WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Internet website Megaupload.com, shut down by authorities over allegations that it illegally peddled copyrighted material, is trying to recover its servers and get back online, a lawyer for the company said on Friday.
The company and seven of its executives were charged in a 5-count, 72-page indictment unsealed on Thursday accusing them of engaging in a wide-ranging and lucrative scheme to offer material online without compensating the copyright holders.
Question is, how does the US have the right to seize servers that are not based in the US? Apparently up to 26 petabytes of information were hosted in the US, so I get that the FBI can seize that, but they also personally seized the founders belongings in New Zealand, with the help of the NZ government of course.
Question is, how does the US have the right to seize servers that are not based in the US? Apparently up to 26 petabytes of information were hosted in the US, so I get that the FBI can seize that, but they also personally seized the founders belongings in New Zealand, with the help of the NZ government of course.
…they are willfully infringing copyrights themselves on these systems; have actual knowledge that the materials on their systems are infringing (or alternatively know facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent); receive a financial benefit directly attributable to copyright-infringing activity where the provider can control that activity; and have not removed, or disabled access to, known copyright infringing material from servers they control.
It would make sense to take them down I guess. If content that is 'illegal' would be reported, and MU would not remove it, then at some point they are engaging in illegal activity.
In June 2010, it appears that MegaUpload was subjected to a something of a test by the authorities. The company was informed, pursuant to a criminal search warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that thirty-nine infringing movies were being stored on their servers at Carpathia Hosting in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“A member of the Mega Conspiracy informed several of his co-conspirators at that time that he located the named files using internal searches of their systems. As of November 18, 2011, more than a year later, thirty-six of the thirty-nine infringing motion pictures were still being stored on the servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy,” the indictment reads.
The paperworks goes on to accuse MegaUpload of running a program between September 2005 and July 2011 which rewarded users for uploading infringing material.
A citation from an internal MegaUpload email from February 2007 entitled “reward payments” claims to show that at least two key staff members knew that cash payments were being paid to users who uploaded infringing material including “full popular DVD rips” and “software with keygenerators (Warez)”.
I don't understand why people would even use these sites considering torrents are so much faster, and you can encrypt your traffic, and use proxy servers to update your trackers.
I don't understand why people would even use these sites considering torrents are so much faster, and you can encrypt your traffic, and use proxy servers to update your trackers.
Yeah I'm a little confused by the uproar as well. I've grabbed an album or two off those sites, but typically if I was going to download an album I'd always hit up the torrent sites first.
Yeah I'm a little confused by the uproar as well. I've grabbed an album or two off those sites, but typically if I was going to download an album I'd always hit up the torrent sites first.
I don't know about Torrents being faster - using Megaupload, you never had to worry about seeds, and the files always downloaded at over 2.5 mb/s (having an account there).
I miss it, but Megashares seems to work for the time being.
I don't understand why people would even use these sites considering torrents are so much faster, and you can encrypt your traffic, and use proxy servers to update your trackers.
For poorly seeded stuff on torrents and rarer stuff it's sometimes better on these sites cuz at least the speed is consistent. With torrents you might have to wait upwards of a week if it's really really poorly seeded. Also as a person that wants to share a file persistently you would constantly reseed files to keep things alive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaydorn
Yeah I'm a little confused by the uproar as well. I've grabbed an album or two off those sites, but typically if I was going to download an album I'd always hit up the torrent sites first.
As others have said the uproar is about is much more to do with that the US government took the whole company down without due process and less to do with the service themselves. The arrests were all made on foreign soil and the whole company got shut down for what would be the mistakes of some insiders. What's to stop the same thing from happening to individuals here in Canada now that copyright treaties like ACTA are getting passed.
I don't disagree with taking down the site, because the owner and his top people were clearly breaking the law, but I do agree that the whole thing is fishy. Especially considering there are millions upon millions of legitimate files that people can't access now.
I don't disagree with taking down the site, because the owner and his top people were clearly breaking the law, but I do agree that the whole thing is fishy. Especially considering there are millions upon millions of legitimate files that people can't access now.
That's the thing with taking the whole site down. If you find a grow op on a single house on a street, do you destroy the street and block off the entire road? Same principle should be applied in this case, prosecute the infringing parties, remove infringing files and not harm legitimate users. But given the way the US government is run by corporations nowadays (i.e. laws being written by corporations to suit corporations against the interests of the people because of powerful lobbies) and how civil liberties/due process is being thrown out the window, this type of response comes as no surprise.
That's the thing with taking the whole site down. If you find a grow op on a single house on a street, do you destroy the street and block off the entire road? Same principle should be applied in this case, prosecute the infringing parties, remove infringing files and not harm legitimate users. But given the way the US government is run by corporations nowadays (i.e. laws being written by corporations to suit corporations against the interests of the people because of powerful lobbies) and how civil liberties/due process is being thrown out the window, this type of response comes as no surprise.
What, you mean do something like order them to remove infringing content, which they blatantly ignored, by removing links to content but not the content itself?
Megaupload is to blame for their own woes here.
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"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
What, you mean do something like order them to remove infringing content, which they blatantly ignored, by removing links to content but not the content itself?
Megaupload is to blame for their own woes here.
I said prosecute, not give them a warning. Arrest the ones you have evidence for, put them before a jury, fine the company and set up a court supervised removal of infringing materials and not take down the whole company.
You aren't differentiating between the company as a whole and the infringing parties, woes or not there are huge numbers of legitimate users that were affected by this.
As others have said the uproar is about is much more to do with that the US government took the whole company down without due process and less to do with the service themselves. The arrests were all made on foreign soil and the whole company got shut down for what would be the mistakes of some insiders. What's to stop the same thing from happening to individuals here in Canada now that copyright treaties like ACTA are getting passed.
Ahh fair enough, I hadn't read that much. My gut reaction was "why are people mad about this? MegaUpload kinda sucked"
But when you frame it in the way you mentioned it makes a bit more sense.
Megaupload shut down, hackers retaliate
