Megaupload files countersuit against Universal, FBI moves in. Good thing I'm not the paranoid kind.
My thoughts exactly. And, the day after SOPA/PIPA blackouts feds take down a site some were using as a SOPA/PIPA poster child, that generates headlines on FOX like this: Feds say 7 from Megaupload.com ran massive worldwide piracy website http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-fil...
I'm waiting for the "terrorist" angle to be used with Megaupload or perhaps the next target. I'm a little surprised the Feds haven't played that card yet.
Hosting files is a dangerous business - the line between being shut down for infringement and not being shut down seems to be drawn by who you know and what users you end up with, not any real actions, design, or technical differences in your site. The indictment of Megaupload actually uses their lack of search function and censorship of copyrighted material from their "top content" list as marks against them. This m…
Censorship of the top-content list is actually a valid point against them. It means Megaupload had some system to identify infringing files, but rather than flagging them for investigation or deletion, they simply removed them from the public list.
Wow, that article's certainly not biased! > "MegaUpload.com is already engaged in a legal fight with Universal Music Group over a promotional video featuring some UMG artists." I suppose there are some reading that that don't know MegaUpload hired all the artists and had contracts and copyright licenses with them and had complete rights to the video, which UMG illegally and fraudulently filed a takedown notice agains…
> UMG illegally and fraudulently filed a takedown notice against YouTube I don't necessarily agree with UMG's action (and that's completely beside the point), but AFAIK (according to the news articles), UMG didn't file a DMCA takedown notice, but a takedown notice that was completely a contractual issue between two businesses (UMG and YouTube). There's nothing illegal there.
While I don't think it's good that it could be possible, their violation of a computer-usage agreement with Google could be criminal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA's prohibition on "exceeding authorized access", where you had legitimate access to a system but used it in ways that exceeded your agreed-upon authorization, has been read extremely broadly, to basically criminalize violations of computer-access agreements. So if they deleted videos that the terms of their contract with Google didn't authorize them to delete, that could be a criminal matter rather than just civil. (The chances of anyone being prosecuted in this case are another matter.)
At the risk of megadownvoting here... Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content. It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators. Now if people believe that…
Why does megaupload have to comply with the DMCA; they're a Hong Kong company. The US simply has no jurisdiction over what they do.
At the risk of megadownvoting here... Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content. It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators. Now if people believe that…
I'm more upset with the precedent than I am with the particular site. I've never made a DMCA request against them, but my understanding from the DoJ presser was that they did comply with the letter- They removed the links that were sent. They just didn't necessarily remove all other links to the same file. When you filed yours, did you follow legal procedure, and go through their registered DMCA agent with paper mail…
This sounds like a somewhat clever loophole around DMCA requirements. Host the same/duplicate file at an approximately infinite number of different URLs and take them down one by one as DMCA requests come in for specific links. This seems like a someone complicated loophole to write around because even if the DMCA was changed to allow takedowns of media and it's duplicates (if it doesn't already) you could combinatorially add random junk into the stream and circumvent that as well.
Indeed, when a site built around (partially) illegal content being shared, it's OK with me if they earn just enough not to lose money on operating the site. However, I do not believe you should profit off the content of others.
Am I being downvoted because people think you should be able to earn money on pirated content, or because you think they should operate such sites at a loss (if at all)?
I'd think it might be the line "However, I do not believe you should profit off the content of others.". That's a blanket statement which probably has been misinterpreted as you being against any form of distributor or reseller business model.
Megaupload files countersuit against Universal, FBI moves in. Good thing I'm not the paranoid kind.
My thoughts exactly. And, the day after SOPA/PIPA blackouts feds take down a site some were using as a SOPA/PIPA poster child, that generates headlines on FOX like this: Feds say 7 from Megaupload.com ran massive worldwide piracy website http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-fil...
Yeah, its the "day after the blackout" which I think is a favor to the MPAA/RIAA folks. "Let's erase these 'sopa is bad' stories from the nightly news and replace them with a good evil pirates tale."
I thought the burning need for SOPA/PIPA was that there was no way for American legal processes to deal with international criminals? Have the MPAA and RIAA misled me about their sponsored legislation?!?
I'm interested in the relationship between this argument and the one going on elsewhere on HN today concerning 37signals' looking up the name of their 100 millionth file in their logs. For MegaUpload, the implication seems to be (from the government if not from commenters here) that, on top of complying with DMCA requests (obviously there are also questions about whether they did even that), MegaUpload should be moni…
I guess the difference is private versus public.
If people were uploading pirated movies to their 37 signals account, who cares because that link can't be used for sharing with the world. But with megaupload, the link is designed for sharing.