# Megaupload shut down



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html

Guess that music video didn't help.


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

Hardly shocking.


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

Yeah, but payback is a B****! :lol:

http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-doj-universal-sopa-235/

_Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today's federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

"It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org," Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon._


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)




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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

I am as against censorship as the next guy, but they start to lose me when they use the shutting down of the largest piracy website on the planet as a reason to fight back.

That would be like the NRA using the seizure of illegally imported automatic weapons as a cry for Second Ammendment rights.


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## klang (Oct 14, 2003)

Strange how some folks equate preventing theft with censorship.


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## Mustang Dave (Oct 13, 2006)

Another movement inspired by youth that doesn't want to pay for stuff. Censorship....right...what a load of BS.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

I've never used this site. I've never even heard of it until this thread and then the news stories. I don't share songs or movies. I don't even own that many in digital form. Most of the music I have is on 33 1/3 LPs

But this is exactly the kind of heavy handed tactics that should never be allowed. Deal with it at a civil level, not criminal. Apparently this site was used by quite a few for legitimate purposes. Percentage? Who knows.

Serve a civil warrant or a cease and desist order to take down infringing items, but leave the site up for legitimate uses. If I buy some songs, why shouldn't I be able to upload them for access from another device? What's the difference between copying them to a thumbdrive and carrying them around, or uploading to a cloud drive? The Cloud is the future, right?

I'd like to see the courts restore this site in part and slap the FBI and the 'corporatocracy' that initiated this mess.

I mean, seriously, the New Zealand police using extreme force to cut through walls of a secure safe room? Over some songs and movies?

Curtailing the RIAA would be doing something useful.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I have to say, this doesn't surprise me a bit. I have had occasion to use this site in the past, when customers have sent me files through it. The whole experience was offputting. 

I do think that there is a difference between preventing piracy and creating censorship, and somewhere in the middle is a reasonable copyright policy that encourages innovation while protecting artists for a REASONABLE period of time.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Stuart Sweet said:


> and somewhere in the middle is a reasonable copyright policy that encourages innovation while protecting artists for a REASONABLE period of time.


Did you hear that the Supreme Court decided Public Domain works can be re-copyrighted?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/scotus-re-copyright-decision/


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

SayWhat? said:


> Did you hear that the Supreme Court decided Public Domain works can be re-copyrighted?
> 
> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/scotus-re-copyright-decision/


This decision was made to bring the US in compliance with international copyright law, to which the US was a party. In the US several works had fallen to the public domain, but internationally those works were still copyrighted, so it started in lower courts saying that the US had to adhere to the international laws and honor the copyrights, removing the works from the public domain. The decision was challenged and upheld at several levels until finally the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court decisions: if the work was internationally copyrighted, the US had to honor those copyrights and the work could not remain public domain.

Intellectual Property rights are a touchy subject to many, but in this case I think the SCOTUS made the right call, as much as I know it will hurt small orchestras, theater groups and non-profits who can't afford to pay for the rights to use the material that is now re-copyrighted.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Some of the stories I've seen miss the major point that you bring up, Drew, it's not just any public domain work. Someone can't just go and re-copyright Shakespeare.


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

Inside the lavish lifestyle of Megaupload's founder.


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## SPACEMAKER (Dec 11, 2007)

Megaupload got greedy as hell. Then they put celebrity endorsements in the face if the RIAA. Idiots.

Piracy will NEVER be stopped but it can certainly be more discreet than Megaupload.


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)




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## Yoda-DBSguy (Nov 4, 2006)

It seems in that in anticipation of possible new SOPA & PIPA regulations, along with the recent closure and arrests made in conjunction with Megauploads, other major file sharing hosts runing scared as well.

Just take a look at the new disclaimer and reduced functionality @ Filesonic which limits their service to personal use only only:


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

And so it begins.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

There are no such things as SOPA and PIPA regulations. These were BILLS that had not been passed into law. Heck, they hadn't even made it out of their respective chambers yet. Megaupload was taken down using current laws. This could certainly serve as proof that we don't NEED *new* laws, enforcing old one will serve quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.


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## klang (Oct 14, 2003)

The Megaupload bust was done with the cooperation of other countries. China, for one, won't work with us on these issues.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Megaupload was generally used for doing stuff you shouldn't be doing. Sure there may have been some legitimacy attached to the site but I don't know anyone that used it that way.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Marlin Guy said:


>


Personal Opinion:

Sorry.. I think the later rule is what is wrong...
4 years for taking the life of someone else, is what isn't correct.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Stuart Sweet said:


> I do think that there is a difference between preventing piracy and creating censorship, and somewhere in the middle is a reasonable copyright policy that encourages innovation while protecting artists for a REASONABLE period of time.


Heh. Like movies for 99 years!! :nono::nono2:


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

djlong said:


> There are no such things as SOPA and PIPA regulations. These were BILLS that had not been passed into law. Heck, they hadn't even made it out of their respective chambers yet. Megaupload was taken down using current laws. This could certainly serve as proof that we don't NEED *new* laws, enforcing old one will serve quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.


Heh. Way too simple and straightforward, methinks! 
:nono2:


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Personal Opinion:
> 
> Sorry.. I think the later rule is what is wrong...
> 4 years for taking the life of someone else, is what isn't correct.


Agreed.

But the illustration said "killed". Is that what happened, really? Or just some terrible lapses in judgement? 
I didn't follow the case, and I don't even play a lawyer on TV or stage, but was this not manslaughter?


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

Manslaughter and killed = the same thing. Murder is a different story.


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

Lord Vader said:


> Manslaughter and killed = the same thing. Murder is a different story.


Manslaughter = woops


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

Interesting turn this took, with the question essentially: does the punishment fit the crime?

Is piracy worse than manslaughter (justifying an extra year of incarceration for piracy)? On the face of it, no.

Piracy of IP content is a white collar crime that many think is victim-less, but I'm not sure of that, yet I do have a problem with someone only serving 4 years for manslaughter versus 5 years for piracy.

Then I think about another "white collar crime" involving theft of intellectual property that can result in a life sentence or execution: espionage and stealing/selling state secrets. And I have no problem with a life sentence for a traitor.

I guess what I would settle on is that all crime and punishment has to be relative, and this is why we have juries and judges and appeals processes in the event that a punishment is too harsh...


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Drew2k said:


> Interesting turn this took, with the question essentially: does the punishment fit the crime?
> 
> Is piracy worse than manslaughter (justifying an extra year of incarceration for piracy)?
> 
> Piracy of IP content is a white collar crime that many think is victim-less, but I'm not sure of that, yet I do have a problem with someone only serving 4 years for manslaughter versus 5 years for piracy.


This is the kind of thing that causes jail/prison overcrowding. Too many people facing or doing time for non-violent offenses.

This should be a civil matter only, not criminal. Reasonable fines, penalties or restitution, but no jail time.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

> A New Zealand judge has ruled that investigators obtained evidence unlawfully in a search of Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom's home, dealing a huge blow to the U.S. case against the online file-sharing company.
> 
> High Court Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann said in the ruling Thursday that warrants used by New Zealand authorities to conduct the search at the FBI's behest were too broadly defined and "did not adequately describe the offenses to which they were related."
> 
> "Indeed, they fell well short of that," she said in the 56-page ruling. "They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid."


http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-megaupload-search-20120628,0,3879393.story



> (Reuters) - Search warrants used when 70 New Zealand police raided the mansion of the suspected kingpin of an Internet piracy ring were illegal, a New Zealand court ruled on Thursday, dealing a blow to the FBI's highest profile global copyright theft case.
> 
> German national Kim Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz, was one of four men arrested in January as part of an investigation of his Megaupload.com website led by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
> 
> ...


http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/28/us-newzealand-dotcom-court-idINBRE85R08720120628



> And what were the cops looking for? They didn't know, exactly. Because they were not investigating the case-the FBI was doing that-the police executing the search had limited knowledge of what was truly useful and necessary. As the judge put it, the people executing the warrant "were not the investigating officers and had limited knowledge of the operation," despite being briefed before the raid went down.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...search-warrants-invalid-mansion-raid-illegal/


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

And that's why we in the "first world" have courts that can overturn the actions of the executive branches of our governments. The system may not always be perfect, but usually it stumbles through to the right decision.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

> Prosecutors concede that they have failed to serve a criminal summons upon a Megaupload officer but still say a federal judge should uphold its indictment.


Lots more legalese here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/01/16/53993.htm

Between this and the other case in the news, me t'inks the US Attorneys Office needs some clearing out.


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