[UPDATE] Feds Take Down Megaupload

[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.

 

[JoaoJatoba]

We are at the edge of revolution. Not of arms, but data. I guess the next few days are gonna be very interesting.

"With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty." - Finch, V for Vendetta