Megaupload file-sharing site shut down, founders charged

[SexyMF]

MU was used by alot of people for legit exchanges of files and they had contracts for off site backups with alot of companies.

and how would u have them scan files, the files are always rared and mostly with password or multirar and have names that dont say something that could be identified. if u follow the DMCA there should be no reason to shut down a site.

Legit users are victums here. I am not disputing that. As for scanning of files - well the user downloading the game has access because the password is published with the links. Nothing to stop MU checking out the files the same way as Joe Public.

This is how it's going to be, as the the world figures out how to strike a balance of privacy vs copyright infringment

[Linchpin]

Except how would they know where the uploaders posted the links as well as the passwords(if they posted it publicly at all) unless you're advocating that they blatantly spy on all their users internet activity 24/7 just to verify that 1 archive which probably ends up being the dudes vacation photos or something.

[Dimitriman]

Funny how things work in the U.S.
It is ok to sell guns to every citizen and gun makers are not charged on people's deaths because they only put the weapon in the market and do not pull the trigger.
Yet the same principle does not apply for Megaupload.

Capitalism at it's best.

[SMTB1963]

Funny how things work in the U.S.
It is ok to sell guns to every citizen and gun makers are not charged on people's deaths because they only put the weapon in the market and do not pull the trigger.
Yet the same principle does not apply for Megaupload.

I'll assume you're not trolling, you're just misinformed. Just so you know:

1. Not everyone in the US is allowed to buy a gun.
2. In order to sell a gun to someone, there are laws that must be followed.
3. If Megaupload operates in the US, there are laws they must follow.
4. If a gun dealer runs afoul of US law, they can expect to get shut down.
5. If Megaupload runs afoul of US law, they can expect to get shut down.

I fail to see any inconsistency in principles or the application of the law here.

Capitalism at it's best.

No need to bring any "isms" into the discussion - unless you're trying to get this thread closed.

Back OT, Dotcom et al have hired Robert Bennett to defend them. Can't say they won't be adequately represented...he is one of the most prominent defense lawyers in the country.

[ajaidev]

I'll assume you're not trolling, you're just misinformed. Just so you know:

1. Not everyone in the US is allowed to buy a gun.
2. In order to sell a gun to someone, there are laws that must be followed.
3. If Megaupload operates in the US, there are laws they must follow.
4. If a gun dealer runs afoul of US law, they can expect to get shut down.
5. If Megaupload runs afoul of US law, they can expect to get shut down.

I fail to see any inconsistency in principles or the application of the law here.

No need to bring any "isms" into the discussion - unless you're trying to get this thread closed.

Back OT, Dotcom et al have hired Robert Bennett to defend them. Can't say they won't be adequately represented...he is one of the most prominent defense lawyers in the country.

He meant it in another way its not the fault of the provider "In both cases" how the person uses the power provided. If a man who does not have a bad history with fire arms kills someone it is he who will go to jail, not the gun maker or the arm dealer.

[MattiasNYC]

He meant it in another way its not the fault of the provider "In both cases" how the person uses the power provided. If a man who does not have a bad history with fire arms kills someone it is he who will go to jail, not the gun maker or the arm dealer.

I think the prosecution is arguing - in this case - that the owners/operators of MU knew that their property was used to break laws. They were given an opportunity to stop that and didn't take it.

The analogy would be that a gun maker/dealer sells weapons to to a group of people, get complaints that this group is using the guns to commit crimes, but then continues to facilitate them committing the crimes anyways.

A sort of "material support" I suppose.

Not at all an outlandish argument in my opinion.

[SMTB1963]

He meant it in another way its not the fault of the provider "In both cases" how the person uses the power provided. If a man who does not have a bad history with fire arms kills someone it is he who will go to jail, not the gun maker or the arm dealer.

What is alleged in this case (among other things) is that MU's actions facilitated copyright infringement/piracy. It's equivalent to a gun dealer knowing that a person will commit a crime with a weapon, but sells it to them anyway. In such a scenario, the gun dealer has run afoul of US law and is in fact criminally liable.

Of course, what people actually knew (or what their intentions were) is a very difficult thing to prove in a criminal proceeding. Like I said before, it's by no means a foregone conclusion that the DOJ's prosecution of MU will be successful.

EDIT: Looks like MattiasNYC beat me to it...well said!

[Buckeye]

Its not just about sharing copy righted stuff. Not like any of us would know what they were doing behind the scenes.
Where they failed was to host servers in the USA.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/J...2-crm-074.html

The individuals and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 5, 2012, and charged with 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.

[MattiasNYC]

Its not just about sharing copy righted stuff. Not like any of us would know what they were doing behind the scenes.
Where they failed was to host servers in the USA.

How about "where they failed was to knowingly host copyright infringed content on their servers"?

[Dimitriman]

What is alleged in this case (among other things) is that MU's actions facilitated copyright infringement/piracy. It's equivalent to a gun dealer knowing that a person will commit a crime with a weapon, but sells it to them anyway. In such a scenario, the gun dealer has run afoul of US law and is in fact criminally liable.

Of course, what people actually knew (or what their intentions were) is a very difficult thing to prove in a criminal proceeding. Like I said before, it's by no means a foregone conclusion that the DOJ's prosecution of MU will be successful.

EDIT: Looks like MattiasNYC beat me to it...well said!

I don't mean to be political. Why do people always go that route? Not meaning to offend the USA who is still 100x more fair than my country. I just mean to say that there are a lot of hypocrisy where someone gets arrested because his service "allows other people" to break the law, while there are several other examples of goods and services where the same idea does not apply. I.e. with guns.

If you are telling me that a gun maker does not know what will be done with the guns he produces then you are being very naive. The only purpose for a gun is to wound or kill another human being or animal.

Yet with so many gun related deaths, only the users suffer the consequences, not the provider.
That is different with the example of Megaupload.

But anyway I rest my case. Let's not go off topic.

[SMTB1963]

Where they failed was to host servers in the USA.

That's certainly the strongest argument the DOJ has for asserting jurisdiction, but not the only one. This ars article spells out another pretty well:

Megaupload purposely did business in the US and with US residents, and it targeted its sites (in part) toward the US. You generally can't gain the benefits of doing business in a jurisdiction without complying with its laws, and being subject to its enforcement efforts (assuming that the jurisdiction can physically gets its hands on you).

Even if they had all their servers overseas, the DOJ would likely still have been able to get an indictment (although their argument for getting NZ law enforcement to arrest Dotcom would have been less compelling).

How about "where they failed was to knowingly host copyright infringed content on their servers"?

I admit that made me chuckle. But to be fair, that's merely alleged, not proven.

[sin0822]

they did a lot of other stuff that got them taken down. Not just helped share files, but didn't take down links they were ordered to take down, and shared files themselves that were pirated.

No there is a tool given to big media that allows them to search through sites like this to find data like that, and then they notify them to take it down. Same thing with child :banana::banana::banana::banana: on their site, but they took down the child :banana::banana::banana::banana:, but not the files.

Like for instance back in 2003 i had a guy who worked on my website and he uploaded some MP3s to the host. i am talking about a really damn small site, and then my host emailed me and this is a pretty big host, and told me i gotta take down those files. Now if they can do that in such a small scale back then imagine about now?

[SMTB1963]

The only purpose for a gun is to wound or kill another human being or animal.

Strange, I always thought the purpose of guns was to blast roadsigns from the back of moving pickup trucks.



Must have something to do with my upbringing.

EDIT: Just saw this on hardocp. I think Mr. Dotcom's gonna be OK, because I'm pretty sure they allow XBOXs inside club fed.

[largon]

Now, what's this...

All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.

[Fatal Error]

Lawsuits are coming for FS since they changed the essence of their services, either they give the money back to those who demand it or will have legal consequences i guess.

[Vardant]

Fileserve, another leading player, also ended its affiliate program this weekend. Additionally, this morning TorrentFreak received news that Fileserve has now joined Filesonic in banning all 3rd party downloads.

As previously reported, Uploaded.to banned all US IP addresses in what appears to be an effort to distance itself from US jurisdiction. Its affiliate program is still listed as operational but the same cannot be said about those run by some of its competitors.

VideoBB and VideoZer have both reportedly closed their rewards program and according to reports have also been mass deleting accounts and huge numbers of files. Other sites closing their affiliate programs and/or deleting accounts/files include FileJungle, UploadStation and FilePost.

http://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker-...action-120123/

UploadBox file hosting service is no longer available. All files will be deleted on January 30th. Feel free to download the files you store with UploadBox until this date.

http://uploadbox.com/

[iboomalot]

UploadBox file hosting service is no longer available. All files will be deleted on January 30th. Feel free to download the files you store with UploadBox until this date.

Why couldn't MU get this treatment?

[iboomalot]

UploadBox file hosting service is no longer available. All files will be deleted on January 30th. Feel free to download the files you store with UploadBox until this date.

Why couldn't MU get this treatment? instead of this

[El Mano]

File sharing in the internet is a very big business. Eventually all this companies will get their act together and migrate their servers (and incomes) to China, Russia and other countries that will not obey whatever the US dictates, and in the end all this will only mean more IT jobs moving from the western world to the enemy.

[Origin_Unknown]

File sharing in the internet is a very big business. Eventually all this companies will get their act together and migrate their servers (and incomes) to China, Russia and other countries that will not obey whatever the US dictates, and in the end all this will only mean more IT jobs moving from the western world to the enemy.

didn't China actually help Murika to get MU?

[Pontos]

moving from the western world to the enemy.

"enemy"? Really? Did i just travel back in time to 1970 or something?

[Flanman]

"enemy"? Really? Did i just travel back in time to 1970 or something?

hoping he means enemy as in what he said earlier in his post, those who won't obey what the u.s dictates

[01Lude]

what the entertainment industry needs to do is make these products both cheaper and easier to acquire over the net. a platform like steam is really successful.

i find myself buying things on steam when they have sales on games for $5 or less because of convenience. i could have pirated a few games that i will not mention by name, but steam had it so cheap and they have features like automatic updates, friends lists etc., that streamline the whole experience of downloading and organizing the games library, so steam is simply more convenient overall. sure you could pirate a game for free, but it takes a while to figure out installation issues, cracks, patches and updates, and when you pirate games you cannot play them online because you are sharing CD keys with everyone else.

i think a fair price for a dvd online is closer to $1.99. they expect me to pay $10-$20 for a movie that probably sucks? no way.

tl;dr make it cheaper and easier to download and organize files, and pirates will find it not worth the hassle to deal with all the issues involved with pirated games.

edit: also i have been disappointed with the games that i have paid full price for recently. battlefield 3 is one example. these companies release incomplete games and expect us to pay full price? i feel like they have thumbed their noses at the gaming community, and the sad part is that those that suffer most are the ones who pay full price for their crap. they are punishing their paying customers.

[m_jones_]

I really hope the usenet provides dont see this as a chance to raise their prices.

[MattiasNYC]

what the entertainment industry needs to do is make these products both cheaper and easier to acquire over the net. a platform like steam is really successful.

i find myself buying things on steam when they have sales on games for $5 or less because of convenience. i could have pirated a few games that i will not mention by name, but steam had it so cheap and they have features like automatic updates, friends lists etc., that streamline the whole experience of downloading and organizing the games library, so steam is simply more convenient overall. sure you could pirate a game for free, but it takes a while to figure out installation issues, cracks, patches and updates, and when you pirate games you cannot play them online because you are sharing CD keys with everyone else.

i think a fair price for a dvd online is closer to $1.99. they expect me to pay $10-$20 for a movie that probably sucks? no way.

Just a couple of things:

I agree that a "fair" price for you might be much lower, but $2? That's pretty low for owning a film. Just consider all the work that goes into one. I don't disagree that a lower price would help thwart copyright infringement, but it can't be at the expense of being profitable. After all, a high-cost production will usually yield a high cost in retail.

Second thing is that the US is pathetically behind other parts of the world in terms of IT infrastructure. Streaming is available on Netflix but a lot of users don't have bandwidth that's sufficient. And if you'd lower prices of streams / owned files that'll just saturate capacity on these already slow connections. So I think it'll take some time before it makes as much sense as it does in parts of Asia and Scandinavia.

edit: also i have been disappointed with the games that i have paid full price for recently. battlefield 3 is one example. these companies release incomplete games and expect us to pay full price? i feel like they have thumbed their noses at the gaming community, and the sad part is that those that suffer most are the ones who pay full price for their crap. they are punishing their paying customers.

Well, the solution to having been "screwed" by a software company is to minimize your actual loss by selling the game 2nd hand, and then never buy from them again until you absolutely know you're getting your moneys worth.