[UPDATE] Feds Take Down Megaupload

[1337mokro]

Let me get this straight.

Some of the employees were arrested in New Zealand, who all have different Nationalities, for crimes committed against American Copyright Holders, whilst they themselves are based in Hong Kong.

Can International law be violated any more? What the fuck is going on here. Grow a fucking back bone people and get your citizens back. I don't want to get sued by some american dickwad because I infringed some law in his country that's perfectly legal in the one I live.

Am I the only one who fucking LOVES that this happened? Good riddance. We need less of these illegal upload sites. If you've got video to upload, WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUTUBE THERE FOR?

Youtube heavily censors it's video and will take down anything with the slightest possible copyright infringement. I had permission to use music from the guys that made the song, a good friend of mine who is a DJ, and it STILL got taken down and they never replied to my complaints.

Giving youtube a monopoly on videosharing is probably the stupidest thing you can do. That´s why I thank god other video sharing sites exist.

(not to mention that little clause in Universal and Youtube´s contract that says Universal can take down every goddamn video it so pleases)

 

[MattAn24]

Hello America. Fix your Government.

Regards, rest of the world.

Hello, Japan, UK, Russia, Italy, Greece, Australia, and various others. Please fix your respective Goverments as well.

Regards, Canada I guess...

Ah, but you see, unlike the US, those countries tend to have relatively little power outside of their own borders. Compare that to the US that seems to believe anywhere on earth is "US jurisdiction".

It's possible to step too far. But equally bad is not stepping at all.

Woah there Confucius, think about it. When you go too far, it's really hard to go back. When you've gone nowhere, it's pretty easy to get going.

Point is that no, it's not equally bad. Going too far is always worse, especially in these cases. Once you get that boulder rolling, it's not gonna stop.

That still reads like, "Do nothing because it's too dangerous" to me. So long as the moves they make are good ones I'll support them like this and write and protest about the ones that aren't like SOPA.

Then you're reading it wrong. It means that you should be fucking careful before you do anything drastic, because drastic measures have a way of escalating and getting out of hand. Doing nothing never gets out of hand, and it gives you an excellent opportunity to think about what you should actually do and how you should it before you get started on doing it. Get what I'm sayin' bro?

It's not drastic though. If you think it is fine. It's a company receiving due punishment for breaking and conspiring to break the law. The thing that probably hurts them worse is the conspiracy part more than just hosting files.

Break what law? What's the point of even having independence and democratic rule if the US is gonna impose their own laws on you anyway? You don't think that's drastic??? We might as well just remove our own parliaments and just let the US tell us what to do and what is right and wrong. A country that still enforces the death penalty is going to be the moral and judicial compass of the world...

The fact that the whole site, and all affiliated sites, get torn down like that even BEFORE anyone has been sentenced to anything at all? And the complete disregard for the millions of users who used that service to host their completely legitimate files? Screw them? You're nuts, sorry.

So how do we target PIRATES, then, hm? HM? Well? Gonna answer me? WELL!? Make it a fucking good reason!

If there's no real country that has "rules or guidelines" for the internet and how things are shared, how IS stuff meant to work.

We're clearly not going to ask Sweden, because they have no fucking idea, because apparently EVERYTHING is free. Sorry, but things cost money. You're fined/jailed for stealing an actual product from a store, what makes it any different on the internet? You're stealing content and spreading it around. What's the fucking point in releasing anything then?

I can't wait to see the drastic result to this. Releases just stop, nothing else for anyone ever. Thanks a fucking lot. Douchebags.

 

[MattAn24]

Why does the fact that somebody from the music buisness is behind the site suprise anyone?

Granted, my first bet would have been one of the big names from the porn industry.

But these people aren't stupid. They know that their money is running through the drain of piracy. And while they all just love banging on how much they want the Feds to ban piracy, they know it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

So the more sensible thing is to simply chip in yourself and host the sites that make a profit of "stealing" your own products. That way you can even sue your own customers for "pirating" your stuff.

Holy shit. This. Who knows if he hasn't already tried to sue some of his own customers?

 

[Rainforce]

On another note, what scares me most about SOPA is probably the utter lack of media attention. I've yet to see it on any news source on TV. Or on the radio. Because the media is all part of these huge conglomerates, which are the ones pushing SOPA. So they don't want to inform people of it. The media is no longer the watchdog of the government. And that's frightening.

I live in germany, and we got the wikiblackout/sopa-pipa thing on pretty much every major channel on the 18th. Even our green party blacked their site.
Same for probably every other country on this planet. Still nothing in the US? Well... you live on a sinking ship, I'm afraid.

on topic: this is all very interesting indeed, and I cannot imagine how the entertainment industry could ever win against the...let's say"the united power of the internet", because for that you would need something BIGGER than the internet. and that doesn't exist on this planet anymore. We have millions of people connected that can exchange information instantly and onthefly, from all over the world, so a mere country can not stop this network.

 

[MattAn24]

So how do we target PIRATES, then, hm? HM? Well? Gonna answer me? WELL!? Make it a fucking good reason!

If there's no real country that has "rules or guidelines" for the internet and how things are shared, how IS stuff meant to work.

We're clearly not going to ask Sweden, because they have no fucking idea, because apparently EVERYTHING is free. Sorry, but things cost money. You're fined/jailed for stealing an actual product from a store, what makes it any different on the internet? You're stealing content and spreading it around. What's the fucking point in releasing anything then?

I can't wait to see the drastic result to this. Releases just stop, nothing else for anyone ever. Thanks a fucking lot. Douchebags.

Thats some attitude XD

You know, since youre so eager too draw comparisons you should at least learn what would be the right way:

First: The internet is not a separate word, its a medium. We need to keep this in mind, since there are laws for this world and those apply to the internet to!

Second: So, if youd try to regulate file sharing on the internet that wouldnt be like making laws for a lawless place. Its more like banning the selling of empty CDs, because they are mainly used to copy music.

Third: If you want to draw the comparison with stealing:
The internet equivalent of stealing in a shop would be to go to a internet shop, like amazon or steam maybe, and take stuff without paying for it. Sharing files is sharing something that you already got, noone can actually proove that you stole it at that point and as you may know, its right for the defendant when theres nothing proven.

And that's some major wrong you're typing there. Let's start with the most wrong, your third point. Just because you've bought something, doesn't give you ANY excuse to share it with others. You bought *your* copy of a product. Others need to buy their damn own.
Second point? Bullshit. If Anonymous is allowed to legally go around defacing websites, maliciously attacking them, (saying they're doing it in the name of free speech is absurd, they're illegally accessing someone elses property. Using real world law, that's breaking and entering. Which is against the law.

Also, just discovered this little thing about "Kim Dotcom".. "Kim Dotcom gained notoriety as a computer criminal convicted of credit card fraud, hacking, insider trading and embezzlement."

WHY IS HE AN ENTREPRENEUR!? How the fuck is he the one previously linked as co-founder of MegaUpload, etc? That's insane. No wonder the FBI went after it. Not to mention the ars technica article, which goes, in detail, about the shit employees were doing.

Anonymous doing *anything* isn't helping. All they do is have temper tantrums and fuck with people's shit, where they shouldn't be.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars

Read it, you might learn something.

 

[devotedsniper]

My university backup.....my programs source code backups....gone.... I suppose it's a good thing i have 2 other back up locations but i feel sorry for any people who don't.

Anyone else think the "Justice" department are only doing this to show that even without SOPA, they can still take sites down?

Sucks to be you, then, using a third party site for important backups. Cloud filing has its benefits, but it would cost you about the same amount in the long run to get a flash drive or an external HD for further backup.
And, yes, the Justice Department can always do this, legitimately. SOPA would have taken away all that annoying bullshit like search warrants and due process.

Hence why i have 2 other backups, a backup hard drive which sole purpose is backing up, university hard drive space and then theres my original copy my removable hard drive.

Either way it sucks for those who don't have multiple places to back up to.

 

[Therumancer]

Damn, they're slow.

I thought law enforcement agencies had "street smarts". Guess not.

Hmmm, well I think people are overlooking the important bit here in their interest to make this into a piracy/copyrights case... on both sides of the fence of copyrights issues.

One of the charges brought here is money laundering. There aren't any details here as to what was being done exactly, but that's probably why there are actually arrests being made despite what it's being dressed up as. Chances are some kind of money trail was found which went back to the "mega" family of digital services, now we're seeing a bust, and people both politicians and those interested in copyrights are trying to make this into something it's not.

See, for money laundering to be involved in connection to these charges it's likely we're not dealing with your typical first world piracy where no money is being made off the media by the pirates and the concerns are entirely about lost sales.

While pure speculation on my part, I'd imagine what happened was that the specific guys who got busted were charging money for copyrighted material at least out of the pubic eye, with this being covered as part of the megaupload business... specifically so criminals with stolen money could spend a ton of it through Megaupload as a filter and were then given the majority of that money (sans a fee) back in order to "clean it" as far as the trail goes. Basically trying to use the crimes of cash for content pirates, as a cover for a bigger crime, assuming nobody was going to actually go after Megaupload since they hadn't done so already.... it's impossible to say yet, but if we ever find out the details it's probably going to be something along these lines. I'm no expert on money laundering so I can't tell you how it would work exactly... but going by the charges, there is obviously something going on there.


Given that the CEO was not busted it seems likely this was something going on within his organization, not nessicarly involving him or what he was already getting attention for. It not being an actual "copyright bust" despites what the industry might want to believe means that he's not really on the radar since all contreversy aside, he never did anything that they feel they can prosecute him for.

Or in short (as I said to begin with) it's a money laundering case, and legally speaking there probably won't be anything more to it than that. The other charges are just dressing, when someone gets arrested IRL every possible charge that can be remotely associated with what someone did is usually thrown at them. In the end a lot of that is going to be thrown out, and probably wouldn't work anyway, but given one good charge the rest of the stuff sounds good and helps set high bails to keep someone in custody. That's a big deal especially in a money laundering case because the people that do that usually have tons of money and the authorities want an unreachable bail because if these guys can get out of custody there is a decent chance they are going to flee somewhere without an extradition treaty. You can't freeze hidden assets and that's what this kind of crime usually comes down to, they probably got caught on one trail, but a decent money laundering operation probably had a lot of money going through it with the guy(s) running it stashing a cut from each transaction.

 

[Monsterfurby]

"racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement."

wait what? racketeering? were they beating up music producers to give them illegal copies? money laundering? how exactly? i call bull. reminds me when stormtroppers in US just randomly confiscate servers because someone though it could have copyright material. turns out it didn't, but they didn't return the servers anyway. so pretty much they stole the servers.

It's a RICO indictment? That explains a lot. I was wondering how they actually figured they could just shut down a running business without, you know, them actually being found guilty of anything. If it's a racketeering conspiracy charge, they actually *can* do that.

 

[Prince Regent]

Megaupload, has been shut down by the federal authorities.

These are the US federal athourities yes? Now I suspected that Megaupload is Hong Kong based and Wikipedia agrees with me.

So how come american federales, from a internal information agency no less, have the authority to shut down a foreign website? One would asume they'd at leas need a judges permission or something.

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

Good to see the Justice Department shut down entire websites to catch some pirates. Oh, all you millions of legal users? Well, you're shit out of luck - we wanted to nab some pirates at your expense. What's next on the chopping block? Rapidshare?

*shakes head* This country is run by a bunch of idiots...

 

[Monsterfurby]

Megaupload, has been shut down by the federal authorities.

These are the US federal athourities yes? Now I suspected that Megaupload is Hong Kong based and Wikipedia agrees with me.

So how come american federales, from a internal information agency no less, have the authority to shut down a foreign website? One would asume they'd at leas need a judges permission or something.

I suppose they didn't technically shut down the company, only their servers, which were located in the US, their domain, to which the same applies, and arrested nearly their entire management. Still, the company itself probably still operates *de jure*.

 

[Superior Mind]

Reading much of the Internet commentary about this has made me feel sad for the world. All this talk about waging war on behalf of fallen Megaupload, all the Anonymous shit and the fear that Megaupload is the first "victim" of SOPA...

Get some perspective please people.

The raid on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom was the result of an operation that has been going on for a considerable amount of time. It's not like taking down Youtube because a kid posted a video of them singing Lady Gaga into a hairbrush. Megaupload is a site that allows the legitimate free sharing of files, sure, but it has also enabled piracy on a huge scale and the operators have done little to nothing to curb it. Why?

Spoiler: This is why.

This is Kim Dotcom's mansion. Technically this classifies as a supervillain lair situated on top of a volcano given that it is in Auckland New Zealand.

Dotcom sold a service that gave its users access to billions of dollars worth of pirated material, he did fuck-all about protecting the "integrity" of the service because he knew that's what his customers wanted. Dotcom is, at least partially, a huge racketeer, he has made millions and millions essentially selling material that isn't his. Megaupload isn't a victim of SOPA, it's not a victim at all. Of course this is up to the courts to decide and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. My point is that Megaupload has done more than enough to earn the wrath of the law and Dotcom isn't an innocent multi-millionaire victim.

This isn't about SOPA though, and all these Internet vigilantes have the completely wrong idea. I've seen so many posts about how people will have to "download everything they can before SOPA is passed". That is the completely wrong end of the stick and is awful for all those who oppose SOPA on rational grounds. People aren't opposed to SOPA because it takes away peoples' "right" to download shit for free over the Internet. They are against it because it grants overbearing powers to copyright holders, makes copyright laws themselves overbearing, destroys fair use, promotes corporate censorship, harms freedom of information and free speech, introduces unjust penalties - to name but a few problems. And on a global scale too with the US creating a law that is going to impact countries around the world. I'd like it if SOPA dealt with piracy, the fact that it doesn't is another reason to oppose it.

People are so willing to showcase their ignorance on the Internet, I'd appreciate if those assuming they're on the anti-SOPA side would actually learn a thing or two about the situation first.

 

[TheLazyGeek]

-snip-

Thank you! And I agree that MU is far from innocent. It's because of the premium uploader fee and ad revenue WITH pirated content. While it sucks for legitimate users who shared their own content, my own experience with MU says there's thrice as much copyrighted content on their sites than "fair use" content, at the very least. I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio were higher.

And looking at the charges, the copyright infringement isn't the biggest thing for them to worry about. It's the 'conspiring to commit money laundering' and racketeering that's going to hit them hard.

 

[BlackStar42]

Where am I going to get my Stainless Steel mods now?!

 

[SenseOfTumour]

A very simple point no-one seems to have made, if we're all bankrupting every entertainment industry thru the evils of piracy...

How come they can afford to buy politicians, run massive pro-SOPA ad campaigns ,and cover cities in billboards on the day of the net blackout.

Surely that money should have gone on bread for their starving families?

Or maybe it's the control thing again, they don't realise that pretty much every job between the artist and the customer is slowly becoming obsolete, and that the suits might have to actually go and get a job, instead of booking an ad and taking 10%.

We don't have fletchers, coopers and blacksmiths in the local mall for a reason, and their guilds aren't pushing for a ban on guns, carrier bags and plastic manufacturers, they just moved onto a new career when they became outdated.

You just can't cling on to the past forever, no matter how many lawyers and politicians you have bought to tell everyone it's true.

 

[Woodsey]

Why don't they just spend a hundredth of the price of pursuing this legal case on a website that shows their own fucking TV shows?

 

[Trasken]

This feels terribly apropos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BN1jSpiyIM&feature=related

Seriously what the fuck does the US think it is? World police? this is like that canadian that got charged for "crimes" commited in canada, or that uk citizen that is getting extradited because what he did in the uk isn't illegal.

I mean for fuck's sake! they take our porn! OUR MOTHERFUCKING PORN!!!!!!

it's like this only instead of jobs it's porn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik

 

[Vohn_exel]

Wow, maybe they just wanted to see how a SOPA style raid would go. I guess they figured nothing would come of it...and I guess nothing did. Still...I'd be pissed if I couldn't post my videos on youtube (not that they're any good) because people like to post "Fullmetal Alchemist part 3/5" in low quality.

Especially since Fullmetal Alchemist is streamed for free on Hulu in high quality!

OT: Sooooooo one of the reasons we banded against SOPA was to prevent them from doing something they already could do?

Or on Netflix for...not so free. But still

But yeah, I mean isn't this what the bill was for? They did it anyway, why did they need a bill for it?

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

How many people think this is the authorities trying to prove there is a pirate problem so everyone turns around and goes 'Oh I'm so sorry! We DO need SOPA!'

....

Yeees... We know there's pirates but you don't take out a termite problem with a nuclear strike >_>

 

[remmus]

And, yes, the Justice Department can always do this, legitimately. SOPA would have taken away all that annoying bullshit like search warrants and due process.

man you scare me, it´s darn scary to hear a person calling search warrants and due process annoying, the two few things protecting people from rich farts and sneaky politicians or well anyone from abusing the law in there favour, the two things that forces people to pause and ask questions.