Feds Shut Down File-Sharing Website Megaupload

[Purveyor]

One of the world's largest file-sharing sites was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several company executives were charged with violating piracy laws, federal prosecutors said.

An indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart online piracy.

The Justice Department said in a statement said that Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and three others were arrested Thursday in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials. Two other defendants are at large.

Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

MORE...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/19/national/a113757S64.DTL

[mike_c]

1. more good work on behalf of the 1%....

Every time an entertainment executive misses a dollar, a kitten dies in heaven.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Torn on this... since it is not just the executives who lose money

also the artists themselves. MOST are not rich either.

SOPA and PIPA are really bad ideas, but protecting IP is not that crazy. I do not have a right to get, for free mind you, the work somebody else is trying to put out there for sale.

This is why when I find a musician I like I make a POINT of buying their piece. That may mean they get five cents out of the deal, but look, we cannot expect to get work for free unless the writer, artist, painter, what have you, wants you to under creative commons.

And yes, I have seen SMALL companies go under because of this shit. (I am not talking Disney here, but small RPG producers)

[Scootaloo]

6. Well, the trouble is, the nature of the medium makes property rights meaningless

We can all go around and around over the ethics and legality of the situation, but regardless, what remains is the simple fact that once information is released, you can't pretend to retain control over it. It doesn't work that way, it's sort of like claiming that the CO2 molecules you exhale are your personal property. Once a book is on the shelves, once a song is on the airwaves, once an image is put on a website, it is, for better or for worse, added to the body of public information and knowledge.

The only possible way to actually "stop piracy" is to unilaterally prohibit the tools and methods used to copy information; which is what SOPA and PIPA are a step towards. I don't like making "slippery slope" arguments, but it's not like other nations in other times haven't very effectively (andvery brutally) shut down methods of information transfer. In the case of North Kore or the USSR it's a method of protecting the state; in the US, it looks like it'll be a method of protecting the corporations.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Then you will see more and more crap

and less and less quality work, which incidentally is already happening in the gaming industry... suffice it to say, this is one of the reasons, and far from the only one.

I guess throw hands in air and let's have all for free, and I mean all work for free. That is the slippery slope we are into.

I hope we make services free too.

[Scootaloo]

10. So no quality work existed prior to copyright law?

After all, if your argument that such law is the only thing saving us from a future of nothing but bad art, then certainly the world was a culturally neutered place before such laws were in place, right?

And again, that's not my point - like I said we can go round and round on the ethics and legalities, the simple point remains that you really CANNOT control information once you have released it. It's impossible. As I said, it's the nature of the medium itself. The only way to avoid this problem - assuming you view it as a problem - is to prohibit communication itself.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Yes, I guess you want to go back to all work controlled

by very rich folks who commissioned it.

That is what existed before. Writers and artists need to eat... so you either give them some protection in law or very rich patrons.

That is your choice.

Copyright protection is NOT SOPA, by the way... in fact, we have laws in the books. SOPA is control of information and the backbone of the web.

There is more, a lot of these problems were caused by the industry themselves, read Naomi Klein for this. but KAZAA is an industry produced peer to peer sharing software...

Nor does the industry have an idea of how to do this.

And yes, there are abuses in copyright law.

But getting rid of all copyright is not a solution either. Which is the slippery slope you seem to be onto.

[Scootaloo]

20. Reactionary, aren't you?

Pay attention now, chief.

The point is, it is logistically impossible to control the flow of information WITHOUT prohibiting communication itself. This is my point. Do you understand it? It's not very complicated. when you say, release a song, then you open yourself up to everything from pirates to cover bands to samplers to everything else that the RIAA is frothing at the mouth over. it's always been that way. And it will probably ALWAYS BE that way.

Why? Again, because when you provide people with information, it becomes impossible to dictate to them what they then DO with that information. You can try to have them punished if they do something you dislike with it - and that's the idea behind copyright law - but you still aren't actually exercising control over the flow of the information.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Pay attention chief, RIAA is OLD MEDIA

see post bellow on that

The Hollywood studios are OLD MEDIA.

But your slippery slope LEADS straight to rich patrons and the system that existed in places like oh Venice in the 16th century. This idea of copyright is a new one, relatively speaking, in law.

Yes chief, there can be a happy medium where artists can make a living, WITHOUT the need of patrons and WITHOUT infringing the web.

Also pay attention chief when I said that this problem WAS CREATED by the industry itself, the back office...

[fascisthunter]

76. I think...

Scootaloo is correct.... we cannot dictate what folks do with info without shutting down the means of spreading info. There may be another way, one I and you and others have not thought of yet, but until then, it is impossible to do. Your heart is in the right place being a defender of a market for artists(I happen to be one), but it's impossible to control this situation without infringing on others' rights.

I thought about this for a very long time, and have to agree with Scootaloo.

[nadinbrzezinski]

83. Given that the industry created the problem

Go ahead go to CNET and see Kazaa is on their site, who owns them? NBC Interactive.. who is also trying to get SOPA \ PIPA in? You guessed it.

We need a happy medium, but we also need to be aware this is Disaster Capitalism at it's best.

[fascisthunter]

93. wow.... great Catch Nadin!

amazing

[tpsbmam]

42. Pay attention now, Scootaloo. You're talking to a long-term, respected DUer who is a

consistently stronger-than-strong advocate for progressive causes, American 99%ers, working class/middle class/poor Americans, and more. Nadinbrzezinski is also knowledgable about this, American politics, and a host of national and international specific and general topics.

Nadinbrzezinski is neither reactionary nor stupid, the latter implied by your "pay attention now, chief" and "it's not very complicated" comments.

You're a newbie here. I suggest taking a different tone -- you'll find you have better "conversations" on DU when you do. I, for one, distrust newbies who come onto DU and start right from the bat or soon after belittling other DUers.

[harmonicon]

70. And they're also making an argument that I would have made.

Have I not been around long enough? Nadin and I have gone several rounds on this in the past, and I don't want to start again today, but, trust me, I know just as much about what I'm talking about and can fiercely defend my side of the argument. Don't go picking on people for being new here; you were, once.

[pocoloco]

80. Didn't realize DU had "newby" police.

What's your fucking badge number?

[Codeine]

84. Who cares if he's a newbie?

He has a right to his opinion, and he's hardly unique in finding Nadin's argumentative and nasty tone unpleasant. I daresay in that respect he's more likely to represent the majority of the board than not.

[dipsydoodle]

96. ditto

.

[Scootaloo]

103. Oh wait, you're serious, aren't you?

Here, let me demonstrate my discussion with Nadin, in cliffnotes version.

...

Me: "Once information is released, it becomes impossible to control, without severe restrictions on communication itself"

Nadin: "YOU JUST WANT ALL ART TO BE CRAPPY AND DOMINATED BY THE ULTRA-WEALTHY WHY DO YOU HATE PERFORMERS LET'S JUST DO AWAY WITH ALL LAWS AND MAKE IT SO NO ONE HAS TO WORK EVER!?!?!?!"

Me: "That's not at all what I said, it's really simple actually..."

You: "Leave Nadin alone! HE'S A HUMAN BEEEEEEING! *Sob, sob, burp, sob*"

...

Let's just say I fail to be persuaded by the size of someone's post count, nor by dire warnings of earning your distrust. So please, feel free to make all the "suggestions" you want, but don't expect them to be taken with arguments like "His post-count is so engorged and mighty!"

Also, sorry to keep you waiting so long, but I had to recover from facepalming so hard.

[Fool Count]

51. Exactly. Even the "old media", like RIAA, despite of what they claim and believe,

never really sold "the right to listen to music" (content), but just packaged convenience of listening
experience. Ever since invention of tape recorders anyone in possession of one could
record any copyrighted music off the radio for free. People continued to buy records simply
because those were cheap and spared them the hassle. They paid for convenience, and they
paid as much as that convenience was worth to them. Same is true with CDs and DVDs.
Now the Internet just minimized the hassle of downloading and burning of a song or a movie.
But RIIA wants to charge the same ridiculous amount for the same product, which is clearly
much diminished in utility. The only way to do it is to make finding and ripping movies and
music into more hassle, as it was before. How far would they go in those attempts? Would
they ban online radio stations, because anyone with minimal technical savvy could save digital
copies of broadcasted songs? SOPA is stupid because it is futile in its declared purpose and
it is dangerous in its potential to overreach that purpose.

[GReedDiamond]

66. I'm so old, I remember when the RIAA was about technical standards...

...in the mastering process, early 1960s.

STANDARDS FOR STEREOPHONIC DISC RECORDS

[Occulus]

57. Are you talking about video games?

Because that comment about quality is really only true of the giant publishers if you're talking about video games.

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. No, paper and pencil

and industry that has been having issues for a while.

A tad of an insider, back in the 1990s one of the publishers I freelanced for had an issue with "fans" buying a copy of new release, scanning it and putting it online. You have no idea how many conversations I had with such "fans" about the damage, as well as the company. When the company filed for bankruptcy protection, I was all but shocked. (There is more to that story as to their internal ethics, but that is another story)

[Occulus]

62. What was the game/company?

I don't know anyone who plays PnP games with any regularity any more. Most of them take way too much playtime to get any real satisfaction out of these days.

Seems like everyone's playing Skyrim for some reason....

[nadinbrzezinski]

63. FASA...

there are things that happened with it that go into the ethics, suffice it to say the downloads were not the only reason. They just helped.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

73. reminds me of a comic strip a while back

basic concept of said strip was The GM talking about how the game publisher for their favorite rpg might close down due to not enough people getting their books, all players obviously shocked and determined to fix that

*time skip in comic*

next strip has the gm quite saddened since the publisher went bankrupt and the rest of the party can't understand why since they all have all their books, the GM asks when they could afford that, one person says he downloaded them all on the net, the rest of them got the files from him

[nadinbrzezinski]

81. Sadly I know which strip you mean

and it was based on way too many instances of this in the 1990s.

There was far more to these companies going down, but in some cases it was a majority cause.

[Occulus]

85. Nadine, I just did some digging, and FASA didn't go bankrupt

This is from the BattleTechWiki:

"Withdrawal from the market

FASA unexpectedly ceased active operations in early 2001. Contrary to popular belief, the company did not go bankrupt; it still exists as a corporation holding IP rights which it licenses to other publishers. According to the owners, they decided to quit while the company was still financially sound in a market they perceived as going downhill. Mort Weisman had been talking of retirement for some years and his confidence in the future of the paper-based games business was low. He considered the intellectual property of FASA to be of high value but did not wish to continue working as he had been for the last decade or more. Unwilling to wrestle with the complexities of dividing up the going concern, the owners issued a press release on 25 January 2001 announcing the immediate closure of the business. "

[nadinbrzezinski]

88. Now that is creative writing

Dad passed the rights to son, and dissolved FASA and created Wizkids, They did file Chapter 11 protection, and they did owe a lot of money to way too many people. (We go into the ethics there)

At this point none of them own rights to anything since Wizkids (which still exists) was sold to a third party.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

86. indeed, it was a very sad time for me since a lot of my favorite companies and as such settings went

obsolete in the mind of most people except those who are diehard supporters of the settings

I mean if I say Spelljammer or Dark Sun most i know who do rpgs these days just look at me like I've sprouted a new head, i can't even get em interested in the settings, tho i managed to convince some to look into Planescape(focusing on these related settings since its the genre they tend to like)

My current favorite company and setting tho is L5R by AEG, while nobody where i live play it i have bought all the 2nd and 3rd edition books just cause i love the setting and want to help the company *sighs* don't want it to go the path of my old favorite settings

[kurt_cagle]

101. FASA had its share of problems

The way they treated their contributors didn't help matters much, nor did the move to go into dedicated "immersive" arcade systems at a time when the rest of the industry was switching to console and PC games. And the net cash outflow of the principals on lifestyle issues (using company funds) didn't help matters much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

102. Trust me, I can speak from first person

on the contributor side.

Why I said the downloads were just part of it.



And I did enjoy Virtual World... so there, but due to the treatment of contributors I cannot stand to play any of the properties.

And anyway the vagaries of Victor Davion are nothing when compared to the present time... may you live the Liao curse!

[Leopolds Ghost]

64. Well, it doesn't help that fans pirated and steal-read everything, did it? THAT BEING SAID

I disagree with Nadine on this. Copyright law is fundamentally broken and we're on the road to perpetual copyright with all content eventually passing into the hands of the corporations. And YES the little guy will go out of business. The big RIGHTS HOLDERS aren't going to lift a finger to protect small fry competition. The only proper course of action is to develop new open source protocols and fair use protocols that benefit the little guy. The big associations won't allow that. They want intellectual property to be rigorously defined as such -- ideas as property, not as work product.

it's funny how I posted extensively about SOPA and PIPA last fall, and hardly anyone said WORD ONE about it. I've been deathly ill for the past two weeks, so haven't had much time to post here or on the old site but I have a whole folder of articles on the SOPA issue I wanted to share. Of course no one here will read it because it's yesterdays news -- "everypony's on the bandwagon" now that Wikipedia and MoveOn and Daily Kos and of course DU signed onto the blackout strike.

Meanwhile, you can say goodbye to all those clips and re-orchestrated versions of Metropolis on the internet (including the Moroder version which the foundation that claims rights to Metropolis has been literally trying to destroy every copy of.)

The Supreme Court just ruled 6-2 (Justice Breyer and Alito dissenting)

that Congress can, as it intended, RE-COPYRIGHT works in the public domain to comply with the neoliberal Berne convention.

Talk about a one-two punch, eh? I have far less sympathy for Megaupload, a commercial site that was mostly devoted to out and out piracy of commercial works, than I did when they abrogated the safe harbor provision and claimed that the developers of file sharing networks were liable for policing peer to peer users and should be sent to jail. You see, the thing about jurisprudence as it applies to stuff like peer to peer and the Internet as a whole is: The more effort you make to police users, the more liability you assume. There is that classic case where the owner of a footbridge became liable when a disabled person fell into the stream -- the plaintiffs argued the park should have been fenced off from potential users to protect against hapless accident -- the judge ruled that the fence was not required but became liable for neglect when the owner posted a helpful "caution" sign on the footpath to warn people to be careful. Thus assuming legal responsibility.

[fascisthunter]

77. Skyrim is an Amazing game!

You really have to like RPG's though...

[LanternWaste]

74. t's still an issue-- if not even greater.

""fans" buying a copy of new release, scanning it and putting it online...."

It's still an issue-- if not even greater. Many of my close friends (and I) are still avid PnP RPGrs (he writes with a sense of guilt-- lol) and half my group owns gigs and gigs of past and present gaming system libraries they've downloaded from torrent sites.

The reason I suggest it may be more of an issue in the here and now is that many of the major PnP developers sell now their products in pdf format for download purchase (Paizo and Wizard of Coast to name the two biggies)-- clear, crisp, clean, OCR, etc., allowing for peer to peer distribution without the hassle of scanning the copy.

There is a part of me who believes that one reason PnP tabletop games have declined so much over the past fifteen years is the almost effortless availability of entire publisher catalogs.

[Confusious]

95. I used to play the pen and paper games

Now computers and game software have gotten so advanced, you can make your own content for them. Why bother just thinking about it, when you can create and SEE your imaginiation.

Oblivion and skyrim are perfect examples of this.

[Yavin4]

8. There's Always Been "Piracy"

From xerox machines, to cassette tapes, to the VCR, people have always made a copy of something and shared it. Hell, many a rock band got filthy rich and successful from their fans bootlegging their concerts and sharing the music with their friends.

So, what's the answer? The answer is that content providers need to embrace the technology. Offer content available for streaming/downloading at fair prices and they would reap some of the losses from "pirating".

[Scootaloo]

12. Embracing the new reality is definitely the way to go

Now... laugh if you want, but I've recently been converted as a Brony - a fan of the new My Little Pony cartoon. Trouble is, the episodes are only released on iTunes... and are encoded so that if I wished to watch them on my tablet, or if I bought a new computer, I would have to buy them again. At $3 an episode, and 39 episodes (with more to come this season) that's $117 dollars to access content that I've ALREADY PURCHASED.

So the solution? Buy an episode... and watch a pirated version of it on my other machines. it doesn't hurt that the pirated version tend to have better colors and higher resolutions than the official releases, either.

Considering that at the end of the day, each episode of this cartoon is a 22-minute toy commercial, this doesn't strike me as a very customer-friendly method of getting the media out there. Should Hasbro release these episodes in a free-for-all business plan? probably not, after all it's pretty evident that schmucks like me WILL pay for the content, so why not charge. But there needs to also be the understanding that providing low-quality product at high prices with limited access isn't going to do anything but ENCOURAGE piracy.

And that, by the way, is the problem with the gaming industry that Nadin brought up, above. when every game you put out is utterly derivative, when you charge $60 for a football game that is IDENTICAL to the football game you released last year (also $60) and then pack it with so many protections and certifications that actually playing the thing feels like you're trying to bust out of Rikers, and on top of that telling the people who just purchased your disk that they are only "renting" the content? You can't expect any reaction other than a drop in sales and an increase in people cracking and pirating the games.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Oh I think we are moving into that new reality

part of this is old media fighting new media, and we might need changes in the law to adapt to the new reality. That does not mean I support either SOPA or PIPA, they were written by old media, lobbied by old media and all that.

But we need a new happy medium for the 21st century.

As to that... yup, and small artists who do not work for labels or work for small labels, and even large ones are figuring this out... per usual not in the front office.

[bigmonkey]

26. Corporations should have different copyright frameworks than persons.

Charge them an ever-increasing fee to maintain the copyright after some initial period, say 20 years. Then they can keep control over what they really need, and the rest of us will have access to culture.

This does not address, though, the technical fact that computers are built and designed to copy things.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Yes, shortening copyright and NOT renewing it

is a good start (see Disney and the famous mouse and how many times it has gotten renewed)

As to computers I am aware of it. One thing they did with the tapes that should apply now, if I buy one copy, I can redo this as many times as I want as fair use. Which is what they are trying to stop but the precedent is there already.

Of course Kazzaa and other file sharing software was created and supported by the major players... so they have little ground to stand on that in my mind.

[bigmonkey]

31. I think you can break the Disney lock on copyright extensions by allowing them to pay for Mickey.

Otherwise, they just use the regular algorithm - Copyright lasts for the lifetime of the person + #of years since Walt Disney died + not less than 5 or so.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. And then they extended it beyond that

aka the natural algorithm.

[Fearless]

17. +1

[Snake Alchemist]

32. All music should be free! Free the sound, man!!! nt

[MadrasT]

36. My musician friends,

Who have spent their lives perfecting their craft would be thrilled to know you value them so little that you appear to believe they should work for free...

[Snake Alchemist]

46. You shouldn't be able to profit from art man!

I thought the sarcasm was pretty thick.

[progressoid]

60. No, it's not at all like that.

"it's sort of like claiming that the CO2 molecules you exhale are your personal property"

Try again.

[24601]

34. Yep, my brother in law was in The Fantistics [off Broadway] for 10 years. Their truism is that you

can make a killing, but not a living. A few jobs in the business here and there - but mostly having to work painting houses and tending bar.

And in NYC, when you're one in a million, there are 7 others just like you.

[Fool Count]

47. Nobody says that protecting IP is crazy in general. But some forms this protection takes

in modern capitalist society can't be called anything but crazy. Is it not crazy when the material
remains copyrighted 75 years after death of its creator? The purpose of IP laws should be to
encourage and reward creative work. How in the world do nearly perpetual payments to copyright
holders (long after the original author is gone) accomplish that?

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. Good luck getting this changed right now

but in my mind ten years of copyright protection is long enough.



And I write for god sakes.

[harmonicon]

69. Home taping is killing music. nt.

[kentauros]

90. Reel-to-reel or cassettes?

[harmonicon]

98. 8 track cassette. nt.

[dipsydoodle]

97. Can you afford to rent a property like this ?

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/megaupload-founders-assets-included-fleet-of-pricey-cars/

This isn't a charity : its all about money.

[Fake Empire]

2. Wonder if this is going to be like Oink

Does anyone else even remember oink?

[tawadi]

4. Money talks. eom

[durablend]

5. So what's this amount to?

"Don't fight PIPA/SOPA because we're shutting the sites down anyway" ?

[Celebration]

50. LOL, that is the issue

Why in the heck do we even NEED PIPA/SOPA when they do this. There must be another agenda.

[salvorhardin]

9. No coincidence there. Nope.

Oh, like they weren't sitting on that so they could roll it out the day after the SOPA/PIPA protests.

Kim Schmitz (Kim Dotcom) resembles our own Wall Street CEOs more than the average pirate. Check out his record. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz

Or is it that our own CEOs resemble pirates more than they do businessmen?

[Hugabear]

11. Does this mean that no online storage method is safe?

Couldn't this threaten the very existence of online storage?

I'm sure that Hollywood has to view this as a threat, as they do with everything else.

[Scootaloo]

13. Well, that's the thing

Yes, it does threaten online file storage.

And technically, everything you ever see on the internet is stored files. This page we're on on DU? It's a stored file on the DU servers. Your avatar too. The SWTOR banner at the top of the page? stored on google, shared on DU, downloaded onto your computer.

Photobucket, imageshack, youtube, your little sisters' silly Twilight fansite on Angelfire, and anything with the word "chan" in it, all are under threat from this. Anything anywhere that derives its content from any media, anywhere is under threat from SOPA / PIPA.

[Purveyor]

14. I've never trusted the supposed 'security' of these online storage/backup sites. eom

[Fearless]

19. If SOPA passes...

None will be safe for sure. Any site that can't PROVE that it doesn't have pirated material on it will be potentially subject to shutdown, through no fault of their own.

Otherwise, honestly they ALREADY aren't safe in that sense, as you see, the feds can shut down the sites. (Granted things like photobucket and picasa are likely exempt as they are solely for photos.)

[Hugabear]

23. Photos can be copyrighted

Why would photobucket, picasa, and any other photo-hosting site be exempt?

[Fearless]

24. RIAA and MIAA

Don't seem to care about them. I don't mean literally exempt, perhaps more ignored than anything.

[bathroommonkey76]

44. Amazon Cloud, Microsoft's 'Skydrive', iCloud?

I doubt the feds will waste their time with those folks. They are using the MPAA's personal blacklist.

[Purveyor]

18. THIS JUST IN! Anonymous Attacks DOJ Site After Feds Shut Down Piracy Hub Megaupload

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In one of the U.S. government's largest anti-piracy crackdowns ever, federal agents on Thursday arrested the leaders of and shut down Megaupload.com, a popular hub for illegal file sharing.

Hours later, Megaupload's fans turned the table on the feds. "Hacktivist" collective Anonymous set its sights on the U.S. Department of Justice and apparently knocked the agency's website offline.

"We are having website having website problems, but we're not sure what it's from," a DOJ spokeswoman told CNNMoney.

The DOJ website glitches came soon after various Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous took aim at the agency.

"One thing is certain: EXPECT US! #Megaupload" read one tweet from AnonOps.

MORE...

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/19/technology/megaupload_shutdown/

[Ruby the Liberal]

21. I know I am not supposed to find this amusing.

I'll grow up some day, but for now, it makes me laugh.

[stockholmer]

25. there are and will be more to take its place :.>

[Taverner]

28. This just underscores why we don't need any new laws

There are enough laws already on the books to go after piracy - we don't need any new ones.

[Ron Obvious]

30. That pesky due process

Exactly, but there's that pesky due process thing. If SOPA/PIPA passes, DU could be shut up for even mentioning MegaUpload merely on the say-so of big media. Without due process, without proof needing to be provided.

Even under current laws, the UK is going to extradite somebody to the US who is considered to have broken US copyright laws, despite not being in the US and not breaking UK laws. I mean, how is this different than the US demanding, say, Holland to extradite someone who sold Marijuana to a US tourist in Amsterdam?

I probably shouldn't be giving anybody ideas....

[randome]

33. It's easy to understand why they want to skirt due process.

If a company had to go through normal channels for the millions of 'illegal' downloaders, they would never get anything done.

I'm not on the side of the media mega-corporations, I'm just saying it's understandable why they see due process as a nuisance.

[Ron Obvious]

38. Sure it's easy to understand

Sure, it's easy to understand why they'd want to get rid of due process. Or why our government doesn't really like the entire bill of rights, as it would be so much easier to convict without illegal search & seizure protection or without the right to not self-incriminate, but those rights are to protect 'us' (the common citizen) from 'them' (the ones with power).

Today, under the DMCA, big media merely needs to issue take-down orders to the site hosting the illegal content anyway, rather than having to go after individual users. As many sites (I imagine DU among them) receive dozens of frivolous take-down notices daily, it's not hard to see how any site with user-generated content would go dark very quickly without the due process protection.

[randome]

45. I know it sucks what they're trying to do.

It's a consequence of the digital age, though. Information is so easy to disseminate, it's inevitable that conflicts arise.

It's a great time to be alive, hey?

[Taverner]

49. They need to understand due process isn't the enemy

They Are....

[Fool Count]

53. There are millions of people in prison in the US. Imagine if they didn't have to contend

with "due process" they could imprison tens of millions. Wouldn't it be something?

[Taverner]

48. Agree 100%

SOPA/PIPA are extrajudicial as they come...

[bathroommonkey76]

29. It's a never-ending battle...

[Pab Sungenis]

35. How did they manage to do this

without the oh-so-necessary tools of SOPA?

[They_Live]

39. Here's my problem with this:

Megaupload was not exclusively a "pirate hub", it was an information storage hub.

I had a great deal of material stored there. All of it was music that I myself had recorded. Some of it was recordings of live performances by other artists, but I always ask permission of the artists before posting the link. Some of it was my own music recorded at my studio. All of the material was intended to be shared and not sold. It was a networking and promotional tool.

I considered all of this material to be a portfolio of audio work that I have done over the years. It will literally take me days to re-upload all of this material and fix my webpage. The action by the Feds was completely out of line and from my vantage point is damaging my business as an artist and engineer.

Megaupload also had an agreement each time you upload a file warning about piracy and not sharing copyrighted material without permission from the rights owner, so they were covering their ass, so to speak.

I'm angry right now.

I'm also wondering about all of the people that had signed up, and paid for, legitimate storage. The Feds have broken the contract with those customers. Are they going to pay back the fees these folks paid? Return their files? This is bullshit.

[joshcryer]

40. Same here. This is bullshit.

I'm contemplating a lawsuit.

[Leopolds Ghost]

65. Could anyone be liable for the permanent loss of artists' work if no backup is avail???

Such as the literally thousands of fair use fan videos that have been taken off
Youtube over the years due to the RIAA protesting use of soundtracks, no copies of
which necessarily exist. Original audio and video files can be huge and aren't always
preserved, as we've seen in the record industry itself.

[joshcryer]

41. For perspective. This is something close to 5% of the entire internet. Gone. Zip. Zilch.

Pow. Deleted.

Think about that.

5% of the largest communication network in human history has been eradicated.

[They_Live]

43. And if you need a little irony in your diet

check out this quote from the article:

A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America said in an emailed statement Thursday that the group's site had been hacked, although it appeared to be working later Thursday evening.

"The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech," the spokesman said. "We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals."

(sigh)

[Leopolds Ghost]

67. When we say deleted, what do we mean? Surely artists that had accounts can retrieve their files?

All of you should support the New Irish Monastery project or whatever it's called to archive culture before it is "disappeared" on the Interent.

Take that animated "All Your Base" gif of George Bush going to war in the middle east, circa 2001. Not on the Internet. Funny, I found a copy not on-line but on an old floppy. It was made in early 2001, and the gif was e-mailed to me as a "funny picture" then. I wonder why it's no longer circulating? I thought the Internet meant deathless, immortal knowledge would just flit from place to place thanks to the distributed nature of the net which was originally designed by academics and the military as a tool for institutions to preserve communications in the face of even the direst threat? Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.

[They_Live]

89. Their servers are disconnected

I cannot access any of my files that I had stored there. Most of the links on my website are now dead. I have to re-upload to different sites now and rebuild my website(s). I suppose I could call the DOJ or the FBI and ask that they repost my stuff for me.

Another thing, most of the files there are compressed (and many divided into multiple parts) and have to be dowloaded and unzipped or un-RARed before you can even determine what they contain. So how did the Feds know that the "Majority" of the files residing there were pirated copyrighted films and/or albums? Why weren't those specific files targeted?

[AsahinaKimi]

91. I had a photograph I had taken of a Japanese pop singer

which I thought had been lost, because when my computer got a virus, I lost all the files. I knew it was in storage on Photobucket.com but I couldn't access it because I had forgotten the password and the email address I had then is no longer working. Then one day I found it on line.

Guess where? Here on DU! I now have it again.. Had I not accidentally found it, here...I would have lost that photo probably forever.


I can imagine what that would be like for someone to have stored their own files on line, to suddenly find that the website was gone.. and your access was denied to your own stuff.



Kimiko ~yori.

[pinniped]

54. Wow. It has obtained the coveted endorsement of that Kardashian idiot.

She would endorse a pile of horse shit if it had her name on it.

[cstanleytech]

55. Assuming megaupload had a report option for reporting pirated material what

exactly is the problem here?

[Yukari Yakumo]

56. From what it looks like the MU people were very, very shady

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

But the government asserts that Megaupload merely wanted the veneer of legitimacy, while its employees knew full well that the site's main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other. Because of this, the government says that the site does not qualify for a “safe harbor” of the kind that protected YouTube from Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit.

For instance, the “abuse tool” allegedly does not remove the actual file being complained about by a rightsholder. Instead, it only removes a specific Web address linked to that file—but there might be hundreds of such addresses for popular content.

Why do we need SOPA anyway when the Feds can do this?

[cstanleytech]

59. Ah, well that doesnt look good for them at all then.

[.99center]

78. Could say that about alot of company's if you're going to judge them by their employee's

The government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other. I'm sure no YouTube employee was ever aware or watched "copyrighted material" on YouTube. Lol, I bet they could make the same claim about employee's at DU

[Blasphemer]

94. Yep... I'm actually surprised it took them this long to get around to "smashing" megaupload

They were pretty blatant and their "veneer of legitimacy" was a pretty thin one. And yeah, SOPA is pointless. There are plenty of laws protecting copyright holders.

[joshcryer]

61. One thing I have to admit. I used to bash them for going after small...

...time pirates, individuals, grandmothers who left a file sharing client open, while completely ignoring direct download sites (see: corporations) which profited from the downloading (either because of subs or ads).

So I have to hand it to this administration for being consistent in their overall crackdown.

Though I do wish the DMCA would be repealed and those grandmothers and grandkids could download again.

[harmonicon]

68. Just like the big Maxell case from the 80's.

Remember when the federal government raided their factories and warehouses and destroyed millions of dollars of blank cassettes? If it weren't for that one raid, home taping surely would have destroyed the music industry.

[vaberella]

71. One more reason why I hate celebrities and the organizations behind their sucess. n/t

[greiner3]

72. There's a big push from the RIAA, et al...

To close public libraries for sharing books and other media. How dare they break copyright laws!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[NorthCarolina]

75. If they can already do this, why the big push for SOPA/PIPA? nt

[fascisthunter]

79. good point! (nt)

[NYC Liberal]

82. Because with SOPA they can go after the "sister sites" who merely link to places like Megaupload.

That's my understanding.

[JackRiddler]

87. Exactly. The point of SOPA is to shut down pages like THIS thread.

For example, it could be made actionable merely to link to the megaupload homepage.

[AsahinaKimi]

92. kinda like using a

Sledge hammer to remove a splinter. sonna baka na ...so stupid.

[lovuian]

100. I find it interesting that US Justice Department made the arrests

Is that the new job of the Justice Department

copyright police for all over the world

if so they will need more staff

I would suggest the Justice Department look into Romney's off shore accounts and Ginrich's Fannie Mae debacles

and look at the Billions stolen by Wall Street Banksters

I think it has higher priority