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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."
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.
MegaUpload's assets have been frozen, so they can't pay their hosting bills. Carpathia Hosting has several terabytes of web-facing storage that are no longer earning revenue. Eventually, they will sell that capacity to someone else, and the data will be overwritten. This has to be one of the most misunderstood, misquoted, and misdirected stories of the year so far.
There's no FDIC for data, and the bank just closed. Caveat Emptor.
A massive civil lawsuit that proved they were not fully DMCA compliant would had been sufficient.
Surely they would had cleaned up their act if they were indeed found acting unlawful. What happend was completely unnecessary.
Surely they would had cleaned up their act if they were indeed found acting unlawful. What happend was completely unnecessary.
While I agree at least partially with the last sentence of your post, the problem was MegaUpload knew they were acting unlawfully, and profited through such behavior, with full knowledge of the illegality of the content they were hosting. They wouldn't have changed. In fact, they didn't, after repeated notifications. Google even ceased doing business with them. Two years ago, which is (probably not coincidentally) around the time this investigation started. When other legitimate businesses stop doing business with you because they think you are breaking the law, that is a good sign you need to clean up.
With that said, the whole mess is blown out of proportion and was taken way too far. I think someone is trying to make an example out of MegaUpload.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Maybe, but there is another distinction here that I don't think is getting enough attention. Unlike Napster, or Limewire, Or Kazzaa, or Torrents, or [insert whatever's next here] where people are just sharing things, as I understand it the people who sourced the copyrighted material could actually make money by posting the stuff. In order for you to actually collect, Megaupload had to know where to send the check. The government now has lots of MegaUpload's records. It seems to me that there could be an argument that everyone who profited this way is subject to the same sort of RICO prosecutions that they typically use for mobsters. Maybe winnable, maybe not, but probably strong enough to get past the threshold that you need to bring charges and begin the legal process. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
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.
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.
And this is where it gets stupid and proves the judge was most likely paid off.
MegaUpload maintained files in a file system to minimize wasted, duplicated data. A file available by one link might be actually pointed to by a dozen links, each "uploaded" by a different person.
Now, here's where it gets dicey:
- If the file was something known illegal pointed out to them, like child pornography, they took it down AND they nuked the file details so it couldn't be reuploaded later. Because there is NO jurisdiction in which child pornography would be legal.
- If on the other hand it was a DMCA request, they took down the link indicated only.
Why? Because we can easily have the following situation:
1) Person #1, not authorized to put up the file, uploads it.
2) Person #2, who IS authorized to put up the file, uploads it.
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.
Now, Person #1's link is taken down by DMCA complaint. But person #2's link is still authorized. The file itself was the same file: one person was authorized, and behaving within the law, one person was not. DMCA is satisfied by making the offending link no longer available.
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.