Megaupload Staff Arrested for Copyright Infringement

so the FBI is hollywood's goon squad now. why doesn't hollywood embrace the internet instead of fight it? soon media companies will go the way of record companies.

LOL

What's sad is that they're also hurting fair businesses that relied on megaupload's services.

This will not last very long, trust me. Our government is simply digging themselves a deeper grave.

they stole 500 million but only got 175 for it, that is a statement in and of itself

Too bad, it was the only reliable upload site in my opinion.

sopa isnt passed yet.. and they are behaving like its passed??

The American propaganda has been teaching kids how communism is bad. I think I've just found a worse form of government: the US government.

In theory I have to agree with these actions. In practice however after SOPA is approved and most internet companies will be shut down for sharing 1 copyright infringing file, I doubt the end result will accomplish anything positive in the economy.

what is next dropbox?

http://chatimpacto.org/Loic/

I don't think this has nothing to do with SOPA, it was just timely done at the wrong time. couple of weeks ago megaupload had a DNS blackout but yesterday the FBI took it down.

This really amounts to a mafia war being fought in our courts. Kim Dotcom himself is a questionable character who has already been charged with several money based crimes throughout his life, so the racketeering and laundering charges may in fact apply. However it is clear that the "industry" thugs have a hand in this. He was allowed to live in NZ despite having criminal charges in Europe, but NOW suddenly NZ is willing to hand him to the US.

This isn't about justice, Kim made UMG look foolish when it's artists made a music video for him, which UMG wrongly tried to pull from Youtube despite not having a copyright claim on it. Even if he is an organized criminal, Kim Dotcom is really messing up the backdoor deals that the industry is making.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/19/ [...] oj-lawsuit

Who's really the organized crime racket here?

That is so ironic. There are record companies, film, and the other, though honest to sell that is worth $0.0001 to sell $ 1.00 or more. So 1000 times the value.

But we want to make people believe that sharing is criminal. It is clear that for all the greedy, capitalists, sharing makes no sense.
They want it all and give nothing, nothing to share.

All this makes me vomit. The power of money is infinite. We keep talking about a crisis and it is normal for those who catch the system and steal money are those who hold all the media. It only remained to control the Internet.
This is done now. By pressing a button on the rich will be able to close any site.
The next step is to force all people to receive electronic chips in the body to be sure you know everything about their “state” and where they are.

It took two towers to blow in order to create laws and amendments to one more intrusive than others.
The next step is to blow up a small atomic bomb, and so we will be able to do whatever we want to people. Inclues insert full electronics in their bodies.

cute, get yourself charged under CPAA and get a nice little notice by the fbi, good job bring civility.



you're an idiot, the case building against megaupload has been going on for a long time now it's why linking sites uploaders jumped ship from megaupload a long time ago. You act like SOPA and PIPA would make piracy illegal, it's always been illegal the problem of a DA is proving wrong doing in compliance usually with DCMA, in megaupload case i think its 3 counts of copyright infringement, 1 count of racketeering and 1 count of money laundering.

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-cont [...] ustice.pdf

not too hard to get information rather then spewing out crap

Someone recently made a classic comment on twitter, it read: If I pirate a Michael Jackson song I could get 5 years in prison, one year more than the doctor that killed him...Justice, yeah right! Copyright infringement is being taken way too far. I agree with the comment about the FBI being the media companies goons, it's like they are given super powers just to enforce copyright laws, its all the government lobbyists giving back handers to government officials to back these sorts of laws. Complete BS

I'm sure no one would care about MegaUpload or sites alike if movie ticket prices and concession stands weren't so damn ridiculously expensive. Now who is responsible for that one, eh?

This is not the way to approach things. What the government should be doing is arresting the people who submitted the uploads. Not those who merely hosted them.

these companies should move their offices to sweden?
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Sweden [...] 13756.html

I wonder how they calculate the losses. Just because something was pirated doesn't mean it would have been paid for otherwise.

This is nothing compared to all existing forms of communism. We may be heading that direction, but we are nowhere near that level yet.

or Senspace

mediafire was better

Look, I hate SOPA and PIPA as much as the next guy. I've written (through and advocacy group) all my congressmen about it. I don't like it, I think it is a really, really bad idea.

But seriously people, how you could defend Megaupload is beyond me. I haven't been too exposed to their legitimate side of business but my sister has watched a LOT of anime online and the one thing almost every illegal anime hosting site has in common is megavideo. Not only that, but I've seen the videos link to porn sites before playing whatever it is it's supposed to play.

Megaupload and Megavideo may not necessarily have cost copyright holders 500 million dollars but they did consistently break the law by hosting and allowing others to distribute illegally obtained content.

Of course, from the article it should be obvious that copyright infringement is not the only charge brought against Megaupload/video. Racketeering and money laundering are much, much more serious crimes than copyright infringement and if these charges are true, they deserved to be taken down.

It's like many of you conveniently forgot that those other charges existed. Unlike patent trolls the FBI doesn't frivolously charge people with crimes they have no evidence they committed, at least to my knowledge.

This is bull**** what right do we have to charge and make people get arrest who aren't even in our own nation? Now he's no doubt going to be brought over here and charged. America's laws do not apply to the world. Also shame on New Zealand for showing they care so little about their own citizens.

this is total bs, megaupload isnt your parrent, they dont watch you 24/7, it was popular and it is also abused.

they comply with dmca take downs when issued, what right do they have to take it off the internet completely?

i hope they are counter sued, and counter sued hard.




i used megaupload like a thumb drive for friends across the county, sending pictures and video was easier to password it and upload it there than a 20 part google email.

that said, i hate theaters, give me on demand same day as theater for 20-30$ and i would get that over theater. but i don't pirate movies because it it (the c&ds i got in the kazaa era when i was 9 made me rethink that)




no, the government should tell the mpaa and riaa to eff off, and worry about real crime, with real people being hurt.

mpaa, riaa, and any videogame company lie through their teeth about piracy when there are a few common facts we should all know.

mpaa - boxoffice is everything, dvd release is candy topping,
riaa - radio/cd sales were the big tickets, now its single songs on itunes that are, and the people who download them wouldnt buy them
videogame - same thing, the vast majority would never buy it if it wasnt free,

because of supposed losses, (all numbers are complete bs they throw out, one movie bombed boxoffice, and said that if people didnt download it, they would have made a few 100 million if not 1 billion more) they up prices, slap on drm, and add crap that just annoys the legit user and devalues what they buy.

you cant resell a digital version if you dont like it, like you could with a physical copy.

piracy is just used as an easy finger to point to for stricter laws, most of which i don't think will ever be used as any more than a scare tactic to get insane amounts of money out of normal people out of fear, the riaa currently does this by offering a smaller settlement than the big what the law says payout.

*not endorsing piracy, stating a few facts*
i honestly dont even think piracy is a problem. look at photoshop and tell me if that wasn't pirated and used for free a long time ago, that it would be where it is today.
look at all the people who buy product because they pirated it first and would have never gotten it without that, you can not discount these people as a few




1 person they catch pirating it, they times that by cost, than by 100-10000 because of how many people they could have shared it with. its not a 1 to 1 scale you are dealing with, its closer to 1 out of every 100-1000 they lose a sale, but its old people who generally don't get it.




lol, riaa goes after consumer for 20k+ each, probably made them more money than they lost too.




when its a copyight thing, they are in the corporate pocket and intreasts
when its out of country and widely distributed, its conspryacy
when people can claim they know nothing, its racketeering.

all these charges can be overblown bs because they cant trace everything in the company easily.

and as for anime, its an international issue, most anime barely makes enough to break even in japan, to the point that they sell it for insane prices (100$+ for 2 episodes isnt uncommon) and selling 8000 is a break even and 12000 is a second season for the anime (per disc)

going after every place to take it down is hard, and re uploading is fairly easy. they don't have the backdoor like corpert in america has, so they have to file take down 1 by 1. there is also the fact that anime is sold in japan to japanese, and they don't even consider over seas sales for anything at all realistically, and there is also the fact that anime only came to america because of the eairly can only pirate and anime circles who subbed tapes and mailed them in the eairly days. anime in general is very liberal with copyright even in japan, look at comiket as an example of blatant profiting off copyright material, or it can also be attributed to the fact that anime is fighting for its place in japan for the last few years where new laws are constantly threatening to kill off anime and manga in general.

move your services to Iran. the US government can't touch you there.

ahhhhh! really bad really bad! it's mean megaupload site no more longer.

I will get a load of thumbs down for this but hey...

Yes, I am strongly opposed to SOPA/PIPA but on the other end of the extreme you have megaupload/videoupload.
Clearing $175 Mio, that's not kids sharing some tunes, that is organized crime cashing in big time.
Screw Hollywood, the RIAA etc; but if you can not see that sites like megaupload are simply criminal even without SOPA in force than go ahead and give me your sorry thumbs down now :-)

Give me pucking brake! Is ok when people are dying due to lack of healthcare! Is ok when "Corporate American Socialism" not paying taxes.
welcome to Corporate Socialim!

So the movie & music industries lost $500m. So if we work on the RIAA & MPAA guidelines on previous court cases & losses, megauploads stolen 1 movie & maybe 3 mp3 files.

I think this is just the beginning. The other file hosting sites will face the same fate.