Megaupload gets shutdown.

[Red Fortress]

US Justice Department, and ICE have taken down Megaupload:

From wikipedia:
On January 19, 2012, Federal prosecutors in Virginia closed down Megaupload and laid charges against its founder Kim Dotcom and others for allegedly breaching copyright infringement laws.
Acting upon a US Federal prosector's request, New Zealand police arrested Dotcom and three other Megaupload executives near Auckland on Friday, 20 January (NZDT, UTC+13).

More Info:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/megaupload-indicted-shuttered
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120119/13052817473/doj-gives-its-opinion-sopa-unilaterally-shutting-down-foreign-rogue-site-megaupload-without-sopapipa.shtml

Edit:
Mods please fix thread title to "Megaupload gets shutdown."

[Lulu_Jane]

I dislike that it's been shutdown, but damn if the owners aren't shady and gross.

Aside from that this really sucks as a precendent.

EDIT: No posting of any "new" megaupload "replacement" links in this thread. They are a scam, you are being scammed, enjoy your viruses and god knows what else.

[DarthHelmet86]

Kinda stupid of them to be in New Zealand what with it's good relations with the USA. Similar thing happened to the Pirate Bay owners, but they didn't even own the site any more...or maybe they did, they at least seemed not to.

Megaupload is like Rapidshare though isn't it? A hosting site? They should be covered by Safe Haven status (they get contacted told that someone has put up copyrighted material they pull it and let the user and the claimer sort it out) I am not in the mood for actually reading the links so what is it they have actually been charged with?

Before anyone gets on their little horse, this has nothing to do with SOPA or PIPA and will be using the current, legal DMCA.

[The Fifth Horseman]

More coverage:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html
http://gizmodo.com/5877612/feds-kill-megaupload
http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/16556750/apnewsbreak-feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website

And yes, I DO think those charges are way off the mark.

Anonymous does not approve:
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/19/anonymous-takes-down-doj-website-in-response-to-megaupload-case/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/apnewsbreak-workers-indicted-at-one-of-worlds-largest-file-sharing-sites-megauploadcom/2012/01/19/gIQAJPIRBQ_story.html

[Lulu_Jane]

I reccomend reading the actual indictment http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment#page=30

Anonymous might do better to pick better poster children. I'm more concerned about what this means for other file storage sites than Megaupload, I mean seriously, I don't feel comfortable trying to claim the moral highground over that site.

[TheChosen]

Anonymous playing Internet Vigilante is only gonna make things worse. Especially when its true that Megaupload seems to have done lot of shady things and yes, its a good place for piracy. Even if there are legal stuff there, majority of it is piracy and thats kind of difficult to protect by moral standards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html?_r=1

Im not shedding a tear for this one

[Lulu_Jane]

I just pulled a muscle from agreeing with you so hard :D

[DarthHelmet86]

I have about 0 care that they have gone down. It seems that they have done and dealt in some highly dodgy things and didn't do anything to protect themselves. Leasing servers in the US was just about as dumb as you can get.

And going berserk and DoSing everything is not going to help us at all.

[GTX2GvO]

Isn't it so that a few of the ISO cellar uploads were uploaded there?

Those will be gone now for sure.

[Lulu_Jane]

We will have to check. The links should be removed even if they are dead I think.

[Doink]

I have about 0 care that they have gone down. It seems that they have done and dealt in some highly dodgy things and didn't do anything to protect themselves. Leasing servers in the US was just about as dumb as you can get.

And going berserk and DoSing everything is not going to help us at all.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller

[DarthHelmet86]

Yeah that is great, cause that is totally the same.

From the actual documents it would seem the owners of the site have committed crimes, not just hosting pirated content. If you don't like the law then go protest that, don't make this into something it isn't. SOPA and PIPA are something to be worried about, a website who's owners actually seemed to be making money of piracy is not.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Yeah that is great, cause that is totally the same.

From the actual documents it would seem the owners of the site have committed crimes, not just hosting pirated content. If you don't like the law then go protest that, don't make this into something it isn't. SOPA and PIPA are something to be worried about, a website who's owners actually seemed to be making money of piracy is not.
We still have to see what they will be declared guilty of. Some of the charges - eg "not identifying and removing EVERY other upload of the same infriging material as in the given link from their servers" - could cause very inconvenient precedence to be established for similar cases in the future.

[Lulu_Jane]

Doink, did you seriously just compare closing down a blatant warez site with the holocaust, because that's pretty amazing.

[DarthHelmet86]

From what I understand from reading it Fifth it wasn't so much that they weren't hunting down each file that was the same, but rather that they knew they had the same files and were talking about them and even suggesting how they could make more money of them now. They have talked about it being in Bad Faith, i.e. they shouldn't have to search everything on their servers, but if they do know of identical copies they should be removing them not talking about they can use them to make more money. I don't know if the law allows that to considered a violation of the Safe Haven laws.

Paying people who uploaded pirated material is a huge no no, copying files is all well and good but when you are making money of other peoples work like that it is a while different beast.

[TotalAnarchy]

From the little I've read in the indictment, there are a lot of loopholes to be exploited in that text. I don't think those guys will get many years of jail, if any at all.

[catchaserguns]

Megaupload was closed down by the FBI and US Justice Dept. for copyright infringement. A few of the Isos from this site were on Megaupload. Looks like somebody got to reup those Isos on another site. Its sad. They had a lot of legitimate music downloads, some homemade rpg games made with RPGMaker, and pinball tables for the Future Pinball emulator program. It was probable the response to the protest Wednesday to SOPA.

[DarthHelmet86]

The case has been worked on for a bit of time now, who knows exactly why they decided to strike now. It could have been because SOPA got pulled but I doubt that, I would say there was a more reasonable reason.

[The Fifth Horseman]

After Anonymous' WMD strike, the award for "next people to have a totally knee-jerk reaction" goes... well, to a bunch of other file hosts. Some merely block specific US IP ranges, others decided to ban any US traffic whatsoever: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65920166.html http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65956650.html

And the Anon? Just getting warmed up: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65958120.html

[Scatty]

And the Anon? Just getting warmed up: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65958120.html
At least someone is (or some are) fighting there. Even if with wrong weapons.
Smalltalk alone doesn't change anything. Especially not in the "pretend-to-be" democratic system. Which isn't one. Never actually was yet.

[TheChosen]

Im just gonna copy-paste my comments from other forum

Fuck 'em. Anonymous are just bunch of man-childs who have watched V for Vendetta far too many times. They dont care about freedom of speech or anything. They just do it for the kicks they get for "sticking to the man", or to protect their source of free stuff. Besides, for people "supposedly" trying to bring freedom to the internet, who gave them permission to play the Internet police? Some day they'll go too far, and that might bring on something stronger than SOPA. Or they make permanent damage to the world system, whichever comes first.

And Im sick of people thinking these basement dwelling dorks are somekind of heroes.

And another thing: For a group thats going around threatening Government and calling for "justice" in Youtube videos like they're some sort of terrorist-faction, they're not really making that huge of a impact. So far, their big protest have involved...taking down websites. At night. Thats like ripping down posters at non-business hours when no-one's watching. Oooo, scary hackers are throwing tantrums. I've seen more threatening school girls.

[dosraider]

I usually keep far away from such topics, but here I agree 100% with TheChosen.

So, to protest against 'the powers that be' that closes down some sites, they gonna eeeuuuurrrhhh .... close down some more sites. Waw.
:palm:

[Lulu_Jane]

Oh, not just that Dosraider, if they get really riled up they might go vigilante and destroy the life of someone who mildly mistreated a cat. Ugh.

I agree with TC. Although they do help get the media attention on certain things that might otherwise be ignored. But you know, they also help bring the shame.

[dosraider]

Although they do help get the media attention on certain things that might otherwise be ignored.....
And so do terrorist bombers ....... maybe if they would blow up some babies or young children they would even get more attention?

*sigh*

[Lulu_Jane]

You have to get out of your parent's basement to blow up babies.

[DarthHelmet86]

Guys I think this is getting a bit silly now.

I think you will find most of us agree that Anon's reaction is about as stupid as you could get and is not helping us at all.

[Dave]

One of the things that bothers me is the removal of all those accounts, even premium, this means that many people have lost their personal data.

There's no need to hide behind a finger, the majority of people used it for piracy and/or illicit file sharing, but other used it as a service.

I'm using 4shared to store backups, I'm just lucky that my first choice wasn't Megaupload.

[Red Fortress]

Megaupload Takedown Aftershocks.

Filesonic
Fileserve
Closed affiliate rewards program
Banned any third parties downloading

Uploaded.to
Blocks all US based IP addresses

FileJungle
UploadStation
FilePost
Banned any third parties downloading
And/or
Mass deleting accounts & files
Some USA IP addresses blocked

VideoBB
VideoZer
4shared
Closed affiliate rewards program
Mass deleting accounts & files

UploadBox
x7.to
Shutting down

Sources:
http://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker-ecosystem-shocked-as-big-players-take-drastic-action-120123/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120122/23343817505/megaupload-shutdown-means-other-companies-turning-off-useful-services.shtml
http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-honolulu/file-sharing-sites-without-the-sharing-megaupload-alternatives-might-not-be

[Scatty]

That stupid *censored* at FBI are typically too dumb, or simply ignorant, to see what effect their actions would produce. Probably just ignorant, as long as their job is done, the rest of the world can go to hell. Got one chain link, and what's with the rest of the chain? Going after it all also and rip down the majority of internet content additionally? If that's the example of how the FBI works I'm surprised they're still in business. Idiots.
Excuse me.

Uploaded stuff from me at 4Shared is fortunately still there. Hope it remains, though some of you guys who uploaded stuff for the ISO Cellar there might want to check in periodically. Chances are some things there will get deleted.

[Doink]

Doink, did you seriously just compare closing down a blatant warez site with the holocaust, because that's pretty amazing.

I am in no way comparing this to any past event.
Its just a simple quote that illustrates a very common situation where people do not take action until they are directly affected.

quote from some forum in the future:

"That Abandonia site blatantly offered copyrighted games they deserved to be shut down"

[DarthHelmet86]

There is kinda a big difference here. Megaupload is charged with some serious stuff, not just hosting pirated information. But not removing it when asked, purposefully allowing content that was meant to be taken down to stay up, paying people money for things they knew where pirated and had been previously asked to take down not to mention the money laundering charges and the like. If the FBI can prove it's case, and it seems they think they can what with all the internal email evidence, Megaupload will be guilty of some serious crimes.

I am not going to run out and protest this crap, I will not use a site that seems to been as devious as it could to make money as my poster child. If we want to make a stand this is not the place, this is the perfect scapegoat for the evils of piracy that anyone could have asked for. Anonymous is doing nothing to help us with these pathetic attacks, having bitch fits on the internet is not helping us either. Protesting over this is like protesting over stop and search laws after a guy got stopped and searched with a rifle in his backpack, ammo, and a diary saying how he was about to murder anyone who got in his way. We might not like what has happened, or the law, but let us at least pick a battle that makes us look like the good guys and not idiots.

[Lulu_Jane]

This is a guy who has in the past been involved in running pyramid schemes and early 90's dot com site scams. I find it mindblowing that he's our apparent internet martyr for freedom of information. Seriously, google some of Kim Dotcom's previous names and marvel at the consistent dodgy-ness.

[Scatty]

I find it mindblowing that he's our apparent internet martyr for freedom of information.
He's just the right hang-out-at the front-shield (no direct word for that in English) for either side's purposes. Both will scratch out as much use of the situation as possible. He's also the first target, but probably won't be the last. That is, if we're talking about Megaupload here.
If it's Anonymous, he's fighting on neither side and doesn't do much to help anyone. I'll be damned if they don't catch him soon enough. Or recruit him.

[florianix]

This is a guy who has in the past been involved in running pyramid schemes and early 90's dot com site scams. I find it mindblowing that he's our apparent internet martyr for freedom of information. Seriously, google some of Kim Dotcom's previous names and marvel at the consistent dodgy-ness.

And I thought that stupid muppet would be past after they got him the last time. :-(

Whatever his name is, Kimble or Kim Dotcom... the constant is that he is into something criminal each time again... and always behaves like a stupid swank trying to buy friends.

Just made me feel I have to apologize what came from my country...

If what people like this do is what you understand from "freedom" of the internet... then I really have to reconsider if I really need or want it.

[Japo]

Of course MU shouldn't be anyone's poster child. And it seems plain that they tried to circumvent laws with bad faith while claiming not to.

They also had some legitimate services, and I read they were partnering with music distribution services and planning to set up their own platform where artists could sell and get paid--by charging for those downloads, or even if they were available for free by partaking in the ad revenue.

Freedom of expression has plenty of poster children to choose, even in the Internet alone. Even putting only the mayor corporations that oppose SOPA/PIPA (including Wikipedia etc.) on one scale, and the sorry pack of political parasites who support it on the other, it's plain which side contributes more to the world.

Also nobody seems to question the concept of intellectual property itself, I suppose everybody thinks it obvious that IP laws are good. All we do know for sure is that they're impossible to enforce. But better than discussing here is reading on your own, so here's a gift (free book download):

(click)
http://i102.photobucket.com/download-albums/m87/japofran/politics/SS362.jpg (http://mises.org/resources/3582/Against-Intellectual-Property)

And a little more to read:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/patent-trolls-are-a-symptom-of-deeper-problems/
The classic patent troll has no products and no employees other than the lawyers required to negotiate licensing deals and file patent lawsuits. ...

Patent trolls make good poster children for the patent system’s dysfunctions, but focusing too much on them ignores the fact that abusing the patent system is a game played by large companies as well.

[Japo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
- Signatories:United States, the European Union and 22 Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea.
- Negotiating parties: Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

https://www.eff.org/issues/acta
Both civil society and developing countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations. ...

new legal regimes to "encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders in the removal of infringing material" criminal measures and increased border search powers.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/we-have-every-right-be-furious-about-acta
it will create new rules for the Internet ...

Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings.

The EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA yesterday in Tokyo. ... In December, the Council of the European Union—one of the European Union’s two legislative bodies, composed of executives from the 27 EU member states—adopted ACTA during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries. ...

In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the constitutionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”. This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.

[DarthHelmet86]

ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) isn't a law, it is an agreement amongst countries about laws. And it is worrying, but at the same time your country would still need to pass laws based around it before they can have something like it sets out to do. Signing it is a lot different from actually making the laws it entails.

Not to mention it would seem it has been toning itself down and after the failure of SOPA and PIPA (if it does fail that is) I doubt many countries will be lining up to start similar laws.

From what I have been reading a lot of it is actually the streamlining of existing laws across lots of countries. Stopping there being gaps in the law that are allowing real pirates stealing money from people escaping out back doors.

Australia is a member of the Kyoto Protocol, we still don't have laws about that yet either.

[Scatty]

ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) isn't a law, it is an agreement amongst countries about laws. And it is worrying, but at the same time your country would still need to pass laws based around it before they can have something like it sets out to do. Signing it is a lot different from actually making the laws it entails.

Not to mention it would seem it has been toning itself down and after the failure of SOPA and PIPA (if it does fail that is) I doubt many countries will be lining up to start similar laws.
Not to mean to offend you, but are you sure you aren't just trying to convince yourself and others there'll be no harm from such an agreement and everything will be ok?
Looking at the pattern of repeating consistency with which all those proposed measures and laws about global control over internet are being raised and proposed again and again each year three to four times per year, even if they didn't manage to gain enough momentum to establish themselves yet, that should tell anybody willing to lend an ear - if nothing will be done now to choke all of those ideas right at their root, there will be an oppressed and completely controlled internet with no respect for inidividual privacy. Maybe not now, maybe not the next year, but it will come. If we just keep silent and hope for the best - don't get your hopes up.
Also I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the origins of almost each of those ideas seem to be coming from USA.

[DarthHelmet86]

I am not trying to convince myself of anything, ACTA is not a good thing. But stopping countries from signing it now is a bit late, not to mention getting countries to unsign it as well. We should still try, but more importantly we should be watching out for our respective countries enacting laws that are similar to SOPA/PIPA.

[Japo]

WTF?

#Polish Parliament members wear #Anonymous masks to protest #ACTA in chambers (http://anoncentral.org/2012/01/polish-parliament-members-wear-anonymous-masks-to-protest-acta-in-chambers/)

Polish politicians do this? What do normal Polish people do? And Polish occupiers?

Well I guess that's the advantage of being in the opposition, parties can do any number of things they wouldn't do if they were in the government, and pretend they would.

[nextinline]

I was mad at first because i redownloaded my Steam version of GTA IV to get a performance mod on Moddb, it was on megaupload, then i found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT5qFrEOKCA

Now, we talk about ACTA
http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8408/actaeu6480.th.png (http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8408/actaeu6480.png)

[catchaserguns]

I hope that the Feds don't go after 4shared because that would practically shut down the ISO cellar.

[The Fifth Horseman]

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6795

[DarthHelmet86]

I don't know Fifth, the arguments presented are rather weak. The problem here isn't that Safe Haven should apply, but that the people in charge of Megaupload seemed to do everything in their power to circumvent following through on their end of the deal. Safe Haven means taking down anything you are asked to, while the copyright owner and the person uploading sort it out. This is why if you get a copyright claim of any sort against a video you upload on Youtube it gets pulled, you then file a counter claim, if there is no copyright infringement the video is able to be viewed again. Megaupload seems to have not done this, they aren't protected as a Safe Haven any more because of that. If the FBI can't prove that to be the case most of their claims will fall down with it, but with the internal emails it seems they likely will.

Brining up the sovereignty and how they can charge people operating in other countries is also Megaupload's fault, they had rented a server in America...so American law applies. New Zealand is a firm ally of America and has similar laws, just like Australia with America extraditing criminals or suspected criminals is a common thing nothing new here.

Then onto another point about only charging on one of the movies, this is also a common thing in court cases. The prosecution often holds off all charges if they are very similar, just in case it goes wrong they can refile with the new charge that they hadn't pressed before. You see it all the time in multiple murders, the person being charged is not often charged with every murder for the very same reason, so the prosecution has a back up plan.

This is due process, yeah the site getting shut down sucks but if you were running a store selling legal and illegal goods and got charged for it you would be shut down as well. An even closer example is if a Storage place got charged with allowing people to store and deal stolen goods from their premises, you would likely get locked out of your legitimate goods stored in their while the case was dealt with. We just spent time trying to get SOPA and PIPA pulled due to their lack of due process and now when it actually happens in a legal way we are all chucking the same wobbly. The only thing that people outside of this can draw from that is that we are nothing but pirates who want the right to pirate whatever we want, however we want and never have to deal with the law ever. That isn't the image I want to be sending out, I want people to know that while I support the right of people to share whatever they want I still want the law to be there watching us to make sure we aren't making money out of it and are obeying the law when it says to stop doing something cause it is illegal.

[Japo]

Darth, I didn't know you knew more Law than that woman from Stanford :P

[DarthHelmet86]

You have no idea how close I came to becoming a lawyer, I really wanted to work on murder cases. I also spent most of my teenage years reading up on every serial murder, mass murder and such that I could find. I might be wrong in the end, but the case she presented was weak to me, it missed information that is rather easy to find, i.e the fact that Megauploads had servers in the US meaning they are subject to US law. And hey just going to a fancy University doesn't make you good at your job, you can still be a complete idiot or not fully understand all the facts of the case.

[Japo]

NZ court finds Megaupload search warrants illegal (http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/28/idINL3E8HS2QM20120628)

[Lulu_Jane]

This could get fun again:

Kim dotcom offers himself to the FBI provided they release funds for lawyers and living expenses. (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/dotcom-surrender/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired27b+%28Wired%3A+Blog+-+Threat+Level%29)