According to the Washingtonpost.com, “one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites was shut down Thursday, while it founder and several company executives” were arrested in New Zealand charged with violating piracy laws.
“The indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. ”
The Justice Department said in a statement said that:
“”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. ”
“”Dotcom, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand, and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany, made more than $42 million from the conspiracy in 2010 alone, according to the indictment.”
According to cnet.com a total of 7 people were been named in the indictment and four suspects have been taken into custody.
“DotCom and three others were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand by New Zealand police, who “who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States,” the Justice Department.”
“Along with Dotcom, Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand was also arrested. ”
“Authorities say that Dotcom founded Megaupload and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites. ”
“They have been charged in Virginia with crimes related to online piracy, including racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, and conspiring to commit money laundering.”
It would seem to me if the Feds have the ability to make arrests based on current laws, even on companies, citizens and sites that live and operate in countries outside of the US, laws like SOPA and PIPA are not needed.
It seems like this has far reaching implications for cloud computing and web hosting in general: Strictly police the content you host, or risk being shut down completely.
Wow, internet regulation has gone from nil to overbearing. I wish the government would start spending their money domestically to help infrastructure, vets, and create jobs and stop wasting time being the henchmen for the Entertainment industry.
Ironically, a company like BP can ruin the ocean and get a fine and carry on with business, but if you host files you will get arrested. That’s rich.
@TLD no kidding. Or create fraudulent financial instruments and cause a multi-trillion dollar global financial collapse and get off scott free.
Well this was bound to happen.
They had tons of copyrighted content. They charged for premium memberships.
The last few months i noticed that Megaupload was trashing alot of illegal content. Most new shows and movies where taken down rather quickly.
Till today i was kinda amazed these guys where still up and running. Most of the link sites made their move to non USA operated ccTLD’s.
I love the word conspiracy in the article btw 😉
from the facts, this was intentional, massive scale criminal infringment. contrast this with the minima “evidence” (= mere allegations, with no intent required) required to initiate a sopa/pipa complaint.
countries such as usa and nz now have copyright treaties in force to address cooperation on criminal infringment.
maybe he should have considered that before he bought the most expensive home in new zealand while boasting to the world media he’s going to win a lawsuit with universal media group. because he has some rappers on his side?
still, as i read this i wonder how much similarly copyrighted content is being exchanged via the dropbox file-sharing service. to think all the file-sharing people are doing with that is completely kosher from a copyright persepctive seems a bit naive.
the dropbox kids have made far money more than megaupload. how much of it is attributable to sharing copyrighted works?
maybe this the important difference is… they are not based in hong kong.
Anon hits back!
http://cnnmon.ie/A2kn8K
the other thing is they used a hosting provider in virginia. sopa/pipa is aimed at “foreign” websites where the content is hosted offshore and the only connections to the united states might be payment processors, ad networks or maybe there are no connections at all.
where there is us-based hosting like in this case, and international cooperation on stoping copyright infringment, no, you don’t need a sopa/pipa to shut it down.
but imagine if the suspects were living in, e.g., russia. things might play out differently.
As TLD correctly stated:
“Ironically, a company like BP can ruin the ocean and get a fine and carry on with business, but if you host files you will get arrested. That’s rich.”
Its actually outrageous. And as long as ‘Copyright’ as practised by Big Media is allowed to stand, this will continue to happen.
The 5 companies that own 90% of the worlds media are very very powerful and use that power to get governments to do their bidding.
Hence the Golden Rule: ‘those with the gold, rule.’
The info in this doco http://ripremix.com/ puts the whole copyright/copyleft isssue in perspective,and asks the question, “Who owns our culture?”
See trailer: http://youtu.be/9oar9glUCL0
I can’t believe they went and arrested him in ANOTHER country!!!
p.s. LOL @list of the owner’s seized cars: (i call dibz on the royce!)
http://www.peeje.com/positivity/5666-megaupload-sued-defendants-property-lol
@theo
[..]”They had tons of copyrighted content. They charged for premium memberships. The last few months i noticed that Megaupload was trashing alot of illegal content. Most new shows and movies where taken down rather quickly.
Till today i was kinda amazed these guys where still up and running. Most of the link sites made their move to non USA operated ccTLD’s.” [..]
I’m amazed that Youtube.com is running too~!! ;)~
I live in Auckland New Zealand where he lives or lived in a sprawling multimillion dollar mansion … apparently when he which found and arrested , he was carrying a loaded firearm in a safe room , heaps of cash and several top end cars being seized . Shown on news tv down here along with his arrested mates … all look dodgy dudes .
You’re right there jayjay, infact i use google for all my music downloads. Beats Itunes, spotify, grooveshark etc etc.
Though i mostly listen to internet radio nowdays, knac.com 😉
This is an ideal item to which to turn to prove current laws do, in fact, work pretty well. Thanks for the comment in the final paragraph.
Considering the complexity of this particular arrangement, it seems lesser schemes would be more easily targeted. Admittedly, however, difficult political landscapes make these kinds of interventions more difficult, but that hardly warrants SOPA and PIPA.
Now, I could go ahead and list all the reasons that blogging is not dead, but truthfully, that misses the point. The reason that people love to declare things dead runs deeper than some analytical look at the pros and cons. What’s really happening here is simple human nature’s interest in finding the answer.
Danny Pryor agreed.
It also shows, that if megaupload is indeed repsonsible for a loss of half a billion that the entertainment industry is doing something very wrong, why is that half a billion not in their own pockets ? Prolly coz they are too stuborn to change their business model while nowdays consumer with their tablets and smartphones, consume movies and music and tv shows totally different then 30 years ago ….
I am sure that University of Maryland and NASA scientist Eric F. Vermote didn’t at all appreciate Megaupload’s seizure. Very nice and cool anti piracy “Hadopi” law progress in France – in French: “c’est très “surprenant” tous les web posts laissés comme cela partout sur Internet par des Pseudos Totallement Anonymes comme le votre sur le sujet de piratage… Megaupload = domaine purement et simplement bloqué par le U. S District Court sur décision de grand jury fédéral américain (par opérations du F.B.I). Je m’y attendais depuis très longtemps en ce qui me concerne (lire tous mes web posts en anglais et français); tout cela est fort intéressant pour les créateurs à mon avis : internautes mal avertis contre la HADOPI qu’en pensez-vous maintenant ? Toujours aussi fiers ?
Voici les graves raisons officielles de la fermeture de Megaupload :
– violation criminelle de droits d’auteurs
– complot de racket
– conspiration de violation de droits d’auteurs
– association de malfaiteurs en blanchiment d’argent.
PAS VRAIMENT “JOLI JOLI” TOUT CELA N’ EST-CE PAS ?”
Interesting fallout from MegaUpload shutdown:
Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action
http://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker-ecosystem-shocked-as-big-players-take-drastic-action-120123
“Last evening Filesonic, a top 10 player in the file-sharing world with a billion pageviews a month, not only withdrew its affiliate rewards program, but also banned any third parties downloading files. Simply put, users can now only download files from the service that they uploaded themselves.”
“Withdrew affiliate program” – is that a surprise? The file sharing sites are cutting their losses as they fix their business model.