megaupload has been taken down by the FBI

[DragonInstall]

They had it coming for a long time. I'm more surprised it took this long.

[Friendly]

I think I just found out why our corporate overlords decided to go against megaupload now:

Megaupload just launched a new music distribution service that would have given 90% of the profits to the artists, without any need for music labels.
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/megauploa ... box/60024/

[Michaelm]

the charges as reported in the news.

Mainstream media is part of the system. So most of it is just pure propaganda.
To get some real news you better find some independent news sites or blogs from people actually on the site.

[antron]

the charges as reported in the news.

Mainstream media is part of the system. So most of it is just pure propaganda.
To get some real news you better find some independent news sites or blogs from people actually on the site.

the news is what they were charged with. period. we aren't taking about a op-ed piece or anything.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press- ... fringement

and if it turns out to be true these guys are some real assholes for screwing everybody for more cash, after they were rich as fuck.

[drauch]

Subsequently hsbsitez has been turned off as well, as all of their files were hosted by megaupload. Well, there goes my source for downloading anime that won't ever get released in English...

l2torrent

Torrenting sucks.

[Despatche]

I think I just found out why our corporate overlords decided to go against megaupload now:

Megaupload just launched a new music distribution service that would have given 90% of the profits to the artists, without any need for music labels.
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/megauploa ... box/60024/

Told you. "Anti-piracy" has very little to do with preventing piracy.

[xbl0x180]

I think I just found out why our corporate overlords decided to go against megaupload now:

Megaupload just launched a new music distribution service that would have given 90% of the profits to the artists, without any need for music labels.
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/megauploa ... box/60024/

Now it's starting to make more sense: our govt. working for the rich people they truly represent.

Subsequently hsbsitez has been turned off as well, as all of their files were hosted by megaupload. Well, there goes my source for downloading anime that won't ever get released in English...

l2torrent

Torrenting sucks.

Aye, it blows, but you can download a lot of what used to be available in MegaUpload with torrents. It just takes longer and you'll have to leave your computer on sometimes to finish downloading everything.

[burgerkingdiamond]

maybe with more obscure stuff you can get away with it, but IP owners pay people to track torrents, take down your IP address and report to your ISP.

I've gotten one notification. It was kinda creepy. Nothing came of it, but I still say fuck torrents.

[drunkninja24]

Welp, time to kick back to good ol' reliable Usenet

[Skykid]

I think I just found out why our corporate overlords decided to go against megaupload now:

Megaupload just launched a new music distribution service that would have given 90% of the profits to the artists, without any need for music labels.
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/megauploa ... box/60024/

Well that pretty much explains it. Corporate govt strikes again.

[Skyknight]

I do have to wonder how the music labels manage to champion their existence to performers as absolutely necessary, given how good the Internet is at word of mouth. Or are they taking the mechanism that Japanese idol singer factories use?

Although with the corporates...I'm wondering if there's a slight mis-aiming here of the source malefactors. That is, the primary problem may be not the CEOs (at least not in their role as executives), but many of the stockholders (CEOs potentially counting when in overlap with this set). I think Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" defined "corporation" as something like "an ingenious device to allow one to make a maximum of money with a minimum of responsibility". The way joint stock companies (and their successors the corporates) were supposed to work was that rather than impel just one or a few people to back a massive venture with the risk of severe ruin were it to fail, you could instead convince many people to back it, with each one able to launch it with less of an investment risk. Granted the return would be diluted, but more importantly, so was the risk.

What I think wasn't counted on was that some people might back a venture with no concern as to whether they actually had any use for the venture's goals/target commodities/etc., but only for the return investment. Pure favor-trading: I did this payment for you, now you do this payment for me. No real primary intent of actually partaking of the silks/furniture/paper/whatever else the venture was trying to create. End result: Such speculators potentially hold the ventures' paths hostage. Either the venture focuses almost solely on profit, with better service of the customer for its own sake completely irrelevant, or the speculators pull out their support and let the venture collapse as it "deserves" to for its "treachery". Which makes me wonder if the speculators see the customer as THEIR servant. Rather than the venture existing to supply a service, and the customer paying so it can continue, the speculator may see the "proper" method as the customer giving over the cash, and the venture acknowledging the tribute with a token artefact. (Makes me wonder how such ones would do if forced to live in a non-monetary village...)

But no matter what, I can't fathom WHAT the speculators intend to DO with the sky-high profits they feel entitled to. How much money can be spent on something before the extra expenditure doesn't bring extra comfort or safety, only extra conspicuousness?

Although more on-topic, while still keeping to the above, I wonder how much the heads of the music labels actually like the particular genres they help sell and champion?

[Siren2011]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD1yaE0 ... AAAAAAAAAA



I only download old ass PSX and Saturn games from Megaupload. I have never touched movies or recent shows.

However, I have torrented a handful of albums (I don't do it that often) and a couple of Japanese visual novels (Saya No Uta, etc). I wonder if I'm still fucked, though. I know a lot of people who have done a lot worse.

How much of what this guy says is for pure shock value and how much is true? I honestly can't distinguish.

[Skykid]

Sounds a little OTT to be honest, although I wouldn't put it past the US government to make an example of the situation by destroying a few hundred lives as part of their standard practice.

[CMoon]

Fortunately I downloaded all my copywritten, ascap shit through Skykid's account.

[Elixir]

From Auckland Central Remand Prison, Dotcom has marshalled an impressive legal team including Paul Davison QC, one of New Zealand's most respected defence lawyers, and in the US, defence lawyer Robert Bennett, who previously defended former president Bill Clinton against sexual harassment charges.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10780321

He'll just buy his way through this like he bought his way into NZ residency.

I have a lot to say re: SOPA and this, but I won't bother.

[Skykid]

Fortunately I downloaded all my copywritten, ascap shit through Skykid's account.

Lol

I do tend to feel JeepersMedia goes a little haywire with the scare tactics in an attempt to rally the masses, which isn't a bad thing but not necessarily indicative of the truth. Extraditing smalltime foreign uploaders/downloaders of MU to the US would be basically impossible unless they're prepared to increase the general population by the millions.

[Ex-Cyber]

I suspect that if the DOJ can substantiate even a small fraction of what's in the indictment, then the MU staff is fucked. For all the theatrics of ginning up the "Mega Conspiracy" label, there is some serious stuff in there, and it sounds like they had an informant inside the company. I gathered that "Dotcom" was a shithead, but I thought he was at least savvy enough to set up some kind of separation to insulate the main company from any obviously shady stuff.

Moneyquote:

Although Megaupload's presence in the corporate world may not have matched its overall share of Internet usage, its consumption of bandwidth was outpacing Dropbox and numerous other business-focused file-sharing services, according to a new study.

Dropbox was never really comparable to MU. All the Dropbox hype is around the interface features, not any ability to handle large-scale content distribution. Dropbox automatically suspends access to public links that incur too much traffic, even on paid accounts. In that respect it's pretty much the opposite of MU, which was structured to encourage uploads of popular files.

[neorichieb1971]

I have attitude of taking something for free whilst you can. Once its gone its gone. I have no complaints. I am usually quite fond of paying for things too.

Most things that are free, especially movies are of terrible quality, don't work, have endings missing, audio quality is muffled or worse. Music is generally fine. TV shows are excellent. Not to mention the amount of virus's and trojans found in torrents. I don't really care if most of the net gets taken down tbh, we will only find something else to exploit to its maximum potential.

I used Megaupload a few times to upload files that were my own WMV's. Came in handy, I hope another site exists that works as well as megaupload did.

[Estebang]

http://www.minus.com/

Best Megaupload replacement at the moment.

[Ed Oscuro]

Extraditing smalltime foreign uploaders/downloaders of MU to the US would be basically impossible unless they're prepared to increase the general population by the millions.

Get a bunch of foreigners in the country who are computer literate and love American music and movies while simultaneously replacing any need to revamp immigration policy to cater to lazy, cruel, possibly tanned People From South Of Texas? Sounds like a great ad-hoc policy fix to me! Waiting for Stephen Colbert and/or "leading GOP candidate" to announce this plank to cover both domestic and foreign policy flanks at once.

[evil_ash_xero]

Damn..that's where I hosted my porn. Well, I'll have to go somewhere else now!

[DocHauser]

Freaking figures! I waited until today to download the Blindmankind Future Pinball tables and now they'll probably never be publicly made available again.

You can find a few of them available for direct download on this site:

http://www.pinsimdb.org/pinball/index-10-future_pinball

I just checked and they have Three Angels, Dead Hunters, Road Girls and Road Girls Revisited.

[Mischief Maker]

Freaking figures! I waited until today to download the Blindmankind Future Pinball tables and now they'll probably never be publicly made available again.

You can find a few of them available for direct download on this site:

http://www.pinsimdb.org/pinball/index-10-future_pinball

I just checked and they have Three Angels, Dead Hunters, Road Girls and Road Girls Revisited.

I since found them. Thanks anyway!

[Khan]

I wonder what wil happen to all the assets that have been confiscated so far

[Ed Oscuro]

haha, apparently the founder was the #1 in Modern Warfare 3, 6 hour gaming sessions, 180K kills or something.

uploaded.to and FileSonic went down as well.

[antron]

haha, apparently the founder was the #1 in Modern Warfare 3, 6 hour gaming sessions, 180K kills or something.

uploaded.to and FileSonic went down as well.

is he the one that had to be cut out of his saferoom by the police?

[xbl0x180]

I wonder if the corporate heads and their lapdogs at the dept. of justice/fbi will also take down YouTube, Photobucket, blogs, and everyone's favourite "social networking" spaces for doing the same thing as MegaUpload

[Ed Oscuro]

haha, apparently the founder was the #1 in Modern Warfare 3, 6 hour gaming sessions, 180K kills or something.

uploaded.to and FileSonic went down as well.

is he the one that had to be cut out of his saferoom by the police?

The one and only.

I wonder if the corporate heads and their lapdogs at the dept. of justice/fbi will also take down YouTube, Photobucket, blogs, and everyone's favourite "social networking" spaces for doing the same thing as MegaUpload

Actually, I misspoke when I said that FileSonic went down - they've moved to being a personal filestorage site only (whoopee?)

The bigger point is that the indictment has some pretty specific accusations that the Megaupload people (and remember they had other sites, like Megavideo) knew that people were using their site to break the law, ignored it, and furthermore that they themselves broke the law in setting up their site.

The big dustup over PIPA and SOPA was caused by the belief in many quarters that it would allow a site to be taken down if there were merely a link to an outside website which infringed upon copyright. Wikipedia was worried that it would be pulled down for that, for example. So far, the DMCA takedown process (which can already be abused, though the process is sometimes frustrating for copyright or trademark owners too) gives a basic level of cover to sites like Megaupload to ensure that they are making good efforts to remove infringing content when it is pointed out to them. The government allegation here is that Megaupload didn't care to make that basic effort.

I'm not sure if uploaded.to and the other site have gone dark simply because they are worried of charges they don't understand or which might not hold up but would hurt the owners nevertheless, or because they are aware they too could be prosecuted and are trying to prevent that happening. Hard to say. It's been a busy couple of weeks on the 'net.

If people think that Ron Paul has his followers, just wait until SOPA 2 and PIPA 2 arrive, or all file sharing services, and torrents etc. are further disrupted. I don't imagine any legal scholar or judge would side with pirates, but it's becoming a big enough fact of life that I wouldn't be surprised if some people started campaigning for it. I expect (and hope) that nobody makes any moves to hurt content owners, but at the same time they need to figure out how to climb down from unrealistic profit expectations and start making more content available for better prices (TV did great for many years with commercials - why shouldn't obscure TV serials and old movies be supported the same way? Oh, that's right, they'd rather charge you and arm and a leg for a license and some plastic to play content on one box only.)

[Estebang]

I would not be surprised if YouTube was forced to completely ban non-user-created content within the year. It'll become nothing but a repository for America's Funniest Home Videos. The same thing will probably happen to image hosting sites: if it's not wedding photos or pictures of your Shih Tzu in the bath, they won't host it.

uploaded.to has gone down as well, though it looks like they're just waiting to see how things turn out.

[GaijinPunch]

I would not be surprised if YouTube was forced to completely ban non-user-created content within the year.

They can't do it across the board... plenty of people post their copyrighted work (which they own the copyright to) for advertising. That will always be some type of loop hole to get stuff up there.