Megaupload shut down

Originally posted by EyesWithPrideB3Anonymous is retarded for striking against government websites for taking down something that people use illegally. This whole thing is getting blown out of proportion.

If you always went to the same house to snort coke, and the government tore that house down even though other people occasionally walked through to do no illegal damage, would all the cokeheads run out to the government and be like, "GIVE ME BACK MY CRACK HOUSE!"??

No.

The indictment accuses the suspects of being members of "the Mega Conspiracy, a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale."

"The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicised their links to users throughout the world," a statement said.

"By actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicise infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicise such content on the Megaupload site.

"Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users."

1.In practice, the "vast majority" of users do not have any significant long term private storage capability. Continued storage is dependent upon regular downloads of the file occurring. Files not downloaded are rapidly removed in most cases, whereas popular downloaded files are retained.
2.Because a small proportion of users pay for storage, the business is dependent upon advertising. Adverts are primarily viewed when files are downloaded and the business model is therefore not based upon storage but upon maximizing downloads.
3.Persons indicted have "instructed individual users how to locate links to infringing content on the Mega Sites ... [and] ... have also shared with each other comments from Mega Site users demonstrating that they have used or are attempting to use the Mega Sites to get infringing copies of copyrighted content."
4.Persons indicted, unlike the public, are not reliant upon links to stored files, but can search the internal database directly. It is claimed they have "searched the internal database for their associates and themselves so that they may directly access copyright-infringing content".
5.A comprehensive takedown method is in use to identify child pornography, but not deployed to remove infringing content. (item 24)
6.Infringing users did not have their accounts terminated, and the defendants "made no significant effort to identify users who were using the Mega Sites or services to infringe copyrights, to prevent the uploading of infringing copies of copyrighted materials, or to identify infringing copies of copyrighted works" (item 55-56)
7.An incentivizing program was adopted encouraging the upload of "popular" files in return for payments to successful uploaders. (item 69e et al)
8.Defendants explicitly discussed evasion and infringement issues (69i-l)