Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

It's very clear now, we live in a plutocracy. Big corporations are above the law in every single way that matters.

E.g. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=957652

> How many legitimate business don't have their owners wrapped in layers of corporations strewn around the globe? Nothing particularly unique or illegal here.

I might be slightly off-topic here, but I think this is a good opportunity to point out the danger of falling for a "Halo or Horns" fallacy.

Wikipedia doesn't compare the Halo effect with the Horns effect but it does have an article about the Halo effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Simply put, if you believe one aspect of a person (or thing) to be bad, you're more likely to judge its other aspects in a negative light. Similarly, one good characteristic can make you more likely to judge the other aspects in a better light.

You can see examples of Halo vs Horns all the time if you look for it. It's very common when mob psychology comes into play, and often causes a change in the status quo.

It's pretty clear that the main use for MegaUpload is for distributing pirated works. The site is essentially the equivalent of Box.net except instead of storing your company business plan in word format everyone puts up the newest movies, music, etc.

But they're based in Homg Kong so where does the US get off shutting it down? Maybe it was a coordinated effort between governments in which case you don't have to agree with it but you can't say it wasn't legal. But then we have to ask if the US is abusing their "power" by pressuring other nations to bend to their will in cases like this.

Whether you're pro-piracy, anti-piracy, pro-copyright or anti-copyright the fact is that it's still the law and it's really hard to believe that MegaUpload is really on the up and up. The only thing they have is a disclaimer that gives them plausible deniability. Other than that they're basically a version of the pirate bay except they actually host the infringing files.

Defending MegaUpload is like a bunch of pot-heads who read a story about how a weed dealer gets arrested for selling pot. Their stance on the legality of marijuana is irrelevant because it's currently illegal and the authorities were within their rights. Even if you throw a wrinkle into the story wherein the hypothetical dealer is arrested at a border crossing in a foreign nation, the point still stands as the odds are that selling pot is illegal in most other countries too save for some exceptions but let's not be pedantic about it.

It's the same here in this case. Whatever your position on copyright and piracy is, it's irrelevant because it's been the law for a long time now.

But everything I just said is completely beside the point we should be really focusing on which is, if the authorities are able to shut down infringing sites already then why do we need more laws like SOPA? They already have the power to go after the major pains in their collective sides so more laws are totally unnecessary. SOPA-like laws may make it more convenient for them to do this sort of thing but we can't let that happen. They just want a system where they don't have to go through the "inconvenience" of actually gathering evidence and building a case. That's the long and short of it.

I'd also like to note how extremely biased this article was. They took a shot at Google and implied that our side of the debate is in favor of piracy. I think a lot of us are but we need to get off that because it's hurting our argument. I personally and against piracy and for copyright to a certain extent (I think copyright extends too far as it is but support the idea of it if it were implemented better) but I'm also absolutely against SOPA and PIPA. A person can hold those two views.

So let's put aside our piracy/copyright stances for now because we're totally playng into their game and they're using it against us. Instead we should be asking why we need SOPA if the Feds can already adequately shut down "pirate sites" and talking more about how these laws do away with due process and articulate it in a way that relates to non-techies.

The real decision was made in some corporate office somewhere - the real owners of the weak little puppet called "government".