know it's bullshit. We've seen profits drop as piracy has risen and if you look at the websites or companies even within our niche which have died or stopped updating, then it's mainly because of this. A group of people will never be buyers, that's a given but when that group, make it easy and give away content to the larger, less internet savvy group who COULD be buyers, it's a problem. Surfer A, recently gets on the internet for the first time and has an interest in shemales. He googles it. He gets to see sites where he can download content for free and pay sites. It's unfair competition. Given that criminals make money from shown the content on sites like Megaupload, makes it all the more nefarious and negates the "oooh, everything should be free" fucking jokers.

I've also heard the "you should change your business model" argument. We have. We have in-house staff to DMCA as much as we can so you find less of our content out there, these same staff also use our software to trace pirates. If we find you are in a country where we can take legal action against you, we will. We've had a successful year on taking down piracy and the recouped costs have more than covered our efforts. Industry lawyers are recognising a good ROI on going after pirates and password hackers and there will be more cases as it becomes easier to find.
Millions of dollars are being taken out of the US economy (or whatever tax territory) through this piracy (yes porn companies pay taxes also) much of it going to foreign countries (most piracy is Russian based in our experience).

We will take action against anyone we are able to, if we trace you downloading our stolen content or accessing our sites with a stolen password. This is not the same as the mass bit torrent end-user litigation that we've been doing for 18+ months but action against individuals, who have shared our content on Filelocker or similar sites, or downloaded from such sites.

Although the timing is interersting, this is not a SOPA issue. There clearly needs to be better anti-piracy legislation and it's coming, SOPA will not be it.

[addicted]

fuk all these long explanations about laws seriously. you think this govt is honest and follows rules? get the fuk outta here your crazy just look at how wall street gets away with shit.

anyway that being we all want shit for free but the fact remains if your a fan of any of grooby sites then support them when able and stop being cheap because he no one supports then the production will end period.

sean, b-leave me if any move is made to shut anything its for corrupt corporate fortune 500 cocksuckers cause they could give 2 shits about the avg small business owner like yourself and the great people you have working on the grobby sites.

[Christastic]

Really these legislative and legal solutions are just trying to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. Take down something like megaupload and two or three can pop up over night. Pirates will just distribute via multiple sites, and multiple methodologies, creating a black-market cloud, so to speak. We're gonna have to figure out how to have functioning content industries without trying to cripple the internet every time the recording studios/film studios/what have you feel like they've bought enough politicians. So far, no one has done that yet. Fucked if I know what the solution is.

[GroobySteven]

sean, b-leave me if any move is made to shut anything its for corrupt corporate fortune 500 cocksuckers cause they could give 2 shits about the avg small business owner like yourself and the great people you have working on the grobby sites.

Oh I know that, I know they're not on the side of porn companies but even within the mainstream (movies/music) it has to have revenue so we'll take the laws if they helps us also

[hippifried]

I think everybody's looking at this with a wrong headed approach. I can understand the anger of the copyright holders, artists, & whatnot. I also understand the sentiments of those who don't want government control of internet content. I don't have any skin in the game or an ax to grind, but I have yet to see any proof of real damages from file sharing. I see the claims of all the money being "stolen". but is closing this site putting a dime in anybody but the lawyer's pockets, now or in the future? I don't see how. The money we're talking about is a claim of potential. "Could have made this money, maybe, if not for..."

I see this a an income source that's being pissed away by overreacting. These issues were dealt with long ago in the broadcast industry, which is a lot harder to monitor. Is the porn industry locked out of ASCAP or something? Every time you hear a song on the radio, there's "cha-chinging" going on. Mega-uploads was apparently making megabucks off the advertising. Same goes for the other file share systems, tubes, & whatnot. They wouldn't be doing this without some kind of profit. How much did Google pay for You Tube? It just seems counterproductive to be spending all your energy in a futile attempt to shut down the file sharing industry instead of going after a piece of the ad revenue. It won't be as much as having all those people join your sites & pay movie theater prices for a download. But that's not going to happen. You can't even think about touching the kind of volume that these guys have. The Napster plan didn't work. The people who swap files aren't going to pay to do it. They're still going to do what they do though, & somebody with a server is going to help while making a boatload of cash. You guys are attacking your potential partners, & all it is is an expense to you. Time to get pragmatic?