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Megaupload and its sister site, Megavideo, has been shut down by federal prosecutors in Virginia for copyright infringement.
An indictment unsealed today accuses the site of costing content owners at least a half billion dollars in lost revenue. Megaupload allows users to upload, store, and share large files with other users. Like Rapidshare, another file storage service, music, television shows, and software often found their way onto the site, where paying customers could obtain the files without much trouble. Megaupload.com has always claimed it responds to copyright infringement notification and deletes offending files, but federal prosecutors believe otherwise.
As of this afternoon, Megaupload.com appears to be down.
The crackdown on what was one of the top-20 most-visited websites in the world comes one day after net advocates protested attempts by entertainment companies to strengthen copyright laws. Many who oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act are now asking why the new law is necessary when existing laws seemed sufficient to shut down a favorite target of Hollywood movie studios and the music industry, who have long accused the site of being the equivalent of an online piracy warehouse.
SOPA was never necessary, they just completely eliminated any due process or protection for consumers and businesses operating online, they don’t even make any logical sense when compared to the same laws that apply to brick and mortar business in the same situations.
Even the current laws have documented cases of abuse by the MPAA/RIAA and the government.
I hope the megaupload shutdown gets enough press to show what we have now is more than adequate and effective.
How does SOPA apply to stuff outside the US? People forget that the internet is global so I believe various govt agencies should come up with a global approach to dealing with problems.
any law made in the US is international law
This is sadly true, due to the official government wires released by WikiLeaks communication between US and Spain, Spain was threatened with sanctions if they didn’t implement a IP Protection law similiar to SOPA/PIPA.
http://socialbarrel.com/us-government-forced-spain-to-enforce-sopa-like-sinde-law-report/29854/
You can bet that’s been going on with other countries being forced to adopt similiar censorship laws to protect US Corporate interests if they don’t have the political and economic backbone to stand up to the US government.
This why you do not want SOPA/PIPA to pass. Megaupload is word-of mouth advertising for your product. Leave these sites alone. After all, if you cannot compete with free, you cannot compete.
Sadly they had servers in both Virginia and DC apparently, but SOPA is still a crock of poop.
SOPA would require US Internet companies to block the domain names (through DNS blocking) of foreign website accused of hosting or promoting copyright infringement, and thus prevent them from being accessed by Americans (well, those who don’t know how to circumvent the blocks, anyway). It targets foreign websites that are beyond the reach of US law enforcement. Megaupload, having servers hosting millions of files in Virginia, was not beyond the reach of the FBI, and thus has been indicted directly. SOPA was not necessary. Time will tell if the charges will stick, but having read them, I suspect there’s enough… Read more »
I think it is pretty clear after this global-wide takedown of Megaupload, there is absolutely no reason for new laws when the ones we have right now work just fine when they are enforced.
If $500M is a lot of money to worry about, how about going after the big banks and investment firms that tanked the economy to the tune of a lot more. After all, they cost us hundreds and hundreds of billions, and not a single perp has been charged or prosecuted.
Exactly, and the finance industry deals in REAL money, not hypothetical lost sales due to digital piracy. That’s something that cost every tax payer in america thousands of dollars, and we’ll still be paying as those banks pass on their losses onto us in the form of new fees to recoup their money and continue with their excessive executive compensation. The type of piracy being claimed against Megaupload are copies of music, movies, or software that have been uploaded to their servers and hosted/shared by their customers. Trying to extrapolate that to lost sales of physical DVD’s, CD’s, or streamed/downloaded… Read more »
Here’s a interesting analysis of the evidence the US Government claims it has against Megaupload: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/00373617487/megaupload-details-raise-significant-concerns-about-what-doj-considers-evidence-criminal-behavior.shtml It’s still fairly likely they will be found guilty of something, but perhaps the case isn’t the slam dunk it first seems to be. Regarding SOPA, I think the proponents claim it is still necessary, even if Megaupload is successfully stopped by criminal prosecution, because the DoJ is unlikely to have the time, resources, or even the ability to go after every source and every enabler of copyright infringing material. This is especially true of distributed torrent files and web sites that host links… Read more »
In the case of the failed bank derivatives, investigations show there were some government officials who received millions of dollars. In the case of MegaUpload, there are no people in political offices who received money. You finish the math.
How is piracy a problem when Netflix can spend 600k per episode for Gossip Girl?
The site founder sounds like a nice guy:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/318247
You won’t get me to defend those who raked in the big bucks effectively peddling a copyright-infringing distribution mill. I don’t like people stealing others’ property or pitching counterfeit goods. However, with the past track record of overzealous “enforcement” from the MPAA and RIAA, which often was “prove you are not guilty or else we will bury you with legal fees,” SOPA and PIPA put far too much power into the hands of an industry which has tried to restrict people from fair use of copyrighted material they purchased legally. With a high profile case like Megaupload, the rest of… Read more »
The MPAA and RIAA are the industry groups that have had their heads buried in the sand for over the last decade trying to pretend the internet never happened and that they can continue business as they always have while blocking or killing off anything that threatens their old models. These industries have NEVER created any innovative or useful technology or services that have benefited consumers, and when they do they only half-heartedly attempt to copy innovators while making the use of said services so onerus a average consumer is unable to actually enjoy their paid for content. As much… Read more »
It looks like they finally seized the domain: http://i.imgur.com/ayHqq.png . It refused to load up on the day the servers were seized and shut down. This would be one of those cases I would say that would require several, well trained minds to analyse. Many sites I’ve seen indicate that Megaupload knew they were trafficed a lot for pirating materials, besides legitamite uploads that I used them for (game mods mostly), and didn’t take active measures to stop piracy. I feel the problem lays with the fact that such sites were made to make uploading easy. By nature, this makes… Read more »
SOPA and PIPA are assholes.