Megaupload shut down, hackers retaliate

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

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.

The company was issued DMCA take down notices and allegedly did not comply. If that is true, then by definition, THEY are the infringing party. Now they are being prosecuted for it, among other things. Are DMCA take down notices NOT the same as "a court supervised removal of infringing materials", to which Mega Upload did not comply? ie the court asked them to do something, and the court checked and they hadn't.

The fact that legitimate users is impacted is unfortunate, but the blame here lays solely with the management of the company who did not care enough about their legitimate users to make sure they were in compliance with the law.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Rathji

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.

Megaupload is to blame, but the Feds didn't exactly use their brains when they took it all down. They could have just as easily gotten access to the servers, and started removing illegal files....and given users with legal files 48 hours to remove all their stuff. Instead they just shut everything down, which is pretty dumb.

[Azure]

Another interesting twist.

TorrentFreak first reported about the service in early December 2011. Megabox was just in beta at that time with listed partners of 7digital, Gracenote, Rovi, and Amazon. Megaupload was in a heated marketing battle with the RIAA and MPAA who featured Kim Dotcom in an anti-piracy movie (5:10 mark). The site had just sued Universal Music Group for wrongly blocking Megaupload’s recent star-studded YouTube campaign. Things were getting vicious in December but the quiet launch of Megabox might have been the straw that broke the millionaire’s back.

Dotcom described Megabox as Megaupload’s iTunes competitor, which would even eventually offer free premium movies via Megamovie, a site set to launch in 2012. This service would take Megaupload from being just a digital locker site to a full-fledged player in the digital content game.

The kicker was Megabox would cater to unsigned artists and allow anyone to sell their creations while allowing the artist to retain 90% of the earnings. Or, artists could even giveaway their songs and would be paid through a service called Megakey. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works,” Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak in December. Megabox was planning on bypassing the labels, RIAA, and the entire music establishment.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/was...kebox-service/

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Rathji

The company was issued DMCA take down notices and allegedly did not comply. If that is true, then by definition, THEY are the infringing party. Now they are being prosecuted for it, among other things. Are DMCA take down notices NOT the same as "a court supervised removal of infringing materials", to which Mega Upload did not comply? ie the court asked them to do something, and the court checked and they hadn't.

The fact that legitimate users is impacted is unfortunate, but the blame here lays solely with the management of the company who did not care enough about their legitimate users to make sure they were in compliance with the law.

Nobody is saying that the site wasn't in the wrong, but the Feds could have not been #######s about everything. There are a lot of file sharing sites that have restricted the actual 'sharing' part, and are only allowing users to download their own files. The Feds could have easily forced MU to do the same.

Either way, no matter what happens to MU, someone else will step in, and if the business model that the owner was talking about works, it will eventually happen. The RIAA is going to die either way.

[photon]

Not if they get government more in their pockets.

I have no idea if it's true, but I've read at a number of sites (ones I wouldn't necessarily trust though) that they'll reintroduce SOPA type legislation but tied into fighting child porn.

The idea being is that no one would want to be seen as permitting child porn, so no one would not give their support.

[Hack&Lube]

A couple more have bit this dust like Fileserve. This is unfortunate for myself because I actually bought Megaupload, Fileserve, and Filesonic accounts for my parents to use.

My parents are big on television and movies from Hong Kong and China and for a lot of ethnic groups, there is a huge reliance on these services in order to get recorded TV broadcasts from other countries or back home as there is no feasible or legal way to watch these shows available. These are just the places where people put this kind of content. I don't give a damn about downloading Jay-Z CDs or Transformers 2 or any of that crap. These services were about being able to get my parents content from around the world that you simply cannot buy or purchase here. I would if I could.

There is a huge desire out there to be able to access content but no legal way to access it and this is the void some legitimate company needs to fill but as Netflix.ca has found out, it's difficult with all the rights wrangling.

What hurts the most for me is that these services were the only ones hosting a lot of the more unique content from other countries or other decades that were rare and obscure. One area that has lost a lot of stuff in the past days are the big tape-trading communities trading super rare concert recordings from the 70s-90s that you will never hear again anywhere.

[kirant]

Originally Posted by photon

Not if they get government more in their pockets.

I have no idea if it's true, but I've read at a number of sites (ones I wouldn't necessarily trust though) that they'll reintroduce SOPA type legislation but tied into fighting child porn.

The idea being is that no one would want to be seen as permitting child porn, so no one would not give their support.

I wonder if there is a much smaller scope it can be applied to though. The distribution of child porn and the first hand distirbutors of child porn are much smaller in scope than the sites spreading piracy and those acting as primary distributors to piracy.

[photon]

True, that was just the "scary next thing" I read about, that child porn would be the thing attached to the next bill to make it go through, that it would be in it but not limited to kind of thing.

Even if limited to child porn, it's still dumb, it's like going after FedEx because someone used it to ship a package of illegal material.

[The Yen Man]

Darn, megaupload, file serve, file sonic, etc. was pretty sweet for all my old school and new HK dramas. It's too bad the one remaining legit source in Calgary to rent these things closed down a few years ago. Good thing for torrents, or my mom would be choked I can't get her the latest TVB dramas.

[NuclearPizzaMan]

The upcoming "Save the children!" act will force ISPs to track and store internet activity of all users for 18 months. Tacking on SOPA to that would be easy enough, and no one will vote against SAVE the children

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by photon

True, that was just the "scary next thing" I read about, that child porn would be the thing attached to the next bill to make it go through, that it would be in it but not limited to kind of thing.

Even if limited to child porn, it's still dumb , it's like going after FedEx because someone used it to ship a package of illegal material.

Which is exactly what the fed would do if FedEx was knowingly a part of a smuggling operation and profited from it

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Azure

Megaupload is to blame, but the Feds didn't exactly use their brains when they took it all down. They could have just as easily gotten access to the servers, and started removing illegal files....and given users with legal files 48 hours to remove all their stuff. Instead they just shut everything down, which is pretty dumb.

You would give the government full access to everyone's files because the website administration was blatantly unwilling to fulfill their legal obligation to remove items indicated by a DCMA take down notice?

I get that you want the website to be still functioning. I get that people got screwed by this. This is MegaUpload's fault though. They knew what they were hosting and chose to take a chance that they wouldn't get shut down. Almost every user of MegaUpload knew, or should have known, that the website was used in violation of copyright laws. I was completely aware of it, and I had probably downloaded 10 or less things from the website the entire time it existed.

If your business model, I don't care how enterprising or how much of a good idea it is, is knowingly to you, being used in illegal activities AND you resist all attempts by the justice system to attempt to bring your business into compliance, then you are at fault.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Azure

Nobody is saying that the site wasn't in the wrong, but the Feds could have not been #######s about everything. There are a lot of file sharing sites that have restricted the actual 'sharing' part, and are only allowing users to download their own files. The Feds could have easily forced MU to do the same.

Either way, no matter what happens to MU, someone else will step in, and if the business model that the owner was talking about works, it will eventually happen. The RIAA is going to die either way.

The feds arean't in the business of making smooth transitions for customers when taking down businesses. If the dry cleaner you were using was shut down for selling drugs out the back door, do you think the feds are going to be too concerned with the pants you dropped off 30 minutes before the raid?

Yes, they should return your property as it had nothing to do with the crime at hand, but they arean't in the dry cleaning business. Their in the law enforcement business.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Which is exactly what the fed would do if FedEx was knowingly a part of a smuggling operation and profited from it

Sure, except DNS isn't knowingly part of the smuggling operation.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by photon

Sure, except DNS isn't knowingly part of the smuggling operation.

That's the bad part about this. With increasing frequency we are seeing more laws that are criminalizing legitimate users based on the will of powerful lobbies. SOPA was almost completely MPAA/RIAA worded and sponsored by Congressmen many of whom didn't know what the bill was really about but sponsored it none the less when offered a pile of money.

What's even worse is the MPAA admits to trying to influence legislation voting by "donations".
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...y-bought.shtml
Wikipedia has spoken out and is currently accusing MPAA CEO of corruption
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/wales-versus-dodd/
Currently the petition to force a public investigation of this guy on corruption charges has reached it's goal
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/1...n-reaches-goal

[SebC]

Originally Posted by NuclearPizzaMan

The upcoming "Save the children!" act will force ISPs to track and store internet activity of all users for 18 months. Tacking on SOPA to that would be easy enough, and no one will vote against SAVE the children

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect...rs_Act_of_2011

Representative Zoe Lofgren, (D-Calif.), one of the most vocal opponents of the bill, presented an amendment to rename the bill the "Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act."

[kirant]

Originally Posted by SebC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect...rs_Act_of_2011

[CaramonLS]

I'll be honest, I used MegaVideo to watch certain things - more specifically, anime shows.

These shows are "fan subbed", i.e. not by the company releasing the video, 2-3 days after it airs in Japan.

The reason I watch most of my anime this way is because the content is simply not available to the North American market in English within a reasonable time frame.

IF the anime is ever released in North America, there is a good chance it would be in 1-3 years - and that is a big if. Not every anime makes it to English.

The anime shows which I enjoy and are released in NA, I buy. I do my best to support the genre I enjoy.

But I guess the letter of the law says I am a thief.

[photon]

They're not on crunchyroll?

Though I guess I'm watching Soul Eater right now and it's not on crunchyroll, but it's on Netflix so I'm not a thief \o/ (thought I'd give the English dubbed version a try, it's actually quite well done).

[Hack&Lube]

Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales has just called for the resignation of Christopher Dodd, the head of the MPAA.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/wales-versus-dodd/

“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd said to Fox News recently. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Wales argued that these transparent statements make the MPAA out to be a corrupt, Congress-buying organization. He also challenged Dodd’s assertion that Wikipedia’s decision to blackout its site in protest of SOPA, an effort Wales said was a “massive success,” constituted an abuse of power.