Megaupload SHUT DOWN ... More to follow?

[GroobySteven]

Win for anti-piracy. Watch our for more to follow and these companies closing their sites.


http://www.xbiz.com/news/143421

WASHINGTON — Cyberlocker site Megaupload.com has been shut down and its operators have been charged in the U.S. with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for "massive worldwide online piracy" of numerous types of copyrighted works, including porn.
The U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced the indictments today after a multi-agency, multi-country investigation. The agencies said Megaupload.com and other related sites generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and caused more than $500 million in harm to copyright owners.
"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the U.S. and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime," the agencies said in a joint statement.
The individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Ltd. and Vestor Ltd. —were indicted by a grand jury in Virginia on Jan. 5, the agencies said.
Charges include in engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.
The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.
The indictment alleges that the criminal enterprise is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Dotcom founded Megaupload Ltd. and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Ltd., which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites, including Megarotic.com, Megaporn.com, Megavideo.com and Megaclick.com, the agencies said.
In addition, the following alleged employees of the alleged conspiracy were charged in the indictment, including Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the chief marketing officer; Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, who is the graphic designer; Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the head of business development; and Mathias Ortmann, 40, a citizen of Germany and resident of both Germany and Hong Kong, who is the chief technical officer, co-founder and director.
Also charged were Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, who is a software programmer and head of the development software division; and Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, who oversees programming and the underlying network structure for the Mega conspiracy websites.
Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann, and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities, who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Bencko, Echternach, and Nomm remain at large.
Today, law enforcement also executed more than 20 search warrants in the U.S. and eight countries, seized approximately $50 million in assets, and targeted sites where Megaupload has servers in Ashburn, Va., Washington, the Netherlands and Canada.
In addition, the U.S. District Court at Alexandria, Va., ordered the seizure of 18 domain names associated with the alleged conspiracy.
According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies — often before their theatrical release — music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale.
The conspirators’ content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors, and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet, the agencies said.
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 indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded.
The charged further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. They also allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.
The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites’ uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content.
Megaupload currently is engaged in a lawsuit with Universal over the promotional video and Universal’s efforts to have it removed from YouTube.
In November, adult company Perfect 10 and Megaupload reached a settlement agreement in Megaload's $5 million copyright infringement suit. Details of the settlement weren’t disclosed at the time.
Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken did not immediately respond to XBIZ requests for comment by post time.

[RallyCola]

are your pants tight steven?

[GroobySteven]

are your pants tight steven?

Wet.

[Faldur]

Just an average guys observations, but it would seem the "tube" sights are doing more or at least as much damage to the industry. And they seem to breed like moss in Seattle. It will be interesting to watch this play out.

[SunshyneMonroe]

Just an average guys observations, but it would seem the "tube" sights are doing more or at least as much damage to the industry. And they seem to breed like moss in Seattle. It will be interesting to watch this play out.

ALOT of sites post videos there too get new members as well tho....

[kittyKaiti]

In other news, within hours after the end of a worldwide internet blackout protest against SOPA and PIPA, Anonymous launches the largest internet based offensive ever with combined numbers of attackers in the thousands from various nations, bring down over a dozen websites in retaliation for the downing of MegaUpload.com. Servers for corporations and federal agencies such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Department of Justice (DOJ.gov), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.gov) and many others are rendered inaccessible for hours. Assaults continue, taking more websites and servers down.

[giovanni_hotel]

Damn. Megaupload and Megaerotic were the best DL sites in the world.

None of those people are going to see a minute in a U.S. jail BTW.

What I don't get is there are at least a dozen other free DL sites like Megaupload. What about them.

Ah, I'm feeling nostalgic for the good ol' bad days of the internet.

You can't spell interwebz without the word F-R-E-E.

[bart87]

anybody who supports SOPA can go to hell

[Jamie French]

Until they make a piece of media for profit that otherwise would not have been made regardless of demand, and then try to sell it. Your average schmo will never understand how frustrating it is to see your hard work spread around like the clap.

Don't get me wrong, free information and media is great but there's a difference between someone uploading their song or art work for free to be shared with the rest of the world, and legitimate businesses who are doing there level best to generate the kind of content people are willing to pay for.

I give my music away for free, make my money playing live gigs. I do it because my love of music is that intense. I would and will do it for free for the rest of my days even if it meant I sleep on the streets.

Does anyone honestly think we film this shit because we think being in porn fulfills any kind of real creative yearning? There are much easier and more meaningful ways to have sex for judas sake!

Words are wasted on those who consume without having ever sacrificed.

[kittyKaiti]

It does not justify shutting down DMCA compliant websites, arresting it's owners and charging them with federal offenses leading to 20+ years imprisonment in a federal pen. Not all uploaded material on megaupload was copyrighted and MegaUpload's admin's complied with DMCA takedowns and did what they could to removed infringing material. Attacks like this by the government against websites, especially if SOPA and PIPA are enacted into law, threaten every blog, forum, file sharing site, online storage sites, social networking, fan sites, news media and search engines on the internet.