Megaupload.com closed by FBI

[ungovernable]

Feds say 7 from Megaupload.com ran massive worldwide piracy website

McLEAN, Va. – Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue.

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment.

The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations -- Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

The Hong Kong-based company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO.

The individuals in the criminal enterprise -- a worldwide ring led by colorful Australian Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor. Each person involved faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on racketeering charges, five years for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years on money laundering charges and five years on related charges.

Dotcom is a German who legally changed his last named to "Dotcom." He was once convicted of a felony but he has repeatedly denied engaging in piracy, , according to CNET.com.

The indictment comes the day after a 24-hour "blackout" of Wikipedia, a protest doodle on the homepage of Google, and numerous other protests across the Internet against proposed anti-piracy legislation that many leading websites -- including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others -- contend will make it challenging if not impossible for them to operate.

The Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are bills backed by the motion picture and recording industries intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights.

Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/ ... z1jwRn9xcV

A lot of good those Wednesday blackouts did for the Internet. Not.

One day after thousands of websites temporarily shut-down to highligt the dangers of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), federal prosecutors have pulled the plug on Megaupload.com, a website that was at one time among the top 20 most popular sites in the world.

American authorities helped issue arrests on Thursday for four people in New Zealand that they say are responsible for the website. According to the official indictment, unsealed the same day, Megaupload is being accused of costing copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues because of content illegally uploaded to its servers.

Megaupload is one of many highly visited websites that allows users to upload any media of their choice that might be too large for traditional online distribution. In lieu of email and instant messaging, users of Megaupload and similar sites can upload massive digital files and then pass the link to others across the world for easy download. The website claims that it has always been diligent in handling complaints regarding pirated material, but authorities have taken Megaupload offline while they investigate.

In a statement published by the US Department of Justice on the website for the Federal Bureau of Investigation Thursday afternoon, they call the charges “among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime.”

The news comes only hours after thousands of sites repealed a temporary blackout in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, which garnered support from sites including Wikipedia, Reddit and Google.

Kim Dotcom, formerly Kim Schmitz, was among the four in New Zealand that were arrested on Thursday for violating piracy laws. The company itself is listed as being based out of Hong Kong and names musician Swizz Beatz, husband to Grammy winner Alicia Keys, as its CEO. Dotcom is being pegged by authorities as the founder of Megaupload Limited and is among a roster of other persons accused of being affiliated, which includes citizens of the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany and Slovakia.

Back in America though, law enforcement officials conducted search warrants related to the charges, and seized, internationally, $50 million in assets.

While Megaupload is traditionally a free service, users are granted added incentives for purchasing subscriptions to the site. Advertisements are sold on its pages as well.

The Department of Justice writes that “for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies — often before their theatrical release — music, television programs, electronic books and business and entertainment software on a massive scale.” The site has advertised on its own that it is visited by around 50 million users each day and constitutes for four percent of the Internet’s traffic. The DoJ believes those running the operation have netted more than $175 million in illegal profits by selling ads and subscriptions on the site.

According to the DoJ statement, “conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download.” Before going dark, however, Megaupload posted a statement on its website shunning allegations of wrongdoings.

"The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch," wrote the administrators.

Is this the beginning of the end ?

If they close mediafire.com we are fucked, just like all out other "sister" websites : pirate-punk.net, quebecunderground.net and punksandskins.com

If something like that happens, we would have to use other file hosting websites (that will probably get closed too) OR make a torrent tracker (it would cost a lot of money)

The future of the internet isn't bright...

[Bentheanarchist]

SUCKS!

[butcher]

"We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn't think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us."

[butcher]

Headline slightly misleading but:

Senators back down on online piracy

Five days before a critical vote, US senators are abandoning an anti-piracy bill after an outpouring of online opposition to tinkering with internet freedoms.

Senate Democratic leaders still plan to vote on Tuesday on taking up the Protect International Property Act and supporters are scrambling to make changes before then to answer some of the critics, but it is questionable whether they have the 60 votes needed.

Half a dozen of the 40 original co-sponsors of what is known as the PIPA bill withdrew their support on Wednesday in the US amid a one-day protest blackout by Wikipedia and other web giants and a flood of emails to Capitol Hill offices that at times doubled normal volumes.

More than seven million signed a petition on Google saying the Senate bill and its counterpart in the House would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on US businesses.

"The overwhelming input I've received from New Hampshire citizens makes it clear there are many legitimate concerns that deserve further consideration before Congress moves forward with this legislation," said Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, one of the politicians who pulled back her support of the bill.

Others included Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boozman of Arkansas.

Nearly all cited the earful they were getting from constituents.

"I can say, with all honesty, that the feedback I received from Arkansans has been overwhelmingly in opposition to the Senate bill in its current form," Boozman said.

Several Democratic co-sponsors also now say they oppose the bill as it is written.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has resisted suggestions he put off the Tuesday vote.

Reid and the bill's main sponsor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said it was too important to delay action on legislation aimed at combating the billions of dollars US content creators and companies lose to foreign copyright violators and counterfeiters every year.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Thursday urged Democrats to shelve the bill for now, saying serious issues with the measure should be resolved before "prematurely" bringing it to the floor.

The Senate bill, and the parallel Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would allow the Justice Department and copyright holders to seek court orders against foreign websites that steal from American content creators.

It would bar advertising networks and payment facilitators such as credit card companies from doing business with the offending websites.

The bills have the strong support of the entertainment industry which loses billions every year to foreign copyright violators and from industries such as pharmaceuticals battling fake and sometimes harmful alternatives sold on the internet.

The opposition, as demonstrated by Wednesday's protest, is led by internet-related industries that say the bills will lead to censorship of the internet and a surge in lawsuits that will discourage budding internet entrepreneurs.

[Bakica]

Support Anonymus fuck SOPA, PIPA and ACTA

[ungovernable]

I just hope mediafire.com won't be the next one to go

But after reading many articles, it seems that the reason megaupload got closed and not other file hosting services is because
1) they were not taking sanctions against users who repeadly violate copyrights
2) they were giving money to uploaders who get a lot of downloads on their files
3) they were helping piracy websites to build search engines that would allow to search through all megaupload files

Mediafire isn't doing anything of this.

But if the new laws passes we don't know what could happen

[butcher]

How The Anonymous Hacker Group Took Down The FBI's Site In Its Largest Attack Ever

Hacker group Anonymous coordinated ~5,600 people to attack and bring down the websites of the Department of Justice, RIAA, MPAA, Universal Music Group, the US Copyright Service, and the FBI yesterday evening.

The attack, called #OpMegaUpload, was the largest ever by Anonymous. The name references the FBI's takedown and indictment of file-sharing site Megaupload, which was what provoked Anonymous.

Mother Jones reporter Josh Harkinson dove into chat rooms to find out more about it.

Apparently, the attacks were organized in old-school Internet Relay Chat chatrooms, which help maintain users' anonymity, and there hackers organized the distributed denial of service (dosing) assaults.

Harkinson spoke to one hacker, who said they launched the operation because:

"Taking down megaupload was another bad attempt at fighting piracy. Putting a webmaster in jail because the users of his website posted copyrighted material is outrageous. ... [Thanks to SOPA and PIPA,] a lot of people really fear the end of the internet as we know it ... They cannot ignore us now.

Meanwhile, Megaupload is preparing to defend itself against accusations that it is a huge criminal enterprise. The arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom apparently played out like a movie, with Dotcom retreating deeper into his enormous mansion and activating layer after layer of security.

His defenders are saying that shutting down Megaupload for hosting some pirated content would be like shutting down YouTube for the same reasons.

[Carlos]

Megaupload shutting down was the owners own fault, bad business decisions it seems.
I wouldn't worry about mediafire.

also it was announced today that SOPA and PIPA have been put on temporary hold.

I guess they've realized the bill was so vague that they are going to rewrite it.

[butcher]

Another one bites the dust: Fileserve and Filesonic the latest file-sharing sites to close

Fileshare and Filesonic have both followed Megaupload as the latest file-sharing websites to shut down.

Megaupload was, of course, forcibly shut down last Thursday, with the site’s hilarious/ludicrous/kind-of-asking-for-it-with-those-car-number-plates founder Kim Dotcom arrested at his $23 million dollar mansion in New Zealand. On Sunday night, fellow file-sharing website Filesonic reacted to the news by disabling “all sharing functionality”, deleting files and accounts that were associated with piracy, and deleting their Facebook page.

Now, Fileserve have effectively pulled the plug too [via Data Transmission], suspending accounts that are associated with illegal uploads – or, “violating terms and conditions” and shutting down their rewards program which allowed users to share links with “friends and family”. Like Filesonic, all downloads from the site have been disabled, except for those that users have uploaded personally (i.e. users can only download their own files).