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EFF Seeking Information of Legal Users of Megaupload
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, with the assistance of Carpathia Hosting, has issued a call for information on users who lost legitimate data as part of the Megaupload takedown. No promises are made at this point, but Carpathia at least notes: "We have no immediate plans to reprovision some or all of the Megaupload servers. This means that there is no imminent data loss for Megaupload customers. If this situation changes, we will post a notice at least 7 days in advance of reprovisioning any Megaupload servers."
> We have no immediate plans to reprovision some or all of the Megaupload servers. This means that there is no imminent data loss for Megaupload customers.
I don't get it. Isn't the issue that megaupload customers ARE going to lose their data very soon? In that case, wouldn't the lack of reprovisioning just maintain the status quo?
MegaUpload's shutdown didn't need SOPA to pass... it's just a simple DMCA escalation that says if you ignore DMCA Takedown letters, your server farm will be ordered to down your server. The DMCA is still missing the provision for a penalty for an invalid takedown request but that's what we should be telling Congress to work on.
because if enough legitimate users rise up, doesn't it throw the entire position of megaupload only "existing for piracy" into question?
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
If I rip an album and upload it for my personal use later, then thats fair-use as long as I never share said link with anyone else.
The mere presence of copyrighted material in their account doesn't suddenly mean the users were pirates.
The big problem here is that piracy probably _was_ a huge part of megaupload.
Not saying their wern't lots of legitimate users, but lets not ignore reality here.
I didn't lose anything I didn't have backed up locally but what I did lose was the service I was using to send clients the photos I took for them. Plenty of alternatives, obviously, but how do I know which one would be next?
It's like sending in a drone to blow up some village in Pakistan - sure they are some civilians there but they are mostly Taliban.
If the government had to care about things like that nothing would ever get done.
MegaUpload - piracy = ???
If enough paying customers stand up, they can retrieve their own data and start a legit service... otherwise, the data will be lost and the company gone.
While I respect the EFF and don't doubt their intentions, it sounds like this Carpathia Hosting company got itself a PR-out that it needed. The way I understood things, it sounded like MU's assets were frozen and it was assumed that since they couldn't pay Carpathia, the hosting company was going to clear out the data at the stroke of midnight (slight exaggeration, but you get the idea). I'm sure that MegaUpload users were hoping that the hosting company would wait until a trial to delete or not delete out of the goodness of their hearts, but that isn't fair to them. On the other hand, from the comment on the EFF page, it sounds like Carpathia can not get users their data, either for technical or contractual reasons, at the moment.
By giving a small grace period and supporting the EFF here, Carpathia has really put themselves out of "Bad Guy" range. I don't think they would have deserved the label to begin with, but you know some disgruntled users would have bad mouthed the hosting company once their data was lost.
Vol~
And we wouldn't keep pissing off our allies by blowing shit up in their territory without telling them. We wouldn't want that.
I'd say the lion portion of usage of it was indeed piracy.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You expect him to go through all of these: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi ?
There are other services much more suitable for piracy. Megaupload is really not something you would want to use for downloading large amounts of data, or multiple files. I doubt they have that many pirates.
If I were a lawyer representing any of the major Big Content companies, I would subpoena that information pronto. Then I would get the credit card and payment records from the government. Voila. You can probably convict most of the top N uploaders of willful infringement and maybe even get a criminal conviction too. Those files are direct evidence of a crime. Is the EFF really thinking through what they're doing?
unless they are planning on a class action law suit, otherwise i bet all the uploaders & downloders of Megaupload have moved on to using other services that basically do the same thing,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The big problem here is that piracy probably _was_ a huge part of megaupload.
And the people behind Megaupload *knew* about it and *encouraged* it.
Besides which, I haven't seen anyone claiming that Megaupload existed only for piracy, as the poster to whom you replied stated. It was just that there was a lot of piracy and everyone was pretty blatant about it - including the owners of Megaupload.
You can doubt it all you want... but that doesn't make it any less true. It's fairly trivial to show show that a vast majority content on megaupload was copyrighted, and unlikely to have been uploaded to it with any permission from the copyright holder.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And don't get me started on the comparison of copyright infringement and terrorism. Unexpectedly, they are remarkably similar: they are both symptoms of a larger problem in society that depriving people of rights will not solve, they are both used to justify unchecked expansion of government with new powers that can be easily abused, and they both reduce to simple law-enforcement issues when you strip away the propaganda.
Is there really a difference between Megaupload hosting infringing content and Carpathis hosting Megaupload?
So who is going to ask Mitt for his opinion on the case? I'm waiting for that soundbite.
I reviewed an academic paper (which unfortunately the others on the PC didn't like, so it wasn't accepted) which examined the economic model of Megaupload, related services, third-party links to Megaupload, and the popular files, especially the "Uploader Rewards", and concluded that the company's business model really was about "Profit from Piracy".
Combined with the email trail that the feds apparently got (eg, emails concerning scraping of Youtube for the creation of MegaVideo, emails about reward payments including clear descriptions of the types of uploads), and the RICO indictments etc are not a surprise. (the indictment)
For example, if its true that their takedown is by URL, but they duplicate based on hash (so one can have multiple URLs for the same file), thats clearly attempting to game the system, as any legitimate takedown system would take down all separate URLs which point to the same file. (Paragraph 23 on the indictment). Especially if this is related to the creation of a "dummy lifetime premium user" to "to prevent the loss of source files due to expiration or abuse reports" (from a Megaupload email).
Also, at least according to the indictment, there really should be very few legitimate files lost in this: Anonymous uploads needed to be downloaded every 21 days or they were deleted, and even free named accounts required 90-day downloads, which is very different from Dropbox and other systems, where persistence, rather than popularity-of-download, is the goal.
Test your net with Netalyzr
They will be contacted by all six of them.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
people respond
So let's see if I have this straight...
Basically, what they are encourage people to do is not ever invent anything new or innovative, ever again, because when it gets used for illegal purposes, it will be shut down.
Can you imagine the ramifications of, say, technology-enabled telepathy?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Labouring under the false assumption that the MAFIAA and their lapdogs care about the rule of law. The tipping point was Mega readying the launch of a streaming service.
That's exactly what they want to do. Sharing technology is a direct threat to their distribution monopoly. I'm sure the copyright cartel would love nothing more than to kill/scare off all file sharing sites.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Presumably the uploaded and served files themselves aren't at stake, because you've got to have uploaded from somewhere, not to mention that nobody in their right mind can count on a service being around forever. Even a fairly long-lasting internet company like Amazon, probably doesn't have your only copy of stuff on their EC2 machines.
So what's the data we're talking about here? Is it logs, marketing info, statistics, etc? i.e. Data created by the service itself? How would any of that be infringing? (Or if non-infringing isn't what they mean by "legal" -- is about some kind of European data collection and privacy laws?) (But at the same time, why would any of that merit anyone caring a whole lot? Anyone who was counting on megaupload has almost certainly already moved in the week or two since they went down.)
There's a distinction between "it eventually draws the attention of the pirate crowd" and "it is advertised specifically for piracy" -- the latter is what's alleged here.
because if enough legitimate users rise up, doesn't it throw the entire position of megaupload only "existing for piracy" into question?
Your dear little innocent boy bought dirt cheap hosting from a 300 lb fraudster who changed his name to Kim Dotcom and lived like Fat Elvis on an income his legitimate services couldn't possibly provide.
Where, exactly, is it advertised that Megaupload is intended to share content that the person uploading does not have any rights to?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Shouldn't these servers be unplugged and in a closet somewhere as EVIDENCE?? or did the "Police" just grab a couple blades or so and are not using EVERYTHING so the stack of "razors" they didn't grab are in danger of being Wiped??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I wouldn't really call megaupload an innocent victim here. At least attempting to prevent illegal usage of your service is all part of the game. At a minimum, cooperating with law enforcement.
Megaupload in my opinion didn't just ignore, but practically encouraged illegal use of their system.
Not saying there wern't lots of legitimate users, but lets not ignore reality here.
This is Slashdot. We're talking about copyright infringement on the internet. You must be new here.
Not quite.
Your description establishes a passive acceptance on the part of the "somebody" who develops that new technology. Megaupload's founders, on the contrary, actively and deliberately encouraged piracy.
Sorry to do this, but...
It's the difference between a car manufacturer developing a very powerful vehicle that becomes the favored tool of drug smugglers, and a car manufacturer that develops such a vehicle and then deliberately arranges meetings with drug warlords to promote that vehicle.
(Please, to anyone who responds, no irrelevant comments about the "war on drugs". That just means you have nothing to say about the topic on hand.)
How is Carpathia Hosting going to determine what is legal and what is not? the copyright owner can claim it is illegal and then it might still be legal, could be a backup from someone who actually bought a copy of say a movie
What if it is a compressed file? what if it is password protected, what if it is encrypted?
Don't see how they could possibly do anything but delete it all or give who ever ask, what ever they ask for
Are you kidding? Didn't you read the Megaupload indictment? The Megaupload founders are alleged to have gone out of their way to encourage as much piracy as possible, including soliciting and uploading pirated content themselves. Now, whether they did or not will have to be decided in court. They are also alleged to have intentionally delayed and, in some cases, ignored DMCA take-down requests. If what the indictment says is true, the Megaupload guys are going to have a really, really tough time in court.
Good luck finding any!
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/people-may-be-forced-to-re%11thieve-stuff-201201314832/
I wouldn't think the question of "did MegaUpload exist ONLY for piracy" is really that important. If pirate websites could protect themselves from takedown by hosting a few files that are legitimate (not copyright infringing), then that's a huge loophole in the system. Suddenly a pirate site could say, "Yeah, 99.9% of our content is copyright infringing, but I had a few people upload a few of their own files and that protects our entire site from takedown, because any takedown makes you guilty of harming those legitimate files."
You can doubt it all you want... but that doesn't make it any less true. It's fairly trivial to show show that a vast majority content on megaupload was copyrighted, and unlikely to have been uploaded to it with any permission from the copyright holder.
If it's so trivial to prove, why don't you share the proof with us? So far all I see are border-line-trolling comments saying it is "obvious" without stating why. Maybe it's because that's all those commenters have ever used it for, but that's anecdotal not statistical evidence.
Plus, as a recent article about Youtube shows, "likely infringing" and "actually infringing" are two very different things. If you go around claiming that anybody uploading stuff who isn't a big name is by default infringing, you end up trampling on a lot of peoples' rights.
Is there a single file on megaupload that I cannot now download on torrents? Yes, all the legitimate ones. Every pirated file they had is still widely available elsewhere. This action has only punished the legitimate users. Go to any Internet community that is based around modding a particular video game. Go try to download some mods. Many, many, many of these places used megaupload. I can still get the pirated game on torrents but all the legitamate mods for the game are offline until somebody re-uploads the original files and updates the links. Again the legitimate consumers are punished severly and the pirates are not hampered in the least. Does this make any sense at all?
Well, MU is quite suited for piracy - sure there were delays and such if you were a free user, but honestly, if you were grabbing a dozen files, you'd copy the links into JDownloader and let it do the waiting for you.
HTTP downloaders were used as a response to the lawsuits over bittorrent - as the users were purely downloading, they couldn't be sued for uploading or sharing - only the hosting provider (i.e., MegaUpload) or the original poster.
P2P is out of the question, and if people were downloading lots from MU, they'd buy a premium account for unlimited access.
It does. But good luck finding both of those legitimate users.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Yes, remarkably similar in the same way that natural heart attacks are remarkably similar to the effects of a massive dose of potassium chloride.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
All three of them.
And this is where it gets stupid and proves the judge was most likely paid off.
But they forum-shopped till they found a bribable, brain-dead judge too stupid to understand the principles involved so they could get rubber stamps to have their little Kristallnacht reenactment instead.
Ten points for the latest proof of Godwin's Law.
Ten bonus points for geek fanservice --- the judge had to have been bribed.
This is not out of the realm of possibility, since a legitimate use for MU was to send files to someone that wouldn't fit into email for collaborative purposes.
Mega has been charged with actively soliciting and paying for the upload of high-value copyrighted files while faking compliance with take-down orders by knowingly leaving other links in place --- as documented in internal e-mails.
Many things are possible in this world. But some things are more likely than others.
Again, no evidence presented. I don't doubt that they knew there were infringing uses in the same way the manufacturers of crowbars, hammers, and kitchen cutlery are aware that their products are sometimes used illegally. Encouraged is another matter as is the idea that they knew of individual instances and did nothing about it.
did megaupload at any time guarantee a minimum availability by a contract because otherwise there is actually nothing to sue about.
It's less a matter of works whose copyright status and owner are not well known that are considered likely to be infringing and more a matter of big-name copyright holders like Adobe, Microsoft, and others, who almost certainly did not give any permission to people be uploading copies of their commercially sold works onto MegaUpload for other people to download. If anyone has proof to the contrary, they should probably step forward.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I wouldn't really call megaupload an innocent victim here. At least attempting to prevent illegal usage of your service is all part of the game. At a minimum, cooperating with law enforcement.
So, if my site, ThingOneBlogs.com, violates Sharia Law in some other country, and I don't cooperate with the people who literally want to cut my hands off -- would you consider me in the wrong? (By the way, the preceding sentence is an image of Mohammed.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Sounds like you could also boil them both down to: "symptoms of a government that oppresses its people." Because "terrorism" is not the root cause. The behavior of my government is the root cause.
I see the "War on Terror" as, really, being a "War on Consequences".
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I accept your qualitative evidence of plausibly complicit infringement in those cases. You have said nothing about how you came to the conclusion that the "vast majority" of Megaupload content was infringing, the claim I was most interested in disputing.
If your server was located in one of said countries and if appropriate agreements were in place between the countries... possibly.
This whole mess started because they had some servers in the US.
So, if my site, ThingOneBlogs.com, violates Sharia Law in some other country, and I don't cooperate with the people who literally want to cut my hands off -- would you consider me in the wrong? (By the way, the preceding sentence is an image of Mohammed.)
Does the country you reside in have extradition agreements in place with the country regarding the laws you're breaking? Have you translated your site in to the local language and rewarding people for doing actionable things on a commercial scale? Do you use financial institutions in this country which you use to pay people in the country where what you're doing is illegal? Do you have a business presence in this country where you are agreeing to follow their laws? Do you have 500+ servers in this country with actionable material? Does your company generate millions of dollars of "business" doing actionable things on a commercial scale in of both of your countries?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
I agree with you on this, but it is not yet illegal to "Profit from Piracy".
That will come as a surprise to quite a number of guests currently registered at Club Fed.
Two Top Adminstratorsof NINJAVIDEO website plead guilty to criminal copyright indringement
NINJAVIDEO founder pleads guilty in Virginia to criminal copyright conspiracy
The big problem here is that piracy probably _was_ a huge part of megaupload.
Not saying their wern't lots of legitimate users, but lets not ignore reality here.
What reality? The fact that you and your friends used Megaupload for piracy, doesn't mean majority of users did so.
I kept backups there. My wife had all our family photos/videos there. It was easy as hell to share with others, and our family members on the other side of the planet were able to easily get all our videos. I also kept backups of FLAC albums I purchased - password protected, obviously, and never shared links with anyone. I kept lots of stuff there.
Of course, we have those files 'locally', but we spent enormous amounts of time uploading all of that on crappy uplinks.
I don't think people understand how valuable Megaupload service was.
This is why the DMCA take down proccess exists. So long as you comply with that you can't be held liable. It doesn't matter if 99.99% of your content is pirated. You can argue the DMCA take down procedure is unenforcable given the nature of the Internet. That is a problem of the system. Jurisdiction is neccessary and they have already stretched nexus farther than any one could possibly conceive. DVD rental discs, sub-contractors operating in states you don't have a presence (Dell subcontracting PC repair), etc.
Couldn't you make that same argument about any crime, though? Jaywalking, littering, etc?
The Us Department of Justice will be tampering with millions of pieces of evidence when they delete the files stored on MegaUpload.com.
This is an admission that everyone involved in the case is innocent, except for the felons in the US Government.
Frankly I've seen no evidence either way - almost everyone is claiming either that it was mostly pirated, or that it wasn't, but no one is putting up any evidence.
I'll wait for the court case.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
One of my past employers used the MegaUpload and similar services, when there were needed to deliver to customer an urgent software update - but Outlook/Exchange was kindly blocking the attachment since it was an executable file. Or the file was too large for the attachment. Updates were incremental, thus it was deemed to be OK to upload them on such services.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I sure hope that all the content was copyrighted, given that I automatically get copyright for what I create.