ATTENTION! MEGAUPLOAD HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN BY THE FEDS!!

[Gypsy]

NOT CLOWN PENIS AND GOATSE...

[Grouch]

now would be an excellent time for that George carllen(did I spell his name right) bit about the big red white an blue dick being rammed up our asses.
also a good time to air my disgust about this. I had very few files uploaded to MU that I shared I mostly used it for personal backup purposes now those files are probably gone, it makes me a sad panda that i don't have an external hdd.

[SegNin]

Here's the government's case against Megaupload.

SOURCE: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...megaupload.ars

...But the government asserts that Megaupload merely wanted the veneer of legitimacy, while its employees knew full well that the site's main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other. Because of this, the government says that the site does not qualify for a “safe harbor” of the kind that protected YouTube from Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit.

For instance, the “abuse tool” allegedly does not remove the actual file being complained about by a rightsholder. Instead, it only removes a specific Web address linked to that file—but there might be hundreds of such addresses for popular content.

In addition, the government contends that everything about the site has been doctored to make it look more legitimate than it is. The “Top 100” download list does not “actually portray the most popular downloads,” say prosecutors, and they claim that Megaupload purposely offers no site-wide search engine as a way of concealing what people are storing and sharing through the site.

Megaupload employees apparently knew how the site was being used. When making payments through its “uploader rewards” program, employees sometimes looked through the material in those accounts first. "10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)," said one of these notes. (The DMCA does not provide a "safe harbor" to sites who have actual knowledge of infringing material and do nothing about it.)

In a 2008 chat, one employee noted that "we have a funny business... modern days [sic] pirates :)," to which the reply was, "we're not pirates, we're just providing shipping servies [sic] to pirates :)."

Employees send each other e-mails saying things like, “can u pls get me some links to the series called ‘Seinfeld’ from MU [Megaupload]," since some employees did have access to a private internal search engine.

Employees even allegedly uploaded content themselves, such as a BBC Earth episode uploaded in 2008.

Other messages appear to indicate that employees knew how important copyrighted content was to their business. Content owners had a specific number of takedown requests they could make each day; in 2009, for instance, Time Warner was allowed to use the abuse tool to remove 2,500 links per day. When the company requested an increase, one employee suggested that "we can afford to be cooperative at current growth levels"— implying that if growth had not been so robust, takedowns should be limited. Kim Dotcom approved an increase to 5,000 takedowns a day.

Employees also had access to analytics. One report showed that a specific linking site had “produce[d] 164,214 visits to Megaupload for a download of the copyrighted CD/DVD burning software package Nero Suite 10. The software package had the suggested retail price of $99.” The government's conclusion: Megaupload knew what was happening and did little to stop it.

[JKDarkside]

Let's just be honest for a moment, Megaupload going down isn't all that surprising since they sort of flaunted the more shady parts of it's service. Plus, from what I've heard, this has been in the works for awhile. On top of this, they had their servers in Virgina. That's just asking to be taken down (Pirate Bay is safe because it's out of country).

The internet moves faster than the American government, which is designed to move slowly. Get rid of one upload site, tons more will eventually pop up to take it's place. No need for doomsday predictions, especially because SOPA has been losing a lot of support this week.

[Gypsy]

Servers in Virgina you say?

[Spose']

Horrible news to happen but deffinetly proves SOPA and PIPA are not needed.

[Supreme Warrior]

Horrible news to happen but deffinetly proves SOPA and PIPA are not needed.

Exactly but they want more power to push and shove in other countries oh and to take away even more freedom in the USA.

[Spose']

There never has been true freedom in the United States, Not even the first amendment gives full freedom of speech. Their are checks for multiple things that could risk other peoples lives and the governments operations that allow the government to take away your freedom of speech.

[Gypsy]

There never has been true freedom in the United States

Patriot Act. *zoidberg noises*

Plus that new thing Obama passed recently that appears to be even worse...

[JKDarkside]

...uh, did anyone bother reading up on SOPA and similar acts?

It's meant to deal with off shore servers and close them off from American users to protect copyright, but will only cause a huge shitstorm of proxy users as a result. Otherwise it's meant to make action on copyright dealing with the internet faster, but the loose language makes this part dangerous.

[gezegond]

It seems they have emails as an evidence that some employees knew about the pirated material. But is that enough to take down the whole business? It's like saying your company is out of business because one of your employees has committed theft. MegaUpload had an abuse tool that let everyone take down their copyrighted content.

Legalities aside, many people used megaupload to host legitimate files and since there was a takedown without any sort of notice, the real victims of this are the people who used megaupload for legitimate purposes. This only encourages people to not trust american hosted websites anymore.

If I could ever be heard, I would encourage people to boycott all the products backed by the MPAA and the RIAA. They claim 90% of earth's population are thieves and pirates, let's see how they can live without them. This all happens because we pay them for their shitty products, after a while they decide that it is their right to be payed regardless of the quality of the product. And if they don't, they can put people in prison and destroy people's communication methods in order to force people to pay them. Let's just not watch their films, 90% of them are all shitty films anyway.

[JKDarkside]

It seems they have emails as an evidence that some employees knew about the pirated material. But is that enough to take down the whole business?

Megavideo certainly was.

[Izuna]

Shit,all the things i had posted are/were from MU Q_Q . Any Advice to switch to another free upload service or you think ppl is better to wait until the whole mess goes away? ( sorry for my Engrish).

[Joe Blog]

Um yeah, I'm advertising a number of sites that offer full service without paying anything.

Think about it. Not advertising if I'm not specific about the company (I said mediafire or other filehosts) and they don't stand to profit from it like some of the shoddy sites on here.

Didn't know mediafire was free.

[Kuro Kagami]

Shit,all the things i had posted are/were from MU Q_Q . Any Advice to switch to another free upload service or you think ppl is better to wait until the whole mess goes away? ( sorry for my Engrish).

Mediafire's a good choice, but it might not be a bad idea to keep your head low and wait for that SOPA/PIPA cancer to die off... atleast until the next shitty bill made by these goddamn lobbyiest comes along and tries to destroy our freedom of speech again