File-sharing site shut down; 7 indicted in U.S.

So the battle for intarwebz control is underway.

"hacktivist"

Coming soon to a dictionary near you?

I can't say I support the government's heavy-handed tactics in dealing with piracy....but I gotta admit.....this site was one of the worst abusers...heh

Doh!!!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10779996

These people will now be getting free air travel and accomodation courtesy of the FBI, extradition back to the U.S. and 20 years in the Federal Pen.

Where was the revenue from? Ads? Or was it a pay site?

It's a shame governments don't put so much effort, money, and time into getting rid of organized crime as they do trying to catch people responsible for giving others a show they otherwise can't watch for less than some crazy amount, or perhaps not watch at all. One key difference, of course, is that these people are paid off by the mafia, whereas useless production companies pressure the government over lost funds when it comes to pirating. Like the mafia, though, when one head gets cut off, something else will just hop up in its place.

I heard that page had excellent movies, songs etc..but now, SCARY! Big brother??

Where was the revenue from? Ads? Or was it a pay site?

Both. The 'basic', free service was ad-supported but you could pay for a 'premium' membership to get faster speeds and bigger file size limits.

charged with racketeering conspiracy, various copyright infringement counts and conspiring to commit money laundering.

Copyright infringement I understand, but racketeering and money laundering... wow, sounds like some kind of a crime syndicate. Would me nice to hear more details on this.

That's a biggie. Hope they've got good lawyers.

Apparently, sharing is NOT caring.

a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand

Maybe they meant shearin'.

This is like holding Xerox responsible for some gang who uses their copiers to make a piles of copyrighted novels that passersby can take for free. Its nuts. Its the gang at fault, not Xerox.

We all know that people use copiers to copy copyrighted material. But guess what? Its legal if its for news, schools, libraries etc. by the fair use doctrine in many places. Therefore, even if the operaters of the site know that copyrighted materials are being exchanged, they don't know if its it legit and its not their perogative to find out. Its up to the authorities to track down that end user...or, my prefered option, just friggen drop it. Anything massively traded is generating a massive profit for the owner elsewhere. They have enough without trying to get more by screwing with freedom on the net.

Thank you Anonymous for retaliating against this maure.

Oh, and the New Zealand cops can get stuffed for taking up that warrant. I hope they are next on Anon's list.

Maybe if the groups behind the complaints (movie, music and tv people) looked at why these sites prosper then maybe they could stop them more readily. Reduce the costs of their products, cater for purely digital downloads reduce waiting for their products in different zones (for example why should l wait a week or longer for something that is available elsewhere). Most people who download are more interested in the product than the packaging. Music for example many people merely download it and put on their ipods many of these people dont even burn it to disc. So simple if these companies set up their own sites and offered their products it would be much cheaper than selling in a shop (overheads and associated costs removed) then that would go a long way to damaging the illegal download issue. Arresting 4 people worldwide will do nothing, seriously show me a hand full of people that havent downloaded something and l will be amazed.

Dam Megaupload was good, the German founder based in Hong Kong has been known for such hacking cases in the past also.

Hopefully they wont come down on rapidshare and bit torrent sites :P

Megaupload was making megabucks through subscriptions and ads by making these files available for download on the internet. Even those using the "free" download option were making money for Megaupload because of the banner ads that they watched while the download happened. The copyright holders of those files received $0 from Megaupload.com

This was not a case where SOPA would have applied, as Megaupload was the actual source of the file distribution, not an ISP relay point. Megaupload essentially became so large and (apparently) ignored the demands to remove the copyrighted material for so long, that when the time came to start cracking down they were high on the list of offenders. This is nobody's fault but the operators of the servers. They gambled that no action would be taken and lost their bet.

Welcome to Obama's Brave New World.

??? There's nothing "new" about this. Copyright infringement has ALWAYS been illegal since the concept was first codified. The intenet was seen by pirates as a way around copyright infringement laws because governments were behind the power curve on tracking illegal internet activity. Now that the governments are catching up, people want to treat this as some major infringement of their "right" to aid and abet breaking the law. People never had that "right". No matter how badly people want things handed to them for free, the fact is that those things cost money to produce and the creator's/producers/suppliers should be monitarily compensated for their work.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Piracy diminishes our ability to enforce this, and thus the US government is simply fulfilling its constitutional obligations. As a loyal citizen of the Republic I fully support these efforts.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

There's the rest of it.

I think Anonymous may have gone a bit too far this time. The stuff they were doing before was nickle and dime, but now they're attempting extortion on the U.S. Congress. You don't threaten to attack the Congressman's campaign donors IF the Congressman supports the SOPA. That's extortion. I think "Anonymous" is going to find out just how false their name really is.

Fadamor, you are greatly confused between Megaupload and the pirates using their service. They are not the same people.

Yes, authors and inventors have rights. But so do people who provide a service even if others abuse it. Copyright infringement has been and will always be around. It must be tolerated to a certain degree, not only because it cannot be eliminated, but also because the fair use doctrine makes it sometimes legal. Your problem is the same problem the makers of the bill have: you have no sense of balance and only see one side of the picture.

And no, the government is not catching up. They are going in circles. The creators of this bill have shown they are as clueless as ever, not to mention stuffed in the pockets of corporations.

This is the splash screen on megaupload as of today http://usdoj.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

If people sent other people DVDs of copyrighted music regularly, would they close down the post office and arrest the Post Master General?

If people sent other people DVDs of copyrighted music regularly, would they close down the post office and arrest the Post Master General?

No, not unless the post office knew about it yet did nothing about it even after being notified by valid complaints.