Megaupload.com Shut Down, Founder Charged With Piracy 1005
zacharye writes "Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service's founder with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com's owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue."
U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
The summary doesn't mention it, but none of those indicted or arrested were U.S. citizens or had likely even ever set foot on U.S. soil. Even if you're in another country, you had better make sure you're not violating U.S. law. Here's a full list of those foreigners who foolishly thought they weren't under U.S. jurisdiction (from the DOJ website [justice.gov]):
Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand. Dotcom founded Megaupload Limited and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites.
Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the chief marketing officer;
Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, who is the graphic designer;
Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the head of business development;
Mathias Ortmann, 40, a citizen of Germany and resident of both Germany and Hong Kong, who is the chief technical officer, co-founder and director;
Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, who is a software programmer and head of the development software division;
Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, who oversees programming and the underlying network structure for the Mega conspiracy websites.
Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities, who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Bencko, Echternach and Nomm remain at large.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is a good argument for why we don't need SOPA/PIPA.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is a good argument for why we don't need SOPA/PIPA.
My thinking exactly.
Present laws should be shown to fail before new laws, which are effectively wrecking balls to swat mosquitos, are enacted.
Timing is certainly insteresting. Is this meant to underscore that point? Could be...
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Murdoch* et al. will point at it as, "See! This kind of thing is killing American business!"
The other side will say, "Doh. You used what legal muscle you already had, which is already abusive."
* If you didn't see him squirm on Twitter yesterday, you're missing out.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
What this is really about (Score:5, Informative)
Found an interview. Apparently Mega was looking to go head-to-head with the big record labels, and give artists 90%. And pay them for free downloads too.
It's here. [torrentfreak.com]
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the "failure" is that the shutdown and arrest couldn't be done without due process. SOPA/PIPA eliminates a great deal of due process for the initial shutdown.
Just consider how long megaupload's been around. If one could just mail a letter to their DNS provider to get it shut down, you can bet it would have happened long ago.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not stand for this flagrant abuse of our farcical democracy!
Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.
This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.
Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.
Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.
Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.
From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.
We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.
Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.
Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.
Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.
Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.
Copyright is fascist. I find it revolting that
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly agree, that, if especially, megauploads owners have been arrested due to material that users of the site had uploaded, this is a very ominous sign, really. If this is so, it will mean that it will be basically impossible to run a user generated content service such as youtube in the USA. it is impossible for site owners to police their sites, to arrest people for what others out of their control have done really brings us to a new letter of fascist insanity and is deeplyu worrying and concerning, it is clearly an outright attack on free speech in the US and will make operating any kind of site that allows for free speech, legitimate content, virtually impossible, as it would take only one illegal post which site owners have no way of being able to prevent, to give the feds a pretext to carry out their gestapo type sweep.
We should all be very concerned and worried about this ominous and dark development.
It seems like they are already trying to enforce SOPA before it has even been passed.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
"I strongly agree, that, if especially, megauploads owners have been arrested due to material that users of the site had uploaded, this is a very ominous sign"
It's worse than this, this is a bunch of non-US citizens, situated outside America, running a business from Hong Kong, having their international domain names hijacked.
Worse, MegaUpload is even used by some businesses, I know a handful of companies first hand, but I suspect there are thousands, who use it as a method to distribute large, legitimate files.
This goes beyond any US action that has ever happened before as the US in this case has effectively just shut down a legitimate foreign business that it simply does not like, and has had arrested everyone who works at that business.
This can now only be resolved by the following two things:
- Countries must start ignoring US requests for arrest of their citizens where the crime has happened outside the US and/or is not illegal in the country of arrest
- The US must lose all control of the internet, it must now be internationally controlled by something like the ITU where majority consensus is needed globally for this kind of thing to be possible such that no single country or small group of countries can impose their will on the rest of the internet
America is now effectively just unilaterally deciding which businesses are allowed to do business on the internet, and the worst part, foreign sovereign nations are allowing it to happen.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't just want to shut down the site! They wanted to prove that the operators knew that what they were doing was illegal, and that they were taking deliberate steps to hide the money! That is central to the indictment, that they knew (because they were told!) that they hosted infringing content, and that they did not comply with removing (very specific) items from a (very specific) server. There's a lot more to the indictment, which I encourage everyone to read before they take an activist position.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171180266957116.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories [wsj.com]
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
Then read the actual Indictment [scribd.com]. It looks pretty bad for MU. Especially since the government keeps calling Megaupload "The Conspiracy". You can't support a Conspiracy can you? That's just downright criminal!
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the timing had less to do with SOPA, and more to do with last month's brou-haha over Megaupload's yanked video on youtube.
After the judge slapped down Universal Music(?) and said they can't censor ads just because they don't like them, the lawyers probably called the politicians and threatened not to fund their upcoming 2012 campaigns. The politicians called Justice Department and demanded action.
Thus action happened. And megaupload was shutdown. And now Universal is celebrating with glee because they' lost the initial battle, but won the war.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a very good argument why people outside the US should still care about SOPA/PIPA.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of one of those "people" I can say that it isn't so much a matter of not "caring" about SOPA/PIPA, it's more a matter of having not a whole lot we can do about it. Seriously, what is the advice given to US citizens who care? "Contact your congresscritter". Unfortunately, those of us in the Rest Of The World don't get to have one of those. We *could* bitch to our own government about how we disapprove of some not-yet-passed legislation that's being debated by a foreign government, but I'll let you take a guess how much effect that's going to have.
Actually, there's nothing preventing you from sending emails, written letters or phoning our Congresspeople. It's apparent to me (as an American) that Congress still has this U.S.-centric attitude towards the Internet, and I believe that needs to change, quickly. Hearing from a fifty or sixty million thoroughly incensed foreigners might very well be a good first step. Yeah, okay, we started the Internet ball rolling almost forty years ago, but this baby has gone global now. Time for Congress to accept that fact, and stop threatening to corrupt a piece of Internet infrastructure (e.g., the DNS root servers) that the economies of many other nations are now dependent.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a better argument for why we don't need the USA.
Comments like that serve no purpose. Citizens of this country are up in arms about what our government (at the behest of certain large foreign corporations, I might add: Sony and several European media outfits can take most of the heat for SOPA, after all, they paid for it.) wants to do with these stupid laws. If you want us to continue to fight to respect you and the freedoms you currently enjoy on the Internet (whatever your own government permits you in that regard, if anything) you should show a little respect in return.
And you got a +5 Insightful for that. Remarkable.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
The position of the U.S. government is that these are foreign nationals operating a criminal enterprise within the United States. From a legal standpoint, it's no different than issuing warrants for foreign drug kingpins who ship drugs to the United States. They're not prosecuting foreigners for their actions overseas, but they are charging foreigners for the actions they are initiating within the borders of the United States itself.
Osama bin Laden never set foot in the U.S. either. We still had arrest warrants out for him, even before 9/11, for acts of terrorism he initiated on U.S. soil (the '93 WTC attack) and on foreign U.S. locations (embassies, Khobar, etc). While we're talking about two vastly different types of crime, the legal principle behind the charges is the same. If you direct criminal actions within the United States from a foreign location, you become subject to U.S. law because you are committing activities within the country.
By placing a datacenter within the borders of the United States, MegaUpload's management placed itself within the jurisdiction of U.S. law for any actions occurring within that datacenter. This isn't a purely U.S. thing either...pretty much every country on the planet recognizes this same legal principle. When you choose to operate a business within a nation, you are also making a choice to subject yourself to that nations laws.
There's only one way around this that I know of, and that's to insulate via foreign subsidiaries. Many multinational corps use subsidiaries to avoid this exact problem. In Megaupload's case, I don't see how they could have fit that into their business model.
If there's one lesson to take away from all of this, it's simply that you should check a nations laws before opening up a business there. If something is legal in your home country, and illegal in the country next door, it's probably a BAD IDEA to start opening offices in the neighboring country. MegaUpload was stupid to open a datacenter in the United States, the MPAA/RIAA's home turf.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Insightful)
SOPA might as well be called iDMCA because it basically takes the DMCA Takedown system to an international level. (I.E. If a TLD won't take down a piracy site, ban the whole TLD from the US Internet.) Maybe what we should trade for that is a punitive damages clause added for incorrect DMCA letters.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Interesting)
But they used server located in the US.
If you stand in Mexico and use a remote control car to rob a bank in the US, the US will come after you..and visa versa.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just glad it doesn't work the other way around. I could put swastikas all over my website on some server in Germany, confident that the FBI would laugh at Germany if they tried to have an American citizen arrested and deported.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Funny)
Texas law only requires that you shoot him in season and buy a tag.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, what was the joke?
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
That's what they did. They asked New Zealand to arrest the men involved, and New Zealand police arrested them. Perhaps reading is not your strong suit?
There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with this that are based in fact. You should try one of those.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Insightful)
and people think Ron Paul is the crazy one for wanting America's fingers out of other country's pies.
This sort of thing is going to spark widespread international hatred for the United States. No, not the general dislike that many countries have for us now, but honest-to-god hatred. Look what good things came out of that situation in the mideast.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we think Ron Paul is crazy for believing in intelligent design, for voting to defund Planned Parenthood, for supporting a Constitutional Amendment defining a fetus as a human being, and many other things; none of which involve fingers or pies.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Informative)
Rationale from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
The indictment was returned in the Eastern District of Virginia, which claimed jurisdiction in part because some of the alleged pirated materials were hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va.
To play devil's advocate here: most Slashdot readers contend that music and movie industries should stop complaining and instead "adapt their business models", because their world has been irrevocably changed by technology. You could also say that that same technology has very much changed the way criminals do their dirty work, by allowing a person in one country to administer a server or hack a system on the other side of the world, and law enforcement officials need to adapt accordingly.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Informative)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, except then you get to experience extraordinary rendition [wikipedia.org] instead of extradition.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Funny)
*raises hand*
Anyone else hear the voice of Yakko Warner (from the Animaniacs cartoon) as they read that?
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Funny)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
All that with the money he made from piracy.
Or by running a useful business. Come on, they have an advertisement with a bunch of artists about how useful their site is for their work. Some people using Google to find unauthorized files doesn't mean Schmidt's money is "made from piracy".
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone gets voted up to the stratosphere or down to oblivion here, we should remind ourselves that there is no way to tell how legitimately or illegitimately he made his money until a breakdown of his income is published.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Funny)
Before anyone gets voted up to the stratosphere or down to oblivion here, we should remind ourselves that there is no way to tell how legitimately or illegitimately he made his money until a breakdown of his income is published.
And we'll probably be a lot older and following other stories by the time that comes out...
In today's news, aliens land in Los Angeles ans proclaim L. Ron Hubbard totally slanders them in his Church of Scientology writings and they plan to sue. Tom Cruise was unavailable for comment as he was squashed flat by the alien ship landing.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Funny)
Tom Cruise was unavailable for comment as he was squashed flat by the alien ship landing.
Rendering him several inches shorter.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new Tom Cruise smashing alien overlords.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone gets voted up to the stratosphere or down to oblivion here, we should remind ourselves that there is no way to tell how legitimately or illegitimately he made his money until a breakdown of his income is published.
Illegally as defined by whom exactly? Printing an image of Mohamed is illegal in Iran. Should we extradite all US offenders to Iran? Most people outside of the US don't see sharing files as illegal in the same way. As a US citizen, I'm appalled and disgusted. How many people were killed by Megaupload? How many made to starve? This is a sickening abuse of power in the name of corporate profits.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that this wasn't simply a case of the United States throwing it's weight around.
I'm pretty sure it was.
(Slashdot: It's 13 seconds since you hit reply. Yes, that's because I'm not typing out an entire fucking essay and even after a bottle of vodka I can type five fucking words in under a minute. Come on Slashdot editors, fix this shit.)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to hear how megaupload made money from piracy when uploading / downloading from the site has always been free. Only thing you'd have to pay for is if you wanted faster download speeds, irrelevant to the user generated content on the site. Megaupload couldn't exist under SOPA / PIPA laws irregardless for that reason.
Also, I am very curious as to what they (the arrested) can / will argue. A lot of lesser arguments have been shut down by courts (ex. I didn't know it was on my server), but megaupload is a little different and unique of a RIAA/MPAA victim isn't it?
If the above can get the US government to consider SOPA though, I don't like their chances considering lobbyists trying to buy a guilty verdict from the judge.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not calling for his income to be published. I'm saying in the absence of their site statistics and their income breakdown, neither FightFreedomOfSpeach nor the AC who responded to his post can prove their assertions. One claims his money is made illegitimately, the other claims the opposite. What I'm seeing is moderator reaction favoring the AC and punishing FightFreedomOfSpeach in an instance where all we have is speculation. I'm for a neutral stance until facts emerge, and because of that I'm against this one sided moderation. Why are you so defensive?
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Previous similar sites (Napster, Kazaa) have been handled through civil cases. Why a criminal case for this one? Megaupload was a very different site than Napster/Kazaa/mp3.com, and it is not at all clear under current law that megaupload is illegal.
Megaupload is a file locker service that has many legal uses purposes. Should a landlord be liable when a tenant infringes copyrights? Then why should a file locker provider be liable when a user uses the service to infringe copyright?
If this is the law of the land, then the founders of the next youtube will be locked up and thrown in jail before their site can ever take off. Of course, that may be what the RIAA/MPAA are shooting for.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Informative)
I hope they weren't important files... you were basically trusting your data to a guy who has been convicted of credit card fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement.
Have you never heard of encryption?
Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, if bottled water companies had enough lobbying power this would probably be a viable reality.
Time and time again big business has proven that it will do whatever it can get away with to make money, and ethical and sometimes even legal impediments prove to be no real obstacle.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's already happened in Bolivia. The IMF insisted that they privatize their water supply and eventually it got to the point where no water in the country was legal to collect or drink unless it had been bought from the cartel that controlled it.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Informative)
Or, more briefly: The state already sold that rain to the water company while it was still in the air. If it falls on your land and you collect some for yourself, you are stealing water from that company.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a valid comparison, as bottled water companies can't claim ownership over tap water coming out of your faucet, and in fact, you pay the water company for that service.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference is that right now, nobody has a concept of "drinkingrights" but we do have a concept of "copyrights."
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:4, Funny)
How dare people drink their tap water!
You mean like in the toilet?
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apples and oranges. The bottled water companies didn't invent water. The media companies did make the media you're pirating. If you don't want to buy their product, there are plenty of alternatives. You can buy indie music, some of which is freely distributed. You can watch free OTA television. You can read a book from the library. And so on.
Taking something without paying just because you can is selfish and wrong.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegally copying/viewing/enjoying copyrighted content is not stealing, by any widely accepted definition of "stealing". Violating copyright is illegal in many jurisdictions, and it could very well be considered wrong (depending on your personal morals) but it is not theft.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Informative)
Megaupload have no system in place to stop people uploading material they don't own. Simple as that.
There is no such system.
Simple as that.
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:4, Informative)
Do those taps run directly into the bottling plants tanks?
For about 1 bottle in 4 [msn.com], yes. Yes they do [cnn.com].
Re:Ban the use of faucets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly a fair comparison - Stealing water from the bottling company deprives the company of water that they paid for. This is more like a canned air company that pulls air (in this case literally) out of the air and cans it. And then suing you for breathing what they could have otherwise canned and sold to you resulting in a "lost sale."
The only real difference (albeit a big one) is that music/movies/games have to be created before being distributed. It's illegal copying or piracy, not theft as the company is deprived of nothing other than a potential or more likely imaginary lost sale.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also been "industry" standard to know that Megaupload is very nice for piracy uploaders.
Megaupload is very nice for downloaders. Unlike most other sites, you were not able to make money by uploading to MU. It was the generous downloading limts that made the site popular.
MU had unrivalled file retention for a free service. Even when uploading as a free user, files were retained for years, even without any downloads. It's fully possible to find working MU links posted in 2005. The only thing they removed files for was a DMCA takedown. If there was a limit or the files you could upload to a free account, I never hit it. Other sites did not offer anything similar unless you paid for preimum membership.
Kim make have been a crook, but MU itself was the bastion of free filesharing in the P2P mould from a user standpoint, whereas nearly every other site except Mediafire is based on commerical (payouts to uploaders) filesharing.
A sad day. Back to the torrents!
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Interesting)
Megaupload is also a very good way to share large files that you have created with others, without setting up your own website. An entirely legitimate and legal use.
What's the balance between the two? Was there a better way to reduce piracy? What unintended effects are present?
I have downloaded many files from Megaupload and MediaFire - always files uploaded and released by the original authors, who don't want to pay to host files of multi-megabyte (often 10's of mbegabyte or more) size. I know it's an easy target, but I fail to see why this business model is necessarily 'piracy'.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:4, Interesting)
>It's also been "industry" standard to know that Megaupload is very nice for piracy uploaders.
From the same industry that says every download is a lost sale?
From the same industry that pirated and sold works they didn't have rights to? http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/ [michaelgeist.ca]
> It's only good - criminals are taken to court and jail
Alleged criminals....
>so companies can again produce goods and software and they don't have to see the widespread piracy that is going on.
Strange so are you saying movies, music and software would be that much more creative and better quality if there was no piracy? I mean all movies and music albums should reap in millions from every release. If they don't apparently its because the companies can't make good works because piracy is holding them back.
Re:U.S. law is the new international law (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still too afraid to post this pseudonymously, but if they're extraditing these people I can't be much further down the list :-( I figure they already have their sights on me if they're hunting down MegaUpload's graphic designer.
File Lockers don't work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody surprised by this story must be new here. File Lockers like MP3.com have been shut down regularly for ages now. You can't have an online database of content that isn't secured right...
Re:The Internet should be P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
right. (Score:5, Insightful)
"holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue."
my ass.
Re:right. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually surprised by that figure. It actually seems low given the people who came up with it.
Considering the past history of ludicrously high damage claims and the huge amount of infringing content they probably actually have, I figured they'd be making up new words to describe the number they came up with...
Dick Morris (Score:5, Insightful)
It almost comes off as intentional that this occurred the day after the SOPA protests. It looks like the battles over copyright infringement are finally coming to a head. This will all get resolved one way or another.
Dick Morris is a former Clinton advisor and a regular Fox News commentator, but he actually wrote what I think is a rational, well-worded message about everything that's been happening:
---
Dear Friend,
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is just the kind of bill that could cripple Internet freedom in the name of a good cause. Everybody agrees that we need to battle online piracy of movies, books, TV shows and such. If piracy spreads, nobody will create anything because their work will be pirated as soon as it is finished.
But...this legislation, with its draconian enforcement powers, uses an atomic bomb to solve a problem best left to educated action by responsible individuals and normal litigation. The collateral damage from this bill could destroy Internet freedom.
The bill would let the Justice Department and copyright holders to get court orders against websites they accuse of enabling or encouraging copyright infringement. It could stop search engines from linking to such sites and require service providers to block access to them.
It should be called the Camel's Nose In the Tent Act (CNITA). It would criminalize the Internet and make search engines the enforcers of copyright laws. It opens the tent to federal regulation and judicial activism that could drive search engines and internet service providers into bankruptcy through excessive court judgments and liability.
There is a remedy: Public education. None of us wants to kill off artistic creation. Each of us realizes that by abusing the system to get the goodies for free, we risk eliminating the goodies. We don't litter because we don't want to ruin our environment. We don't run red lights because we don't want traffic chaos. We wear seatbelts because we want to live. Law enforcement plays a role, but the greater influence is an educated public.
Copyright infringers can't make it if we don't buy it. Consumers need to realize that we will kill the golden goose if we steal his eggs! The way to regulate the internet is to use it sensibly and wisely and not to let Congress and the Justice Department in the door.
Thanks,
Dick Morris
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dick Morris (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody agrees that we need to battle online piracy of movies, books, TV shows and such. If piracy spreads, nobody will create anything because their work will be pirated as soon as it is finished.
That's rational and well-worded? I disagree. It's boldly irrational, arrogant, and false.
Movies, books, TV shows, and music all are still operating on a business model that depends wholly on copies being worth something. But copies of data inside computers AREN'T worth something. They are worth nothing, they have no intrinsic value at all.
Access to the work has value. The creation of the work has value. But copies no longer have value. So bascially we have whole industries that are trying to pay for valuable things by selling their customers something valueless. Econ 101: this is a stupid idea.
Don't get me wrong, it didn't used to be a stupid idea. It used to be a GREAT idea. But then computers got smart enough and connected enough to make copies of common media worthless, and as if by magic it became a stupid idea, almost overnight. It will remain a stupid idea until the computers aren't smart enough and aren't connected enough.
Shit like SOPA is not some sort of accident on the road to trying to prop up this broken business model; it's an inevitable side effect of trying to create a chimeric beast called "intellectual property". It's what happens when you try to force the limitations of physical copies onto a virtual object, inevitably fail to do so in a technical way, and are left with no recourse but draconian measures to prevent people from doing the obvious. It's what happens when you try to apply copright-as-written to computers: it breaks the computers.
Copyright needs to change. Business models need to change. If they don't, running arbitrary code will become a crime, and countries with digital freedom will leave the rest of us scrabbling in the dust.
Who needs SOPA/PIPA? America, F**K YEAH (Score:5, Insightful)
The Government responds... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Government responds... (Score:5, Insightful)
The People expressed their opinion about SOPA/PIPA. The Government responds with a resounding, "We don't give a shit."
This has nothing to do with SOPA, beyond showing that the government doesn't need it in order to take down (alleged) pirates in other countries. If anything this is the government throwing a bone to the (pissed off) media industry, saying look - we can get these guys without crippling the internet.
Re:The Government responds... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We don't give a shit" would be them passing it anyway.
This is far closer to "how DARE you stand up to us!"
This is not apathy, this is retaliation for contempt of our corporate overlords.
Looks something like.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks strangely familiar [upup-downdown.com].
In seriousness, why isn't this all over the news? Why just SOPA?
Re:Looks something like.. (Score:4, Informative)
Looks strangely familiar [upup-downdown.com].
In seriousness, why isn't this all over the news? Why just SOPA?
Because this just happened today. For once, /. is pretty up to date!
Wow, what amazing timing! (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck RIAA/MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
I also don't understand how they got the Netherlands to raid their servers...
This is what happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
...when corrupt laws don't get passed, or even do get passed.
Not as if they care, they will deal with the backlash later.
This will get worse if SOPA or anything like it passes.
I can't wait for the media industry to collapse. Maybe then content creators will realize they don't need the shit labels.
See you on Tor everybody. It is the only safe place now, but only if everyone gets in on it.
Hope the media companies love helping terrorism get even more secure, because that is all this will do as they push more and more people to encrypted networks.
Oh, wait, that won't be a problem, FBI will just get those backdoors and have control of millions of nodes for free.
Time to blackhole America. Bye.
Something fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting that megaupload got nailed so soon after they tried to fight back against UMG's frivolous youtube takedown.
I smell a rat and suspect someone's trying to avoid giving megaupload an edge in their lawsuit.
Why do they need SOPA again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why do they need SOPA again? (Score:5, Insightful)
With SOPA, they can take your site down if you link to (or, presumably, mention) megaupload.com. Think about that one for a minute.
Re:Why do they need SOPA again? (Score:5, Insightful)
With SOPA, they can take your site down if you link to (or, presumably, mention) megaupload.com. Think about that one for a minute.
Exactly, or even worse, SOPA lets them take your site down if one of your user-generated comments mentions of links to megaupload.com. Remember when it was popular to post the bluray key (if I'm remembering this correctly) on slashdot to spite Sony? Those posts are still accessible. There's no reason Sony couldn't or wouldn't use SOPA to shut down Slashdot. And hey, Google caches those posts, too!
Re:Why do they need SOPA again? (Score:5, Insightful)
MPAA Parenting Tip:
If your dog makes a mess on the floor, remember to punish your children for feeding him.
Re:Why do they need SOPA again? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bummer. (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, it's not a terribly huge loss on the material scheme of things. There are still plenty of other sites that people can use to host data, including wider-range services like Dropbox and Sugarsync. The other funny thing is that Megaupload et. al. did shut down links to any media that infringed on copyright policies, so it's scary to see how far these laws will go. I'm hoping that Dropbox and partners will not start telling people what can/can't be backed up.
ONLY 500 Million? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not 500 Trillion? They're not even trying hard enough anymore...
Only $500M in damages? (Score:5, Insightful)
$500M? That's like, what, one .mp3 file these days?
G.
Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Megaupload was one of a few (3-4) sites where a cracked copy of my software product was uploaded. They were extremely slow in responding to DMCA request and clearly had interest in continuously providing an obviously illegally obtained copy of the software (because they make money from download fees, essentially re-selling content without paying me). I don't care much for Hollywood, but I do care about software I spend 24/7/365 writing and supporting.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
what's the name of your software?
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I, too, would like to know - but I can understand why he wouldn't want to reveal that (in any of his posts to date).
I don't think he would be branded an 'enemy of the people', however.
It's just that any follow-up discussion is far more likely to be used to attack him in these comments than it is to sympathize or offer genuine assistance.
Let's say he did mention the product's name and its name was NetCommand (if a product with that name exists it's coincidental.. he has mention his product has to do with IP (the networking variant) and server vs desktop stuff, and the name works).
The very first thing people will do is figure out what NetCommand is, and suggest that it's not worth the money he's asking anyway. Whether that's $1 or $100.
Next come alternatives that are free (as in beer and/or speech).
Next come links to other sites where the cracked copy is and telling him "See how much good your DMCA request has done in curtailing its piracy? Doing it is just a waste of your time and money".
Then come the friendly suggestions on how he should just offer incentives to those who do buy it. Features not available to the pirates (at least until a few days later when the new pirated copy is released). Access to a support forum (which he probably can't staff and personally I know I get more support from random forums than official forums any time of day - so that's pointless anyway). Make his money instead with contract work and charge big for that (but maybe there's very little interest in that). Make his money by selling merchandise (because who doesn't want the NetCommand mug, right?). Suggest that he needs to find something else to do if he wants money because clearly his trade is dead and he needs to just accept it.
That of course alongside out-of-the-behind figures on how much money he has already made and that he shouldn't whine and moan about supposedly 'lost' sales - he's rich already. And the pirates wouldn't have purchased anyway.
etc. etc.
Unfortunately, the flip side is that he doesn't mention the name of the product and so he gets modded down (because hey, where's the proof?) and the AC who wants to know the name (whether genuinely curious or just looking to incite exactly the kind of 'debate' I sketched above) gets modded up.
All in all, however, he stands far more to lose in revealing the name than in not revealing it. So his karma may get dented - big deal, better than people parading around after pummeling his product into the ground.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
How long it took for them to respond to your DMCA takedown letter and was the response time within what the DMCA specifies?
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently not 24/7/365 since you are posting on slashdot
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
>Would you be content if your labors were simply taken with no recompense or permission from you?
If it was making my software the de-facto software and piracy gave me a market penetration I'd write it off as advertising. Just like Photoshop and Windows.
Safe Harbor (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there some reason why the DMCA's safe harbor provisions don't apply to Megaupload, or has the Federal Government decided those provisions are too inconvenient and therefore do not apply? Will Dropbox become the US Government's next target?
Next, YouTube (Score:5, Insightful)
Youtube may be next. Once they started putting ads on pirated content, they became an active participant.
And what about the legitmate content? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about the legitmate content that Megaupload was holding? No mention of that by the media... Nope, shut down, no trial, no jury, just executioner.
Isn't that nice?
That's like taking down Flickr because some of the photos are copyrighted... Of course, those photos are worth a billion dollars (wink,wink), so it's perfectly OK then to inconvenience the other 34 million people who had legitimate stuff on the site.
If any of you were hosting legitimate material on Megaupload, and you've now lost access, I suggest immediately filing class action against the government.
And in related news (Score:5, Funny)
The United States Department of Justice also filed indictments against Western Digital and Seagate for making hard drives that are capable of holding everything from copyrighted works to child porn. "They should have some mechanism in place to make sure illegal content isn't stored on these devices," an agent representing the DOJ said in a prepared statement today.
Do you now see that these people are your enemy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Megaupload was not violating any copyright laws - they had a pretty solid dmca takedown procedure that was quite fast. Most of the 'pirated' stuff you would see that were uploaded were users, you wouldnt be able to see a few days later. They were good at taking down stuff.
But they were also the biggest. this meant that for every dmca takedown, a few went unnoticed or slowly processed. aaaaaaand fast forward to this - they shut it down and charged for piracy.
This should tell you EXACTLY what will happen when sopa passes - imagine the sheer violations of sopa law, when entire user generated content, including comments and links have to be reviewed. NO outfit on the internet will be able to do that. NO outfit. if google, microsoft, apple, rackspace, softlayer, verizon, at&t came together to do it, set up facilities covering half of texas for it and in addition and threw the echelon listening array (belongs to nato) and all its worldwide facilities at it, still they wouldnt be able to manage an effective removal of such 'infringing' stuff in acceptable time.
even china is not able to do it with a huge budget spent on surveillance farms and - mark that - 240,000 employees employed for censoring - quite a lot of them embedded as 'users' in internet cafes and whatnot, to snitch on the users even.
so it is certain that there is no way in hell any outfit on this planet will be able to NOT violate sopa. every outfit will live in a constant state of varying level if infringement as per sopa.
what does that mean ? it is a sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of EVERY internet outfit and website out there. if you go out of line in ANY way against the interests of any established private party, - whoa - a sopa complaint. MUCH more effective than suing for endless durations.
now you see why this sopa thing is useful for censorship, and why it was intended in the first place ?
these people do not seek to profit over anything. they are making sufficient profits. they know they can make even more profits if they adapted to the internet.
the problem of these people is CONTROL. internet is uncontrolled. it bothers them. they need the same kind of control they exercise over cable news channels, radios and whatnot. and all these shit are intended precisely for that duration.
these people want to control you for their own minority's profit. it is no different than dictatorship or enslavement - just the facade in front is different. they are NO longer your compatriots, they are no longer your countrymen, they are no longer your country's citizens. they are your enemies. even if you dont see them as your enemy, they DO see you as their enemy and act accordingly.
and you are playing in their home ground - as long as you keep all the game rules that allow them to control, ranging from copyright to patents, they will keep being in the advantage - for you will be playing in THEIR home.