Megaupload shut down by Feds.

Americans again trying to police the world, who do they think they are?.

So a company builds and provide a legitimate internet file sharing service, which can't be searched and actively scans for copyrighted content.
The userbase abuse the service by sharing copyrighted material, so the feds
go the whole way to NZ to arrest the owners?. You can do exactly the same thing with google, but the feds aren't heading to California to arrest Larry and Serg.


Its like one of us building a road and then getting arrested because someone was speeding on that road. Complete bull****.

The laughable thing is that the chief exec of MU is Alicia keys husband, a major music producer. He wasn't even mentioned in the indictment!.

amacachi wrote: »

Faster and cheaper technology did that.

Good one, and Apple invented the mp3 so they could sell the ipod.

Feelgood wrote: »

So a company builds and provide a legitimate internet file sharing service, which can't be searched and actively scans for copyrighted content.
The userbase abuse the service by sharing copyrighted material, so the feds
go the whole way to NZ to arrest the owners?. You can do exactly the same thing with google, but the feds aren't heading to California to arrest Larry and Serg.

I'm no apologist for the MPAA but it's blatantly obvious that the vast majority of Megaupload's paying subscribers are doing so to download pirated material.

Megaupload can probably claim ignorance of the content of their users files but if it's shown that they haven't been implementing an aggressive policing policy like YouTube do then they will be in major trouble.

token56 wrote: »

I think what might have set off some of the bigger record labels etc was the fact megaupload was apparently planning to start its own record label with much more generous margins for the musicians themselves. I'm sure they saw them as a threat in ways than one. Apparently this has been a case building for a while though but I'm sure megauploads plans were too.

That is interesting, I had no idea about the record label startup though now it all makes sense. How come he wasn't mentioned in the indictment though?. Not a word about him like.

Having any sort of server on US soil was probably a bad move though as it always put them at risk even if they were convinced what they were doing was legal. Innocent until proven guilty means nothing in the US now, just look at how the megavideo was first pulled on youtube for absolutely no reason.

This is whats bugging me, as far as I am aware MUs servers and data
centre are in China. So how do the feds have jurisdiction to arrest people in
NZ for activities on systems in China?. Surely it would be up to the Chinese
government to enforce local laws?.

The same happened with Rapidshare.de, the German government came down hard on them and shut them down. RS moved their infrastructure to
Switzerland and RS.com was born. German government couldn't touch them
because it wasn't their jurisdiction. So how come the feds can waltz around the world arresting who they like?

It all really sounds like something that would be in Team America though.

**** YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!

KerranJast wrote: »

Megaupload can probably claim ignorance of the content of their users files but if it's shown that they haven't been implementing an aggressive policing policy like YouTube do then they will be in major trouble.

I don't think these guys were stupid though, I mean if you are making that much money on a service like MU you would at a minimum have some sort of heavy policing policy in place just to cover your arse at least.

Even from an audit point of view, they wouldn't have been able to keep surviving year to year without something in place to keep the digital rights at bay.

RS policing policy is very tight, but in fairness there is still petabytes of illegal material on it. How would you even go about policing anyways. If I upload a recent movie and call it 123.avi in a rar file called 321.rar. Unless that file is individually opened whos to know what it is?.

There is no way of checking every upload for illegal content, its impossible. Some stuff will always slip through the cracks, though I don't think that should be blamed on the company offering the service. Again I can upload illegal content to Google just as easy, but there would never be a word about that.

Doesn't Ice films still work, using 2shared? Haven't checked it on ATV, but from my pc I can see all the MU links are gone but there is still plenty of content using 2shared links..?

KerranJast wrote: »

I'm no apologist for the MPAA but it's blatantly obvious that the vast majority of Megaupload's paying subscribers are doing so to download pirated material.

Megaupload can probably claim ignorance of the content of their users files but if it's shown that they haven't been implementing an aggressive policing policy like YouTube do then they will be in major trouble.

As far as I'm aware neither megaupload or youtube have to implement aggressive policing policies. They just have to comply with valid taken down notices. I'm not sure they have to actively check if material upload is copyrighted, maybe I'm wrong here. Youtube implements such an aggressive policy though because everything they have is fully indexed and searchable and it wants to be able to host copyright material such as songs etc on its site. So it needs to play ball with big record labels etc. Megaupload doesn't need to do this.

But looking at the indictment there does seem to be some causes of concern.

When a file is being uploaded to Megaupload.com, the Conspiracy’s automatedsystem calculates a unique identifier for the file (called a “MD5 hash”) that is generated using amathematical algorithm. If, after the MD5 hash calculation, the system determines that theuploading file already exists on a server controlled by the Mega Conspiracy, Megaupload.comdoes not reproduce a second copy of the file on that server. Instead, the system provides a newand unique URL link to the new user that is pointed to the original file already present on theserver. If there is more than one URL link to a file, then any attempt by the copyright holder toterminate access to the file using the Abuse Tool or other DMCA takedown request will failbecause the additional access links will continue to be available

On or about June 24, 2010, members of the Mega Conspiracy were informed,pursuant to a criminal search warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that thirty-nine infringing copies of copyrighted motion pictures were present on theirleased servers at Carpathia Hosting, a hosting company headquartered 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 stillbeing stored on the servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy

It seems as thought some taken down notices may not have been complied with and even if a taken down notice is complied is questionable whether megaupload simply deletes the link for the file or actually deletes the file itself. It seems like because of the system they have implemented, deleting one file would effect several links so it might not be a policy they implemented. It's all very interesting.

The great internet war of 2012 has well and truly begun!

Quite a good article on summarising the evidence they seem to have against Megaupload

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars

Looks like at least some people within megaupload will certainly be in trouble. Not sure it the site itself could recover though. Hard to see how it would do it if at all possible.

jc84 wrote: »

so is it free to watch them?, you can buy the latest episodes on us/uk itunes a couple of hours after they air

Buy them..........:pac::pac::pac:

Sure isn't everything on the internet free? Have you heard of this great service called google?

It matters not.

100's of other sites with better quality free movies etc.

Heck! Ive got free streaming on live premier league football and movies from the cinema on my i-phone through a free app!!

And when the feds are trying to fully take down megavideo another will just take its place.