22 replies to this topic

[webbway]

The popular file hosting site Megaupload has been shut down by US authorities on Thursday, and the site’s leaders have been charged with widespread online copyright infringement. According to an US Department of Justice press release, Megaupload generated more than “$175 million in criminal proceeds” and caused more than “half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners”.

Seven members of the site and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in Virgina, and charged “with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement”.

Arrests have been made in New Zealand, were Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and three others were arrested at the request of US officials. According to The Verge, a total of 20 search warrants have been issued in the US and eight other countries including The Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Australia. In addition, assets worth more than $50 million US Dollars have been seized as well as 18 domain names associated with the business.

Users who try to open the Megaupload website, any of the site’s inner pages, hosted files or one of the related domain names will notice that all connections time out. Megaupload, which has been listed as one of the top 100 sites at Alexa, and its cousin site Megavideo, in the sub 200 rankings, have been two of the most popular file sharing sites on the Internet.

The core question that many Internet users will have right now is if this will affect other file sharing services like Rapidshare as well.

http://www.ghacks.ne...have-been-made/

Makes you wonder who is next...

[MedEvil]

I find it always most interesting, that every country jumps, if an US court indicted someone.
Despite the fact, that the US don't even hand people over, that are indicted by the international court in Den Haag.

[homes32]

“half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners”.

always intrigues me how they come up with these numbers. most assume that everyone that downloaded it illegally would have paid full retail for it had it not been available.

what really disturbs me is these quotes

A business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download

I must have missed that part of the megaupload (or any others like it) where it expressly promotes the illegal sharing of copyrighted works.

A structure to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded

yeah. cuz thats illegal. seriously? how the hell does this encourage sharing illegal files?? megaupload is NOT and has never claimed to be long term storage. neither has rapidshare, etc. automatically deleting files after a period of time fits perfectly into its goal of a short term file exchange site. not everybody has web/ftp servers they can setup to exchange files and most email services are limited to 10MB attachments.

A rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites.

so now for content to be popular it MUST be illegally distributed?

[Brito]

so now for content to be popular it MUST be illegally distributed?

I better close down the download portal here at reboot, it is starting to become popular..

[homes32]

I better close down the download portal here at reboot, it is starting to become popular..

yes. and the AD sharing is going to have to go as well. you are offering financial incentives for members to start topics (most likely also providing illegal files in said topics) and encourage discussion in them.

[MedEvil]

A rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites.

I'm a bit surprised about this quote. Megaupload was one of te very few sites, which did not offer such a program.

A structure to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded

Wasn't the automatic deleting, when files weren't downloaded a certain time, limited to the free uploads?
I think to remember, that premium accounts didn't had that limitation.

But as usual, one can make up any reason, no matter how stupid, simply because judges are eighter bought or have no clue about IT.

I mean, of how many movie pirates have you heared, which attacked the poor movie transporter, killed and mamed half the crew, to then disappear with the film roles?
Still the governments, which are usually so big on fighting defamations of minorities, do nothing against the MAFFIA.

[MedEvil]

always intrigues me how they come up with these numbers. most assume that everyone that downloaded it illegally would have paid full retail for it had it not been available.

I remember a case back in the 90ies, were it was claimed, that a schoolboy of 13 years, had cost the industry 150000 DM, because of the illegal software that was found on him.

I always wondered, how much the guys, who calculate these sums, must make to give their children such an allowance.

[sambul61]

most assume that everyone that downloaded it illegally would have paid full retail for it had it not been available.

Could you clarify "downloaded illegally" clause for forum readers? Did you mean "used without license" after being downloaded? Or the fact of download is deemed also illegal without evidence of use - in what scenarios?

[MedEvil]

All depends on the country you're in. Or in the case of the US, who's after you.

[homes32]

I remember a case back in the 90ies, were it was claimed, that a schoolboy of 13 years, had cost the industry 150000 DM, because of the illegal software that was found on him.

I always wondered, how much the guys, who calculate these sums, must make to give their children such an allowance.

even if they did give their children that much for allowance chances are they would still not buy a single song.
people who buy will buy
the people that download 100-1000's of songs/movies/software/whatever will never buy it even if a store where to offer it for free to anyone who came and grabbed it off the shelf.

furthermore the industry's have made a habit of punishing those who do "legally" purchase songs/movies/ect. want to watch your paid for DVD on your phone or ipod? too bad. go buy a copy for it or use the DRM infested "digital copy"...oh wait you have an android/zune/whatever? too bad. it only works on iPod.

pirates have no such restrictions and can happily use the media however they choose....I wonder who is getting the better deal?

[MedEvil]

I don't know if people, who download, would turn down a freebee, just because it isn't pirated.

But the point, that all those defenses, people come up with, to protect something, cause always more discomfort to those people, for who it never would have been needed, than to the target group, has often been made.
Yet noone listens!

[sambul61]

I don't think this piece of legislation was created to protect "rights", or someone ever thought about comforting the public. As Marlon Brando said once after getting 14 million dollars for his 10 minute role as Superman's father, "I work in the movies because only this industry pays that much for doing nothing". Simply movie industry can't keep up with tech advances deemed dragging profit down, and attempts retaining huge profit level forever by well familiar to them lobbying ""investments". But Google money goes long way too...

Marlon was wrong though... Movie giants are running behind their Wall Street buddies making money seemingly out of thin air.

[MedEvil]

Simply movie industry can't keep up with tech advances dragging profit down,

This statement is pure propaganda, from MAFIA.

In the early 90ies, we could go see a movie on a saturday for 5 german marks per ticket. Cinemas were everywhere and they were all packed on weekends.

When we want to go today, see a movie, i pay on a saturday 15 Euro per ticket. That's about 30 german marks!
In comparison wages are today in euro not even what they were back then in german marks.

Most Cinemas have closed, even the really great ones we had.


Greed is, what kills their profits. Nothing else!!!

[sambul61]

Not only... Younger audience tends to go less frequently to cinema, because many have 3-d TV nowadays at home. The problem for movie industry is, youngsters no longer buy DVDs either, and that's what driving hungry man crazy. They just can't settle for Netflix model.

[Mikorist]

A Report from the Front Line

MegaUpload
Closed.

FileServe
Deleting multiple files. Closed affiliate program.

FileJungle
(Owned by FileServe) Deleting multiple files. Testing out blocking some USA IP addresses.

UploadStation
(Owned by FileServe) Deleting multiple files. Testing out blocking some USA IP addresses.

FileSonic
Sharing disabled. Closed affiliate program. Deleting files and accounts.

VideoBB
Closed affiliate program.

Uploaded.to
Banned USA IP addresses.

FilePost
Started suspending accounts with infringing material (doing what Hotfile did)

VideoZer
Closed affiliate program.

4shared
Deleting multiple files.

Wupload
Many accounts disabled.

East European & former Soviet Union countries based file sharing services are working as usual :-)

Source:
http://www.avaxhome..../The_storm.html

------------------------------------

http://www.filesonic.rs/
"All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally."

[Ghoster]

Yikes. This is a bit scary. The way I see it is the internet took a stand against SOPA and PIPA, and so the government nonchalantly responds with the middle finger by doing this.

Also, if you've ever downloaded anything from Megaupload that is copywrited material, you could be sued for $150,000 per item. So, if you downloaded 2 albums, let's say that's 20 songs. You could owe $1.5million. That is, if the government decides to actually take action with all of their newly aquired logs full of downloads, uploads, and IPs.

[MedEvil]

Yep, yesterday, was the day the internet imploded.

Was funny to follow the whole deal. Like watching a trainwreck happening in slow motion.

- First MU the biggest filehoster worldwide, responsible for 4% of all internet traffic, acording to some sources, went belly up.
- Then the weekend-download-wave hit the rest of the providers, most busy deleting new ciontent as fast as it appeared.
- Which further increased the load on the few provider still hosting.

Resulting first in download speeds of 2kB/s for guest access and as little as 34KB for premium users, before one after the other provider collpsed completely.

Even if they can't touch MU, they already succeeded. For now filehosting seems dead.

Interestingly hits against torrentsites never caused this kind of fallout.

[Brito]

Grooveshark.com has discontinued their service in Deutschland, complaining about the high prices demanded by GEMA.de

The Internet world is becoming too close to a real world with borders.

[MedEvil]

Comeon, let' be honest, filesharing went way to mainstream lately.
It's time for a more complicated, geeky way, so that the noobs and lamers rather buy than learn, how to download.
And then we're all, geeks, nerds and MAFIA, happy again.

[Mikorist]

GEMA.de

GEMA also bans YouTube videos in Germany that violate its copyright.

http://articles.busi...gema-operations

[Mikorist]

We are setting up servers.
Each user gets a FTPs access, which can be used to safely transfer files.We hope to launch the online version of the site in less than 3 days.
( On Wednesday, January 25 ).
For your safety, our infrastructure will be out of the U.S jurisdiction ( Russia ).


http://anonyupload.com/

[MedEvil]

Isn't it nice, how there is always a helping hand around, when you need one?

[sambul61]

Interestingly hits against torrent sites never caused this kind of fallout.

Torrent sites don't store cracked copyright material. The difference of this action with SOPA and PIPA is such top level actions are usually political statements therefore scary but short lived, while SOPA and PIPA were aimed to provide smaller players with tools to go to a local court and get a site shutdown or remove copyright order instead of playing costly "pushing" game at the very top usually possible only for big guys. It looks, they'll find middle ground over time.