RIP Megaupload

I'm not too worried so long as we still have Depositfiles, Filesonic, and Filestube. (I've seen manga translators upload to all three at once for the sake of redundancy.)

Redundancy is good.

Anyway, how legal is this shut down? I mean, they are being accused and such, but there haven't been any judgement yet, right? How come the site is down then?

This is ridiculous...Mega Conspiracy? They should be ashamed.

The site computers were seized, pursuant to a warrant, as evidence.

Also, remember that under U.S. law, the government can force them to forfeit their servers and sites via a civil action, and the burden is on the person whose property was seized to prove that it was not used in a crime.

Okay, we've established that most of us agree about this being a terrible, awful horrible thing and that the federal government is abusing its authority most egregiously. What does this mean in the larger picture, and what can we as citizens of the Internet do about it?

I ask because threads that devolve into righteous bitching get locked by the mods (for good reason) and this is an issue worth talking about.

So. I suggest everyone take a deep breath, put your outrage aside and talk about what this could mean, rather than how horrid it all is.

They've had this thing since '08, and it's now that their use has caused some uproar.

All more reason to think something's up.

I don't download anything but games and ROMs from emulation sites, and I don't even do that much, so I never used Megaupload. If memory serves, it was kind of a pain to get ROMs that way...

In the wise words of Wikipedia

Citation Needed

edited 19th Jan '12 7:11:15 PM by Mattonymy

What it may have is the same chilling effect as SOPA. A decree that the government doesn't need to respect your rights, and that you are effectively guilty until proven innocent. Sites may likely start self-censoring for their own protection, and Russia will become the next IT hub; Rutube, for instance, will replace Youtube.

On the other hand, if Megaupload wins the trial and can get back into business, and SOPA and PIPA are stopped, then what we'll see is the feds' hand ratcheting back from the stove. They'll have been burned, and we'll have another few years to sail smoothly before the RIAA lobby tries again.

Either way, I'm also worried that Anonymous will stop playing pranks at some point and actually do something to damage the government's activities. Blowing a list of FBI informants to the public, for example, or robbing banks, or otherwise engaging in actual infowar and infoterrorism as opposed to petty vandalism. The fallout from that will all fall on the uninvolved. (Fortunately, given how hard Anonymous backed down from their attack on the Zetas cartel, it seems like Anonymous doesn't have any stomach for actually fighting.)

Mm... I find it difficult to be moved much by this.

No kidding.

I'm against SOPA, but ACTUAL copyright enforcement I agree with.

I don't know, I think Even Evil Has Standards. Remember when Anonymous "supposedly" held the credit numbers of Sony ransom? They still didn't use any, they were more interested in proving a point.

And/or just fucking with people.

The problem is essentially that the copyright enforcement in question is, quite likely, being done in violation of the DMCA. The rule for the DMCA is that, so long as Megaupload takes action to remove infringing material when the owners complain, Megaupload is not liable for it.

If Megaupload has done so, then this action is illegal.

As I said, Anonymous isn't willing to actually do anything that will damage the American government. If they went beyond "bloody nuisance" and into "terrorist" or "freedom fighter," the game would change and the big losers would be the American people.

edited 19th Jan '12 7:38:46 PM by Ramidel

Well that's the entire gist of their charges. The US government claims that the Megaupload guys were hoodwinking the US government about actually removing the infringing material.

Indeed. From the list of charges, though, it looks like what they're doing isn't an attempt to bring them to justice for violating a particular law, but throwing a lot of charges at them and hoping that one sticks. Makes me rather suspicious; if they had Megaupload dead to rights I can't see them using this much patter.

When you're enforcing bs, you tend to look like bs, so yeah.

I'm still holding hope that , like in the past, megaupload doesn't die and is instead able to bounce back with a new domain name. Megavideo.bz anyone?

500 internal error, anyone?

I think it's actually a phishing site that could land you in jail for 10 years for entering that site.

That's what I heard, I think.

Sigh... Not only were all of my audio books there but all my necessary 3d modeling stuff( obj files, PDF, 3ds and pdo files) were there too. Which means no full scale Spirit Tracks Train, Space and Adventure Core, Dog, GLaDOS ver 2, Nyan Cat Airplane, or flying Serenity Ship for the Internet...at least for a while.

edited 19th Jan '12 9:12:53 PM by Mattonymy

I checked out Twitter...

It's true.

I'm a little scared now because I checked the site out for about a few seconds.

edited 19th Jan '12 9:13:13 PM by Psyga315

Sigh.

Megaupload was my favorite and it held a lot of good legal material in it.

They obviously just wanted to make an example out of them with this.

That said Anon's new tactic is just heinous.

edited 19th Jan '12 9:27:36 PM by Thorn14

Wait? What is going on? I am not clicking any link in here....

Hackers are spreading a link that would cause your internet to DDOS attack certain websites like the Department of Justice.

Being caught could net 10 years in prison.