Mega upload shut down

[Todeswind]

In what the federal authorities on Thursday called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.
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Associated Press
An undated screenshot of Megaupload.com, which allowed users to transfer large files. The U.S. shut the site on Thursday.
Coming just a day after civil protests in the United States over proposed antipiracy bills, the arrests were greeted almost immediately with digital Molotov cocktails. The hacker collective that calls itself Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Justice Department and several major entertainment companies and trade groups in retaliation for Mega-upload’s seizure. The Justice Department’s site and several others remained inaccessible for much of Thursday afternoon.

Megaupload, one of the most popular so-called locker services on the Internet, allowed users to anonymously transfer large files like movies and music. Media companies have long accused it of abetting copyright infringement on a vast scale. In a grand jury indictment, Megaupload is accused of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million through selling ads and premium subscriptions.

Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), have been arrested in New Zealand, the authorities said; the three others remain at large. Each of the seven people — who the indictment said were members of a criminal group it called “Mega Conspiracy” — is charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The charges could result in more than 20 years in prison.

As part of the crackdown, more than 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites.

Ira P. Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload, said in a phone interview on Thursday that “Megaupload believes the government is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law.”

The case against Megaupload comes at a charged time, a day after broad online protests against a pair of antipiracy bills in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act, or PIPA, in the Senate.

The bills would give federal authorities expanded powers to crack down on foreign sites suspected of piracy. But technology companies and civil liberties groups say that the powers are too broadly defined and could effectively result in censorship. On Wednesday, Google and Wikipedia joined dozens of sites in political theatrics by blacking out some content and explaining their arguments against the laws.

Anonymous, which has previously set its sights on PayPal, Sony and major media executives, was more blunt in its response. The group disabled the Justice Department’s site for a time, and it also claimed credit for shutting down sites for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, two of the most powerful media lobbies in Washington, as well as those of the Universal Music Group, the largest music label, and BMI, which represents music publishers.

“Let’s just say, for #SOPA supporters their #SOPAblackout is today,” Anonymous wrote in a Twitter post. In an e-mail, a spokesman for the group said it was responsible for the Web attacks.

The Megaupload case touches on many of the most controversial aspects of the antipiracy debate. Megaupload and similar sites, like Rapidshare and Mediafire, are often promoted as convenient ways to legitimately transfer large files; a recent promotional video had major stars like Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas singing Mega-upload’s praises. But they have become notorious inside media companies, which see the legitimate uses as a veil concealing extensive theft.

Mr. Dotcom, a portly 37-year-old with dual Finnish and German citizenship, has made himself a visible target. He splits his time between Hong Kong and New Zealand and casts himself in flamboyant YouTube videos. His role as one of the most prominent Web locker operators has earned him a half-joking nickname in Hollywood: Dr. Evil.

According to the indictment, he earned $42 million from Mega-upload’s operations in 2010.

The indictment against Mega-upload, which stems from a federal investigation that began two years ago, was handed down by a grand jury in Virginia two weeks ago but was not unsealed until Thursday.

It quotes extensively from correspondence among the defendants, who work for Megaupload and its related sites. The correspondence, the indictment says, shows that the operators knew the site contained unauthorized content.

The indictment cites an e-mail from last February, for example, in which three members of the group discussed an article about how to stop the government from seizing domain names.

The Megaupload case is unusual, said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, in that federal prosecutors obtained the private e-mails of Megaupload’s operators in an effort to show they were operating in bad faith.

“The government hopes to use their private words against them,” Mr. Kerr said. “This should scare the owners and operators of similar sites.”

It seems oddly coincidentally timed with what is going in with SOPA.

[Todeswind]

EDIT : I forgot the link

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/techn ... cy.html?hp

[JME2]

It seems oddly coincidentally timed with what is going in with SOPA.

Yeah, that was my first thought too.

[Panzersharkcat]

I'm annoyed because that's where some of my mods were stashed. I have backups on my hard drive and fully functioning ones on the Nexus but it's still annoying, especially since I was planning on using that to send the most recent version of my overhaul mod to my testers.

[Thanas]

Well, crap.

So much for sharing data with researchers on the other side of the world who are not-PC savy and don't know how to operate ftp servers.

[MKSheppard]

I like the way the DOJ describes MU:

As a result, non-premium users are repeatedly asked by the Conspiracy to pay for more and faster access to content on Megaupload.com.

Holy shit, it's painful to read the DOJ filing -- they've just described how the internets pay for massive bandwith consumption -- all that megabytes ain't free.

[Thanas]

It also is BS - the download speed is fast enough that anybody who does not download several GB in files can live with it.

[Lord Anubis]

Ok, admittedly I don't understand most things when it comes to the law but I have to ask this, what happens to the premium subscribers to Megavideo and Megaupload? With the site down they can't access the site to terminate their accounts to prevent well charges accruing on their credit cards for those premium accounts, personally I don't remember if its a one time charge or does it continuously roll over or not. Also what happens to the premium members who didn't upload anything but just used it as a download service for the videos they liked off Megavideo? Not to mention I'm not American.

[Todeswind]

... Am I halluicnating or has megavideo gone down as well?

[Simon_Jester]

Isn't Megavideo affiliated with Megaupload? A ham-handed lockdown of one could affect the other, surely.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Megaupload is a company which offers a number of services, including megavideo (videos), megalive (live video streaming), megabox (music) and megapix (photos like photobucket). All of those were shut down by this thing.

Its sad, I was only halfway through watching the IT Crowd on megavideo.

[PeZook]

I wonder if they'll actually find any "hurr hurr we wuvs pirates" statements in those private e-mails, or if they'll just try to tug and twist MUs disdain for anti-piracy bills into "bad faith".

Since if they can't prove the site owners operated in bad faith, they really have no case, do they? No more than they could shut down the USPS because people might be mailing pirated CDs to each other...

[Ace Pace]

I wonder if they'll actually find any "hurr hurr we wuvs pirates" statements in those private e-mails, or if they'll just try to tug and twist MUs disdain for anti-piracy bills into "bad faith".

Since if they can't prove the site owners operated in bad faith, they really have no case, do they? No more than they could shut down the USPS because people might be mailing pirated CDs to each other...

Well, Ars technica has a pretty good read on the case against MU and it seems solid enough (like we didn't all know they encouraged piracy).

[PeZook]

Yeah...man. It seems they were pretty blatant about it

[Skgoa]

Well, crap.

So much for sharing data with researchers on the other side of the world who are not-PC savy and don't know how to operate ftp servers.

What stops you from using one of the million other one-click hosters?

[Stofsk]

Well if Megaupload gets taken down, what's the guarantee that those other hosters won't go down too?

[Bellosh101]

kk. On or about July 9, 2008, VAN DER KOLK sent an e-mail to a third-party, entitled “funny chat-log.” In the e-mail, VAN DER KOLK copied the text of a previous online conversation between himself and ORTMANN, in which VAN DER KOLK had stated, “we have a funny business . . . modern days pirates :)” ORTMANN responded, “we’re not pirates, we’re just providing shipping services to pirates :)”.

Those choice quotes from two of the accused is mentioned in the indictment itself... a PDF copy of which can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment

*EDITED TO REMOVE TYPO*

[S.L.Acker]

Megaupload is back at the following address, less than 24 hours and they're already back and likely hosted outside of the US now. Way to go America, your war on the internet is even less successful than your war on drugs...

The new link is here.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Anonymous is shitting bricks, and has declared war on the government, the RIAA, and NBC-Universal.

[S.L.Acker]

The next few days should be interesting at this rate. I'm just not sure Anonymous is actually help their cause at this stage.

[bilateralrope]

Well if Megaupload gets taken down, what's the guarantee that those other hosters won't go down too?

Maybe they aren't stupid enough to have emails admitting they know about pirated content. Or to limit the number of DMCA requests someone could file each day.

Or maybe they will go down one at a time, only to be replaced one at a time. It took two years to build the case against Megaupload, plenty of time to switch from one site to another until one of them doesn't give such an opening.

[Rabid]

Megaupload is back at the following address, less than 24 hours and they're already back and likely hosted outside of the US now. Way to go America, your war on the internet is even less successful than your war on drugs...

The new link is here.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to enter my login and password into this thing before I see an ssl certificate authenticated by a trustworthy third-party or something.

[S.L.Acker]

Well if Megaupload gets taken down, what's the guarantee that those other hosters won't go down too?

Maybe they aren't stupid enough to have emails admitting they know about pirated content. Or to limit the number of DMCA requests someone could file each day.

Or maybe they will go down one at a time, only to be replaced one at a time. It took two years to build the case against Megaupload, plenty of time to switch from one site to another until one of them doesn't give such an opening.

Or you know, Megaupload can still just get a new domain name and ignore the US whinging. It's not like their servers have been seized yet, at least not that I've read. It's not even like cutting the head off the company by arresting the four people at the top will change anything.

Megaupload is back at the following address, less than 24 hours and they're already back and likely hosted outside of the US now. Way to go America, your war on the internet is even less successful than your war on drugs...

The new link is here.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to enter my login and password into this thing before I see an ssl certificate authenticated by a trustworthy third-party or something.

I fully understand the leeriness, I just figured I'd post the link for those interested.

[Rabid]

I fully understand the leeriness, I just figured I'd post the link for those interested.

And I thank you for it, as I've just communicated the link (with a warning) to the people with whom I co-own a premium account.

It's just a proof of what I was fearing : that the US Government collectively shitting its pants on internet piracy is going to be quite a bother for the rest of the world, at least for a while, for the time it will take the rest of us to adapt.

I just hope the clearly demonstrated efficiency such measure can have (or more accurately its lack thereof) will force the French government to abandon, or at least revise, its own little internet-censoring project...

[K. A. Pital]

Megaupload is back at the following address, less than 24 hours and they're already back and likely hosted outside of the US now. Way to go America, your war on the internet is even less successful than your war on drugs...

Just push this forward and most file-upload services would be hosted outside the US.

In a bizarro anti-Americanist fever I'd even wish for America to proceed with SOPA and start attacking websites. That would just lead to the collapse of internet sharing, filesharing and such in America, while other nations will get benefits from housing the fleeing webpages.