7 Charged as F.B.I. Closes a Top File-Sharing Site

[Izrail]

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. 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... source: nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html And so it begins.

[DeletePlease]

... wow. >_>

[cmind]

fbi.gov is one of the downed sites. If this really is anonymous and not a false flag attack by the Feds, then I take back what I said about anonymous, they do have the ability to take out sites. However, if fbi.gov and the other sites are all back up tomorrow morning, we'll know it was a false flag. Here's a more exhaustive list of targeted sites: http://www.fbi.gov/ http://www.justice.gov/ http://www.riaa.com/ http://www.universalmusic.com/ http://www.wmg.com/ http://www.BMI.com/ http://www.mpaa.org/ Tomorrow I'll check to see if they're still down. EDIT: DoJ, RIAA and I think MPAA are already back up.

[LucidFlanders]

Megaupload are back. Got it via twitter. MEGAUPLOAD IS BACK, NEW MEGAUPLOAD SITE - The leading online storage and file delivery service -

[tommo]

It was definitely anon, not the Feds. It's verified on all the official anon "outlets". Yeah some are already back up but there were around 20 sites I think and most that I checked we're still down. They really do need to lengthen their attacks though. A week at the least would be good.

[Xei]

I'm not sure why people think the people who run Megaupload aren't scummy, greedy people.

[tommo]

I'm not sure why people think the people who run Megaupload aren't scummy, greedy people. Because there were simply providing a service which people wanted? If that makes one scummy, every big business person is....oh wait. Carry on.

[Marvo]

Because there were simply providing a service which people wanted? If that makes one scummy, every big business person is....oh wait. Carry on. The CEO, Kim Schmitz, is very much a criminal. Getting extradited is wild, but there's no doubt that MU was an illegal website. They didn't really care about the piracy going on, and didn't make extensive efforts to take down illegal material. In comparison, YouTube and Mediafire remove warez very quickly. Schmitz and his accomplices have made tons of money off of illegal activites, and there's really no reason they shouldn't be brought to court, apart from the fact that they are being extradited, not because of rape, murder, war crimes or similar things, but because they hosted a website where people could share files. This is an excellent display of, to quote a SomethingAwful member, how firmly the US government has its lips wrapped around the entertainment industry's cock.

[tommo]

The CEO, Kim Schmitz, is very much a criminal. Getting extradited is wild, but there's no doubt that MU was an illegal website. They didn't really care about the piracy going on, and didn't make extensive efforts to take down illegal material. In comparison, YouTube and Mediafire remove warez very quickly. Schmitz and his accomplices have made tons of money off of illegal activites, and there's really no reason they shouldn't be brought to court, apart from the fact that they are being extradited, not because of rape, murder, war crimes or similar things, but because they hosted a website where people could share files. This is an excellent display of, to quote a SomethingAwful member, how firmly the US government has its lips wrapped around the entertainment industry's cock. They were providing a service! People chose to flock to that service for downloading and uploading songs and movies. It's not their fault. I'm sure they had no qualms about making money from piracy and obviously knew it was the main use for their site, but it was a legitimate business and they really had no way of removing or stopping people from using it for piracy.

[Marvo]

They were providing a service! People chose to flock to that service for downloading and uploading songs and movies. It's not their fault. I'm sure they had no qualms about making money from piracy and obviously knew it was the main use for their site, but it was a legitimate business and they really had no way of removing or stopping people from using it for piracy. The difference between YouTube and MU, is that YouTube went to very great lengths to reduce the amount of illegal content on their website. MU didn't really do anything. The problem is that the guys who ran the site endorsed illegal activity, and made a massive profit off of it.

[cmind]

Because there were simply providing a service which people wanted? If that makes one scummy, every big business person is....oh wait. Carry on. And every small business person....oh wait

[Xei]

Because there were simply providing a service which people wanted? If that makes one scummy, every big business person is....oh wait. Carry on. Please don't make such stupid posts. The Nazis were simply providing a service which people wanted, that's not inherently a good or bad thing. It depends on what you're actually DOING, doesn't it? What they were doing is making large amounts of money off of people who had actually spent money creating the content on their site, at their expense. They had no interest in 'freedom of information' or any of that bullshit, they just had interest in getting rich by leeching off productive people. Of course that is scummy, you dolt. Why do you think they placed a time limit on their videos? How does that fit into their status as heroic knights of information spreading ('information' here meaning Hollywood Blockbusters, which are an inalienable human right)? They tricked people into giving their credit card details, and then took monthly fees which the people didn't seem to have the option of ever stopping. Not that they even bothered to take the time limit off for them.

[tommo]

Please don't make such stupid posts. The Nazis were simply providing a service which people wanted, that's not inherently a good or bad thing. It depends on what you're actually DOING, doesn't it? What they were doing is making large amounts of money off of people who had actually spent money creating the content on their site, at their expense. They had no interest in 'freedom of information' or any of that bullshit, they just had interest in getting rich by leeching off productive people. Of course that is scummy, you dolt. If they had crated a site called megaillegalupload, I'd agree. But I have no doubt that many, many people used that site for legitimate reasons, to upload a file to the site so that they could send it to their friends etc. It's the same as piratebay, there were thousands of legal torrents on there. There was just millions of illegal ones too. It's not the sites fault, you cannot be put at fault for that. That is fucking ridiculous. If I go in to the theatre and play a pirated film on the projector, does that mean the theatre owners are scummy? They have all the resources set up to do so. Obviously it's their fault right Why do you think they placed a time limit on their videos? How does that fit into their status as heroic knights of information spreading ('information' here meaning Hollywood Blockbusters, which are an inalienable human right)? They tricked people into giving their credit card details, and then took monthly fees which the people didn't seem to have the option of ever stopping. Not that they even bothered to take the time limit off for them. I have no idea what you're talking about. I never used the site, mainly because it had too much attention on it. Luckily too coz the feds probably have all the IP addresses of people who used the site now.

[Marvo]

Indeed, the people behind MU very much had something coming, however the scale of this operation is ridiculous, and it goes to prove that the US doesn't really need PIPA or SOPA, when they can take down one of the biggest filesharing sites on the internet. According to their own video, MU accounted for 4% of all internet traffic. On top of the US acting outside of its jurisdiction, these people are facing up to 55 years in prison, EACH, and a fine of 500 million dollars. This is ridiculous. The number is completely arbitrary, it might as well have been 500 billion dollars. 55 years in prison, that's three times as much as the MAXIMUM prison sentence for murder, in Denmark.

[Supernova]

107.21.243.42 If seeing that doesn't scare you, nothing will.

[Xei]

Uhh yes it's their fault if the theatre has full knowledge of it and takes a fee on the door. Hurrrr. If you didn't know anything about the site then it's really pretty bizarre that you took issue with somebody calling it scummy.

[tommo]

It's the same as the thousands of other uploading sites. People are going to abuse it, what are the companies gonna do? Youtube still has pirated stuff on there. And since when is pirating scummy? It hasn't ever reduced sales at all of anything.

[cmind]

Pirating? Maybe we should change the word. A pirate steals goods on the high seas. File sharing is...wait for it...copying data. Copying data. Even if it could be proven that file sharing reduces potential sales, which is quite clearly not the case, that only means that those bits of data were overpriced. You know what seems scummy to me? Protecting the inflated profits of big media corporations. But hey, let's pick on the internet sites trying to make the world more free.

[Supernova]

I'm really puzzled by this doctrine that piracy isn't stealing and there's not really anything wrong with it. I mean, I'm not even saying I;ve never pirated anything, but it IS stealing.

[cmind]

I'm really puzzled by this doctrine that piracy isn't stealing and there's not really anything wrong with it. I mean, I'm not even saying I;ve never pirated anything, but it IS stealing. Copying is stealing? What about the copies you make in your brain?

[Supernova]

Copying is stealing? What about the copies you make in your brain?

[cmind]

I take this to mean that you have no rebuttal. I accept your surrender.

[tommo]

I'm really puzzled by this doctrine that piracy isn't stealing and there's not really anything wrong with it. I mean, I'm not even saying I;ve never pirated anything, but it IS stealing. Because there isn't. The movie and record companies have not lost a single dollar. It literally is just like advertising for them. And its free advertising too.

[Xei]

In a decade's time when a cinema-quality entertainment set costs a hundred bucks and you can download high-res films quickly and easily for no cost at all, you can bet your ass the film studios will be losing dollars.

[cmind]

In a decade's time when a cinema-quality entertainment set costs a hundred bucks and you can download high-res films quickly and easily for no cost at all, you can bet your ass the film studios will be losing dollars. And why should they be immune to the march of technology? When the automobile was invented, the carriage makers lost a lot of money. Should the government have passed anti-car laws? Times change, and business models must be adapted or die. If purchasing "official" copies of movies is absurdly expensive compared to the alternatives, that's the fault of the publishers and they SHOULD be punished with lost business. Why hasn't Hollywood implemented an iTunes-like system for movie distribution? Perhaps they thought it would be cheaper to just lobby the government, huh?