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[Tilla]

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/

While SOPA is defeated, the US Justice Department in cooperation with international authorities has shut down MegaUpload.com and arrested many of their staff.

[Angel Of Death]

R.I.P, the late Megaupload. You were too beautiful for this world

[Loud Whispers]

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/

While SOPA is defeated, the US Justice Department in cooperation with international authorities has shut down MegaUpload.com and arrested many of their staff.

Using a lot of controversy to hide more controversy -_-
That's low.

[olemars]

And suddenly the web had a few billion more dead links.

[Frumple]

The FBI press release.

This one was a fun one to me:

As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.

Someone has no g'damn idea how filesharing sites work, don't they? Those aren't duplicate links to the same file nitwits, they're entirely different files.

The actual trial should be interesting, though.

[Aqizzar]

Stands to reason it'd be the one file-storage site that's actually worth a damn, instead of shutting down RapidShare or something.

[Aklyon]

Stands to reason it'd be the one file-storage site that's actually worth a damn, instead of shutting down RapidShare or something.

What about mediafire?

[freeformschooler]

Stands to reason it'd be the one file-storage site that's actually worth a damn, instead of shutting down RapidShare or something.

What about mediafire?

AK has a point. They're both pretty decent, and legitimate file-sharers could fall back on one if the other goes down like in this case.

[Karlito]

The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.

Wow, that's quite the array of charges.

[Aqizzar]

Mark my words, there will come a day soon when RapidShare, like the legendary cockroach, will be the only surviving file-sharing service left on the Internet.  And they'll throttle free users to 5Kb downloads a day with membership at $1000 a year contracts.

[Bauglir]

Then, they'll start accepting Bitcoins as currency with a fixed rate of exchange.

[Haschel]

The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.

Wow, that's quite the array of charges.

The copyright infringement is obvious- what's with the racketeering and money laundering?

Aside from that, I'm curious how many times big name sites like Megaupload getting taken down it would take for there to be any real impact upon the internet. I figure at some point corporations would finally cave in and figure the risk of lawsuits isn't worth the possible income of such a website. Could such a thing happen, or will greed always win out?

[Frumple]

The copyright infringement is obvious- what's with the racketeering and money laundering?

Read the FBI press release I linked, it goes into a bit more detail. The laundering, at least, is specifically mentioned; I've already forgotten how the racketeering comes into it.

[Karlito]

The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. The indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The conspirators further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.

Basically Megaupload is a vast evil conspiracy specifically designed to steal money from hard working media corporations.

[sneakey pete]

Using a lot of controversy to hide more controversy -_-
That's low.

Note that they started proceedings on the 5th of January. I'd say its a coincidence. Not to mention they probably don't give a crap about weather it would be hidden or not.