Anti-Piracy Group Targets Mega

[PinkiePyro]

they are just being obnoxious at least mega is making an effort to be clean this is all just making a mountain out of a molehill

 

[Mike the Bard]

King claimed that Mega is already sharing a "significant amount" of infringing material, although he declined to provide evidence to support the charge,

If king is right, then why doesn't he release the evidence? If you show they are hosting illegal material and are not actively trying to remove it then you got them red handed. which leads me to your next statement King...

and said that "there is no mechanism by which rights holders can gain access to remove files, there appears to be no plans to institute arrangements whereby files can be matched against MD5 or other fingerprinting technology for automated copyright removal and the detection of harmful content, and the site has not shown any wish to comply with the policies of the payment processors with whom it seeks to do business."

I have three problems with this statement

1. your suggesting that copyright holders should be able to directly remove files themselves. Not even youtube allows this since it opens the door to abuse by people removing content which isn't infringing on any copyrights but they just don't like.

2. You say there "appears" to be no automated system? you can't make the charges your making and expect it to go anywhere unless you know for a fact. If you do, then you better have some evidence to back up your claims. Which your not showings us.

3. MD5 can only find a copyrighted file that has not been modified in any way. If they have been, then MD5 will not know that the file is copyrighted material and will not block it. So saying that since MEGA is not using an easily fooled system and any like it, they're allowing copyrighted material on their website is a dodgy argument at best.

 

[Jamous]

I am really hoping this goes the way it should and Mega blows them way out of the water. These people really oughtn't make any progress whatsoever, especially if they have no evidence. Best of luck to Mega with the hope it can avoid any other arseholes going out of their way to be difficult.

 

[major_chaos]

Ok anti-piracy zealots always annoy but this is a whole new level of stupid. I have to wonder who is paying these morons or if there really are just that many delusional MPAA/RIAA fanboys.
Also I cant believe these morons are going after hotfile of all places now, seriously where the hell do they expect people to store files to share? or do they not realize there is such thing as legal file sharing? Also their own description kinda makes them sound like a Annon style cyberbully group, but I'm sure no action will be taken against them because they have a "good cause". (albeit "good" here means "loyal to the corporate overlords")

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I think these just might be the most hated people on the internet.

Pirates of course despise them as they are working to take down the sites that the pirates use.

And yet, law abiding people hate them because they're idiotic vigilantes!

I love it.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

I would LOVE to see someone else do the EXACT same tactic and cut off any funding this group has XD

 

[crepesack]

Say I run a storage company and a thief keeps his stolen wares there and I have no way to go through his stuff and tell if it's stolen should I be shut down?

 

[Strazdas]

so wait, some shady group calling themselves "StopFileLockers" (who came up with that name?) has the ability to freeze bank accounts? seriously?

Mega, please come to Lithuania, our Scandinavian banks would just tell them to stick it and process your funds as usual.

Also no site should be forced to create mechanisms to allow some 3rd party control of its content with easy matching ids that they do not like.

Funnily enough, by this logic they should close down microsft. The SkyDrive (microsofts cloud hosting service) has pretty much no way of checking whats uploaded there, and i know a person who keeps a backup copy of his illegal cracked windows 7 in microsofts own cloud service. and its there for like a year now and noone noticed. So we shoudl stop microsoft from runing their company now. Same goes for google and dropbox, they offer same services. heck, who doesnt offer cloud hosting now?

I would LOVE to see someone else do the EXACT same tactic and cut off any funding this group has XD

I guess its time for 4chan to pull their mouses again.

Say I run a storage company and a thief keeps his stolen wares there and I have no way to go through his stuff and tell if it's stolen should I be shut down?

Unless your are in, like, switczerland, it is very likely they would confiscate your whole warehouse till they find it, essentially bankrupting you. my dads friend was once wrongly accused of printing his childs school card. they confiscated half of his house, kept it for over 6 months and once they returned and "apologized" for the misconception most of the items were broken. however that was all in the right as far as police were concerned.

 

[Callate]

Ah, yes, the righteous cause of making people go to torrents and sketchier overseas file clients. Perhaps these people get a kickback from Symantec and McAfee?

I've got no great love of pirates, as someone who has had his own work pirated within 24 hours of its release. But this is just vigilantism- and petty vigilantism at that.

 

[gigastar]

The Mega ToS does clearly state that its not meant to be used for sharing copyrighted content, not that this King fellow seems to give a fuck.

Mind you it doesnt say what Mega will actually do about illicit file sharing. If the site grows to the size that Megaupload used to be then it would become damn near impossible to shepard effectively.

 

[weirdee]

good intentions are their mask, but i'm starting to think this "antigroup" might have a little too much power and could start dictating the terms of use on many facets of the internet based on their own agenda rather than what may or may not be the case

does this sound familiar to anybody? hm?

 

[Aeshi]

*sighs heavily*

This is why we can't have nice things...

Looking at their ToS there are clauses such as...

"16. You own, or warrant that you are authorised to use, any intellectual property in any data you store on, use, download, upload or otherwise transmit to or from, our service."

"17. You can't:
17.1 assign or transfer any rights you have under these terms to any other person without getting our written agreement;
17.2 do anything that would damage, disrupt or place an unreasonable burden on our website or service or anyone else's use of our website or a service including but not limited to denial of service attacks or similar;
17.3 infringe anyone else's intellectual property (including but not limited to copyright) or other rights in any material."

"17.5 use our website or a service, including, without limitation, any communication tools available through the website, or any forum, chat room or message centre that we provide:
17.5.1 to store, use, download, upload or otherwise transmit, data in violation of any law (including to breach copyright or other intellectual property held by us or anyone else)"

"19. We respect the copyright of others and require that users of our services comply with the laws of copyright. You are strictly prohibited from using our services to infringe copyright. You may not upload, download, store, share, display, stream, distribute, e-mail, link to, transmit or otherwise make available any files, data, or content that infringes any copyright or other proprietary rights of any person or entity."

So... WHY exactly do these guys have a problem?

Because they know ToS's are basically the equivalent of a sticky note with "plz don't use improperly" on it (assuming people even read it in the first place.)?

 

[karloss01]

so why aren't these guys going after 4shared, Rapidshare, Mediafire, Uploaded, Filefactory, Netload, Hotfile, Letitbit, Extabit, Depositfiles, Crocko, Przeklej, Dump,Uploading, Megashares, Furk, 4FastFile, GoldFile, GigaSize, TurboBit, HitFile, ZippyShare, SoundCloud, BitShare, UploadStation, FreakShare, SpeedyShare, Fyels, FilePost, Scribd, DocStoc, GlumboUploads, HellShare, RapidGator, HulkShare, FilesFlash, FilesMonster, FiberUpload, 2shared, ShareFlare, CloudNator, ShareBeast, FileFlyer, JumboFiles, FileGag, FreshMaza, RyuShare, PutLocker, FileVelocity, FileMates, LuckyShare, LumFile, DropBox, Box, FileSwap, CramIt, UltraMegaBit or FileNuke?

all of the above are filesharing sites some just as popular as Mega/Megaupload yet haven't suffered the same fate despite hosting pirated files. it seems that none of these morons realise that in order to catch these files they need a host of staff trolling through the servers and comsumers that report the files as copy-righted material.

hell youtube has the same problem, i can find full episodes of tv series and cartoons on youtube that have been there since the episode aired.

this seems like global trolling to me, to attack one while dozens if not hundreds get away with it in plain view.

 

[Baldr]

so why aren't these guys going after 4shared, Rapidshare, Mediafire, Uploaded, Filefactory, Netload, Hotfile, Letitbit, Extabit, Depositfiles, Crocko, Przeklej, Dump,Uploading, Megashares, Furk, 4FastFile, GoldFile, GigaSize, TurboBit, HitFile, ZippyShare, SoundCloud, BitShare, UploadStation, FreakShare, SpeedyShare, Fyels, FilePost, Scribd, DocStoc, GlumboUploads, HellShare, RapidGator, HulkShare, FilesFlash, FilesMonster, FiberUpload, 2shared, ShareFlare, CloudNator, ShareBeast, FileFlyer, JumboFiles, FileGag, FreshMaza, RyuShare, PutLocker, FileVelocity, FileMates, LuckyShare, LumFile, DropBox, Box, FileSwap, CramIt, UltraMegaBit or FileNuke?

all of the above are filesharing sites some just as popular as Mega/Megaupload yet haven't suffered the same fate despite hosting pirated files. it seems that none of these morons realise that in order to catch these files they need a host of staff trolling through the servers and comsumers that report the files as copy-righted material.

hell youtube has the same problem, i can find full episodes of tv series and cartoons on youtube that have been there since the episode aired.

this seems like global trolling to me, to attack one while dozens if not hundreds get away with it in plain view.

Because most of these sites have filters installed. Megaupload was the one that did not. You had to file a complaint, then it took two weeks for them to remove the the copyrighted material, only to have another file show up the next day. Getting your games pulled off the site was ridiculous.

 

[ThisGuyLikesNoTacos]

Seems logical to me... and by that I mean desperate.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Mega's terms of service are pretty all-encompassing. People can ignore them any way they want, but you can't come down on the site for that.

 

[Denamic]

What's the point of MD5 chacksums when every file is zipped up?
I mean, that changes its checksum.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

(Face palm) Is it wrong that I hope Anonymous will get involved? I understand why these people are trying to do this... but there HAS to be a better way to do it...