MegaUpload had fallen | Online Piracy

[Ceyfer √]

GENERAL ALLEGATIONS

At all times relevant to this Indictment:1.

KIM DOTCOM, MEGAUPLOAD LIMITED, VESTOR LIMITED, FINNBATATO, JULIUS BENCKO, SVEN ECHTERNACH, MATHIAS ORTMANN, ANDRUSNOMM, and BRAM VAN DER KOLK, the defendants, and others known and unknown to theGrand Jury, were members of the “Mega Conspiracy,” a worldwide criminal organization whosemembers engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scalewith estimated harm to copyright holders well in excess of $500,000,000 and reported income inexcess of $175,000,000.2.

The United States Justice Department filed charges against MegaUpload today, calling the file-sharing service an "international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy." Founder Kim Dotcom and three MegaUpload executives were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand at the request of the US government under provisional arrest warrants, and the DOJ describes three other execs as "at large."

The complaint charges Dotcom, his executives, the MegaUpload Limited company and a second company called Vestor Limited which Dotcom used to shield his personal assets. Specifically, the charges are:

• engaging in a racketeering conspiracy
• conspiring to commit copyright infringement
• conspiring to commit money laundering
• two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement

The full 72-page indictment legal paper : The US Department of Justice has accused a total of seven MU employees with involvement in an international piracy syndicate responsible for the dissemination of some $500 million worth of copyrighted materials.

More here | The Verge.

[Raymond]

It's pretty obvious that most of the popular file sharing websites such as RapidShare, Hotfile, Filesonic, fileserve are being used to host pirated materials. Megaupload is just unlucky.

[Ceyfer √]

It's pretty obvious that most of the popular file sharing websites

Yah, taking MU down will simply send a chilling effect to other hosting sites that do the same thing.

[Kees]

It's pretty obvious that most of the popular file sharing websites such as RapidShare, Hotfile, Filesonic, fileserve are being used to host pirated materials. Megaupload is just unlucky.

Quite right, but the claim of a 500 million earning loss due to piracy is simply ridicilous. Anyway, there must be some strategic reasons behind this crackdown that go away beyound fears of piracy.

[Christy]

This Aug. 26, a U.S. Federal Court has to impose on the file hosting Hotfile to disclose the IP to its users, its main affiliates, and financial information about the company based in Florida. Hotfile has until September 12 to reveal these data.

http://www.pcsmax.com/hotfile-must-r...#ixzz1k0Yx3vby

This means that Hotfile must disclose details of all files uploaded, including the title, the number of downloads and IP addresses of those who have downloaded and uploaded the content. Fair warning. Just a matter of time before the MPAA puts a leash on (the internet) all the remaining file sharing and torrent sites.

Megaupload wasn't just plain unlucky, Mega had developed a system whereby files set to be uploaded by users were hashed in order to discover if a copy of the file already exists on the Mega servers. If a file existed, the user did not have to upload his copy and was simply given a unique URL in order to access the content in future. What this meant in practice is that there could be countless URLs ‘owned’ by various users but which all pointed to the same file.Actually most services follow suit.But the diff...

The indictment claims that when a copyright holder issued a takedown notice for content referenced by its URL, only the URL was taken down, not the content to which it pointed. So although the URL in question would report that it had been removed and would no longer resolve to infringing material, URLs issued to others would remain operational. Also, they could and did automatically remove child pornography from their systems given a specific hash value, the same standards weren’t applied to complained-about copyright works. (Ironic: Try to do something positive, & that becomes a premise for your downfall).

Remember the Hotfile cleanup - en masse, the rest of the sites will probably take some meausures to avoid Megas state. Tough luck 4 the users,(not me).

[luffy]

Bad new. No more freedom here.

[ted]

The way things are going maybe we should just rename the whole planet China

[Neo]

I like MU because it gave me options to download files at high rates with resume capability ( Legal files , of course )

Now only mediafire is left for me.

As far as piracy is concerned all sites which raymond mentioned are famous for it.

[ginzon]

I loved MU so much... Sadness I lost my photo album too.. didn't have a backup copy of it....

[Raymond]

@ginzon: I feel bad for you to lose your photo album because megaupload has gone down.
Never trust these one-click file sharing websites.
Go for legitimate file host such as Dropbox.