America’s FBI takes down hundreds of thousands of legal files
Today the American FBI took down Megaupload and its sister sites on the ground that Megaupload was intentionally designed to promote piracy. I could have decided to not care, until I realized we (the /talk community) host hundreds of perfectly legal homebrews there, independent games and creations that are now potentially lost forever.
I will do my best over the days to come to fix broken links on our homebrews database, although we already have lots of things hosted directly here (on my server) or on other websites such as mediafire.
Am I the only one *** at the fact that the US can purely and simply shut down, for the entire world, a german website hosted in Hong Kong? (Update: . Megaupload is a HK based company, but the site was apparently hosted in Virginia, US, which changes lots of stuff). Apparently not, seeing that Anonymous started to retaliate with what seems to be one of the biggest coordinated DDoS attacks ever.
It also makes one wonder why the Music Industry in the US so badly needs the SOPA and PIPA laws, if they can already basically shut down a foreign website at will…
In taking down Megaupload, the FBI probably removed thousands of copyright infringing files. But they also removed hundreds of thousands of legal files. Thousands of people, artists, programmers, creators were legally making a business out of the downloads of these files, and will have to find new solutions for hosting their files at a reasonable cost. The same content creators that the RIAA and MPAA in the US claim to protect. Except if you don’t pay a tax to these groups, they don’t protect you, and they apparently don’t hesitate to shut you down. There is a group of people who do similar things as the RIAA and the MPAA in the real world (not the digital one), they are called the Mafia: pay us for protection, or you’re just collateral damage.
I’m not pretending Megaupload wasn’t a hive for pirates, but it also contained lots of legal content, that has been wiped out without any form of discrimination, in the name of the crusade against piracy that was started by the american entertainment industry.
I also can’t help but feel the recent events on the Internet (which basically started in 1998 with the DMCA) are similar to an invasion: the people who were here first on the internet are progressively losing their rights and the very own identity of their “land” (the network) because a handful of powerful men found that it is full of resources they plan to exploit. The poor internet natives are fighting with what they can (bows, arrows, DoS), but the powerful men have boats, guns, money and lawyers. They will eventually win, and in 50 years there will be internet reservations where small group of Native Internauts will slowly die, while discussing how cool it was when their land was free and full of buffalos, movies, and music.
I hope Universal and Sony don’t start sending us blankets…
that is messed up, what is the u.s becomming?
communists.
I’ve got to agree sometimes, we bottled it up after world war 2 only for it to spill out all over the country 60 years later.
nope, U.S. wants rule over the WORLD, rule every each of you to do what government wants..
Not what the government wants, they are but puppetts in a game they think they rule at, but all of them are controlled by corporations. It was on the mayans 2012 predictions, the end is NEAR!!!!!!
Anynomous did well.
Still got backups of homebrews right?
In every city, there is a den of theives. Destroying the whole city however will not solve the problem. The FBI is approaching a worldly issue as if it only affects the US. And now because of it, thousands of dollars are lost to the people like me who paid for premium accounts.
RIOT!
Why can’t they do this to torrent sites? Anyway… every country that rises in domination soon falls, so lets hope it’s sooner rather than later :).
Cause torrent sites don’t work that way, the files are hosted on private computers, and torrent servers are just keeping track of those computers. There is no way of telling if a torrent is legal or not.
Oh, damn, yea, peer to peer file sharing *facepalm*.
Actually, this is exactly what Hadopi does in France. Some private companies are hired to download the same files as you on p2p, and their word is legally trusted. If they say you downloaded a file that is known to be infringing copyright, you can contest the decision but need some proof. This is the basis of the “3 strikes, you’re out” law in France. I think they don’t even have to download it, they can query your list of files, and do their work simply based on the file name (not sure about that from a legal point of view…)
Is that why that wikileaks insurance torrent has so much ‘seeds’?
Yeah, I was bit to fast to write you can’t tel if your torrent is legal or not. Though I still think that megaupload was not the worst sharing service; there was a policy and reporting was very easy.
Guess there setting a tone here, but I doubt this will solve anything. Just think about them “illegal” music sharing programs they “stopped” 5-10 y ago. Just other services pop out of the ground.
I LOST ALL MY WORK… -Sniff-
Your not the only one 🙁
I lost a ton of stuff from my computer classes that I had backsups of on MU that was a just incase I cant find it on my computer or home server sort of thing…Im ***….freaking gov’ts thinking that they can stop piracy forever…pft no way in heck they can….
This may sound crazy, but I think everything happening with SOPA (like giving power to a dominant country/person/group of people that can affect the whole world) is somewhat of a step closer to fulfilling the goals of a “New world order” where there is a one-world government thats dictates all. I may sound like one of those nutcases but to be honest with everything that has happening, nothing seems crazy…
I’m most worry’d about the fact that they take down a German company hosted in Honk Kong, they could just have blocked the website in US, now they just go international and *** ?
What about the other file hosting services? (us gov, is now like -what there other file hosting services?-)
It turns out I misunderstood some bits, it seems most of Megaupload was hosted in Virginia (US) and this is what they are attacking, although the owner is a german and the company is based in HK
100% truth in this article.
loving the last paragraph. keep up the great work, wololo.
im sure if we ever find ourselves missing homebrew, we can make a post and ask if people still have local copies and we can just reupload.
hope is not lost!! 🙂
What the ***? They couldn’t shutdown sendspace insted with all its movies and iso’s? Megaupload atleast tried to ban pirated files and send space did nothing about it. Its not Megaupload’s fault
Well all i can say that time to backup my ISOs , Music , Videos, and other stuff or ill lose all of it.. stupid FBI made me *** =(
that took long, before wololo starts writing anything about SOPA and PIPA. suprised me that he didnt took down his whole site.
about the article: this will not prevent piracy in anyway. people will find ways around this and start using stuff like TOR to get around the goverment. there is no point of fighting against it. instead they have to adapt themself.
I thought about taking my whole site down, and then realized it was too late and a bit lame since I hadn’t talked about SOPA and PIPA at all, would have sounded like a guy joining the hate wagon without knowing what he’s talking about. I am, of course, entirely against these laws, especially since today the US proved that they don’t hesitate to believe their laws apply to the rest of the world.
Megaupload sc*** up by taking on Music companies. They were in a legal battle with Universal and they also tried to “upgrade” their image by hiring famous Musicians for some PR work. If Megaupload stayed below the radar and kept to themselves, they would have been left alone like Rapidshare and others.
scam link removed by mods
megaupload ip you get it directly 😀
Good luck!
I don’t really see a problem with this the severs where in the united states that’s why the FBI had jurisdiction for the area, also the site itself was taken down that’s why the homebrew apps we love got taken out too, for example if a movie store is selling pirated dvds as well as legal dvds, they would be shut down just for the pirated dvds its doesn’t matter.
Would you stock your legal fisical goods in a Bank/Depot that you know it contains 90% percent of ilegal fisical goods (like drugs for example) ?
We can’t blame the FBI for everything, we are guilty also, we were using a system that encourages “financial” piracy, just because it was so confortable …
This is a good point, although as far as I was concerned, that bank looked like any other one, I honestly had no clue that megaupload was mostly used for piracy, I was honestly thinking they were complying to the DMCA, the same way youtube does. Would I stop using youtube? No. I had no reason to believe Megaupload was any different than youtube. Who tells me now that I can use mediafire, dropbox, or Aplpe’s iCloud without being worried of the same result in 2 years?
Nobody. If they start having more ilegal stuff than legal … it can happen again. If you see that your cloud service is becoming the paradise of piracy, i advice you to move.
Megaupload were complying to the DMCA with a quote, puting a daily or monthly limit, different than youtube. And another difference is that megaupload doesn’t provide any tools to find copyrighted material.
quota, not quote, sorry
And I think that in our battle for defending the freedom of Internet, we should not defend people that used it for earning lots of money making ilegal things, because that will harm our battle.
Your last paragraph is very nice, but Kim Doctom is more like the “powerful men have boats, guns, money and lawyers” than the “Native Internaut”.
STOP SOPA & PIPA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again you’re right, although I’m basically more worried about the precedent being set by this case. Until this FBI attack I thought Tim DotCom was a business man like any other one: he was rich because he knew how to be borderline legal in order to make more money than anybody else. If you check the amount of legal cases against google and facebook for their infringment on privacy in Europe, you will see the problem is not about doing something illegal or not for a man to become rich. The problem is “who you mess with”. Facebook is messing with governments, no problem. Megaupload was messing against the Entertainment Industry, who are much more powerful.
So, It doesn’t mean I like Tim Dotcom, but I don’t see why he deserves less to be rich than, say, Zuckerberg. In my eyes these people are all people who found innovative ways to exploit the system in order to get rich. The only (big) difference is that Facebook is probably creating much more employment than Megaupload. But if you remove that from the equation, this is all it’s about: one cannot get that rich by being 100% honest. It’s always about pretending to be following the laws, but actually pushing them a little bit, where the money is.
The diference with facebook, is that when the receive an advertisement about privacy, they change the things.
When Kim Doctom received an advertisement about piracy and IP, he negotiated a quota … he PUSHED too much.
Right, but how much is too much? Facebook comply with the laws for a few months, then they come back with another idea that infringes on people’s privacy again… progressively, they push the boundaries of the laws for their own benefit, so I think the comparison is still valid: these businessmen, if they were completely complying to the law, and made sure 100% that they’re not doing anything illegal, wouldn’t make any good business.
Similarly, to the strict sense of the law, Megaupload was following the DMCA. The quota limitation they put into place was probably not such a good move in retrospect, but I know why they did that: Companies like Warner Bros and Universal abuse the DMCA onm a daily basis, and sometimes get removed some videos for which they do not own the content. This happened to me for one of my Wagic videos, illegally removed by WotC. At that time WotC removed 4 of my videos from youtube. 3 of them contained pictures of Magic the Gathering, therefore deserved to be removed, one of them was unrelated, they just looked at the title and removed all my Wagic videos in one single click. It is possible to complain, but the procedure is painful (snail mail to youtube in the US), so I can clearly see why Megaupload was putting a quota on these guys: so that the copyright owners didn’t go over the top and start banning every video they didn’t like. With a daily quota, they had to be careful not to remove videos they didn’t actually own.
Anyway, if Zuckerberg goes to prison because he pushed too much, no problem for me. I don’t like greedy guys.
I prefer ambitious guys like you, that pursue many things, a little money, knowledge, values, justice, etc …
That’s what seperates the rich from the rest…. I’d rather lather in riches with the price of a little dishonesty then fight useless battles that are destined for me to lose…
I’m actually not ambitious at all. I think comparing me to these guys is giving me way too much credit. I’m just a normal guy with a blog 😛
I was not implying that Zuckerberg should go to prison, rather that depending on who’s your enemy, doing something borderline legal can bring you no trouble at all (Facebook VS privacy) or jail time(Megaupload with the entertainment industry)
Let’s wait, perhaps doctom doesn’t go to prison, there will a friendly agreement, and will only loose some money …
kim schmitz was a joke, all his life….so serves him right
What dont make sence to me is the fact when a site opens up for potential ilegal possibility’s, it only take’s a month before everybody know’s about it and is exploiting the services with legal and ilegal file’s.So why dont the U.S. just deal with it then instead of letting grow so big it creat’s a fire when they stop it, instead of smoke at the start. In other word’s why dont the U.S. just leave the site’s alone if there gunna allow them to get away with *** for so long and become so big.
It’s like how there fighting marijuana “A DRUG NOT A MEDICINE FOR THOSE WHO DONT KNOW” in the U.S. when it’s so wide spread across NATIONS Let alone the U.S. it’s a loseing fight no matter what they do when the people want it they will get it any way they can no matter what the goverment does to regulate it.”This was just a anology”
we are anonymous we are legion we do not forgive we do not forget united as one divided by zero expect us
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