Feds shut down megaupload

[Mousey]

There goes my backups.... sheesh... Big gorilla ....

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A federal court in Virginia ordered that 18 domain names associated with the group be seized. Further, some 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and eight countries and about $50 million in assets and targeted sites were also seized.

The founders of the company - Kim Dotcom, who is also known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, and Mathias Ortmann - were charged. The company's chief marketing and sales officer, Finn Batato, head of development Sven Echternach and other company officials were also charged.

The charges included copyright infringement as well as conspiracies to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering.

 

[Pulver]

Team America - World Police...

 

[petr1]

This is just small compared to what could happen if SOPA/PIPA passes.

 

[Surasanji]

PIPA, as I understand it, is on the back burner for the moment and has gone back to committee. We can only hope that it dies there like so many bills before it.

SOPA, I'm not as sure as- but I can only hope, right?

Its not the US's place to decide for the rest of the world what should be or shouldn't be allowed on the internet, imho.

 

[Nifty29]

Team America - World Police...

F**K YEAH!!

 

[Mousey]

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...Officials estimated it could be a year or more before Dotcom and the others arrested in New Zealand are formally extradited.

The others arrested were Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, the company's chief marketing officer; Mathias Ortmann, 40, a citizen of Germany and resident of both Germany and Hong Kong, who is the chief technical officer, co-founder and director; and Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, who oversees programming.

Still at large are Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, the site's graphic designer; Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, head of business development; and Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, head of the development software division. ...

I am so freaking tired of this crap... and embarrassed....

 

[slotplayer]

PIPA, as I understand it, is on the back burner for the moment and has gone back to committee. We can only hope that it dies there like so many bills before it.

SOPA, I'm not as sure as- but I can only hope, right?

Its not the US's place to decide for the rest of the world what should be or shouldn't be allowed on the internet, imho.

not me, I'd like to see it rewritten but if you didn't make, create it, think it up or invent it its not yours to distribute freely, especially if someone is making money from it.

As an example, I have an eBay seller in Flordia that stole an image of a product from my retail site and has sold over 200 because of it.
Thing is I bought the top of line digital camera, took all the photos and spent hours learning photoshop not that clown.

 

[Surasanji]

I don't totally disagree

not me, I'd like to see it rewritten but if you didn't make, create it, think it up or invent it its not yours to distribute freely, especially if someone is making money from it.

As an example, I have an eBay seller in Flordia that stole an image of a product from my retail site and has sold over 200 because of it.
Thing is I bought the top of line digital camera, took all the photos and spent hours learning photoshop not that clown.

Those laws already exist in the copyright law. You're talking about someone making money off of work you did. And I agree- that's wrong. Its theft, without a doubt.

But my main issue with PIPA/SOPA is not that its stopping download sites or things like that- but that the bills themselves are about censorship, ultimately. They're not combating piracy in a way that would effect the guy who's downloading bootlegs to sell at the flea market. They're combating piracy by telling the rest of the world- and the citizens- that they can't go where they want online because they can't be trusted not to be criminals.

And while I no longer live in the states, I do have certain 'American' beliefs. (Not that these beliefs are uniquely American ) One of those beliefs is the idea that you and I have a freedom of speech. PIPA and SOPA are the first steps to a China-Esque great firewall for all of the USA. Its a bad thing.

 

[P.V.]

not me, I'd like to see it rewritten but if you didn't make, create it, think it up or invent it its not yours to distribute freely, especially if someone is making money from it.

As an example, I have an eBay seller in Flordia that stole an image of a product from my retail site and has sold over 200 because of it.
Thing is I bought the top of line digital camera, took all the photos and spent hours learning photoshop not that clown.

You have the right to sue within the U.S. courts, without Internet policing by the government.

If someone stole an image from you, you're in the U.S. and this person is in Florida, then sue him.

No need for SOPA, which was also reiterated in the Republican debate last night, basicly thats why we have courts.

 

[vinylweatherman]

This can kill confidence in the concept of "cloud computing". The idea was that people would entrust their data to such "locker" sites, and that even the number crunching would be done by other servers, and that home users would not need more than a terminal that supports web browsing.

It is hard enough already for people to trust their data to an online service, which though more robust that most home users' backup practice, could be subject to the company being brought down through going bust, taking their data with it.

This adds a new dimension to it. ALL online "locker" sites are going to have a mix of data, and some of this will be pirated files, along with the legitimate data such as users' photo albums and purchased music files. Not only has the pirating aspect been dealt with, those users who used megaupload to house legitimately purchased movies and music, and even irreplaceable home videos and photos, have lost access to this data, which may eventually be destroyed at the end of the trial of those 7 charged.

This could happen to ANY site, and would come completely out of the blue, leaving the MOST secure option for home users to ensure they make their own robust backups, much like before the advent of cloud computing.

I was already unsure about this cloud concept, and now I am convinced that it is not as safe as having my own backups, because this action and the potential for SOPA to make things worse means that government interference as well as technical or financial failure are risks to be taken into account.

We have yet to hear reports of users who have lost legitimate data because of this shutdown, and who are unlikely to get it back.

In theory, Youtube could be shut down, because there is quite a bit of pirate material on it alongside legitimate home produced video clips, such as the regular Meister bulletin.

Also worrying is that the founder was NOT in the US, yet was arrested on the direction of the DoJ, even though the New Zealand government had no issue with the website until the DoJ had an issue with it.


If anything good has come out of this, it is the fact that the DoJ have something other than online gambling to go after on the internet, and the big media companies are not going to tolerate holdups because the DoJ is too busy going after those casinos still operating in the US. Maybe their recent U turn over the wire act has something to do with SOPA, in that the DoJ knew it would soon be very busy with enforcing it, and needed a get out excuse for it's intense crusade against the internet gambling sites.

Locker sites should learn from casinos, who have already figured out that it is the use of .com and .net that has made their sites so easy to shut down, and that migrating to domains not controlled by the US makes it much harder to shut sites down, which is the reason we have SOPA - recognition that foreign sites cannot be shut down as easily as .com sites, so need to be blocked.

Even without SOPA, we have heard suspicions that some US ISPs have been experimenting with blocking access to online gambling sites, so adding sites that are claimed to help piracy to this list, and blocking access, mey not need the development of new technologies.

Seizing domains and blocking access didn't do too much damage to Bodog, so I can't see SOPA being all that effective against it's main target. What SOPA will achieve is minor dents in piracy, but with the potential for some MAJOR collateral damage to legitimate parts of the internet.

 

[Seventh777]

Team America - World Police...

Amen to that brother

 

[Mousey]

In CasinoMeister News (thanks Jetset!)
https://www.casinomeister.com/stati...ws1/BWINPARTY-DEFENDS-MEGAUPLOAD-POSITION.php


With the brou haha over MegaUpload and similar that have shut down... there were perfectly legitimate reasons (other than sharing the sacred copyrighted music or movies) for having a MU account. I've had an account there for a few years. I always save some company files there before I go out of town that I might need. And I always upload some graphics files and some scrap kits that I might want to use for making sig tags if I'm stuck out of town for days or even longer. It allowed easy access from my laptop from anywhere. I could download a file, either keep or dump after use on my laptop and the file would still be there at MU when I wanted it again. I do not have a portable hard drive, and uploading large files to MU was easy peasy. I also kept copies of some of my scrap kits there that I'd bought as back up.

So... anyway... once again... the Feds seize a business... and I'm out money because I had just recently renewed my membership/account at MU. I guess I just hang out with the wrong folks online. My file at the FBI should be quite plump by now.

 

[jetset]

And as we have seen, at some stage the Department of Justice could just do an about turn and say, 'uh, we may have got that one wrong.'

Too late for the companies and livlihoods they may have damaged in the meantime.

As to SOPA, I have to ask if it is really necessary when there are existing remedies, and whether government heavies stomping about and bending other nations to their will is desirable. The politicians are at it again - forcing more restrictions on the internet. It seems that they cannot abide even a relatively free medium of communication, commerce and entertainment.

 

[vinylweatherman]

In CasinoMeister News (thanks Jetset!)
https://www.casinomeister.com/stati...ws1/BWINPARTY-DEFENDS-MEGAUPLOAD-POSITION.php


With the brou haha over MegaUpload and similar that have shut down... there were perfectly legitimate reasons (other than sharing the sacred copyrighted music or movies) for having a MU account. I've had an account there for a few years. I always save some company files there before I go out of town that I might need. And I always upload some graphics files and some scrap kits that I might want to use for making sig tags if I'm stuck out of town for days or even longer. It allowed easy access from my laptop from anywhere. I could download a file, either keep or dump after use on my laptop and the file would still be there at MU when I wanted it again. I do not have a portable hard drive, and uploading large files to MU was easy peasy. I also kept copies of some of my scrap kits there that I'd bought as back up.

So... anyway... once again... the Feds seize a business... and I'm out money because I had just recently renewed my membership/account at MU. I guess I just hang out with the wrong folks online. My file at the FBI should be quite plump by now.

This is what "cloud computing" was supposed to be about. It promised no more need for storage on PCs, with such beasts being replaced with lighter kit designed to let the "cloud" do all the work. It was also promised that our data was much safer in this form, as the companies operating the storage facilities would take care of backup procedures so that subscribers didn't have to worry any longer about local kit failures destroying their data.

This action proves that far from being the safe option, cloud computing is far more risky in terms of data integrity because anything can bring down the company safeguarding data, and now a new threat has emerged, the arbitrary no-notice seizure by the authorities of ALL data because SOME users have used the cloud facilities offered for illegal purposes. Given the nature of the concept, I expect EVERY such cloud storage facility houses at least some data that infringes copyright laws, and could be seized at any time.

It seems the only safe way to use the cloud concept is for a "working copy" of your data, but ALWAYS keep your own critical backups just in case.

This is a blow to the confidence of the concept, and will probably put a stop to it quickly being adopted, since loss of critical data can bankrupt a business, and destroy personal memories forever. It could even backfire on the government if it's employees or contractors were using the cloud concept in their work, and have had arbitrary chunks of critical data placed out of reach overnight, with the best hope being a long winded legal process to retrieve it. Most users have no way of knowing the level of illegality that goes on in secret, as often the supplier of the service takes a "no questions asked" attitude to the content actually being stored on their servers; they just want to pocket the subscription fees.

In terms of chasing down individual users, they will have the records and will have to look through individual accounts to see whether they have been used illegaly. At worst, it will be an invasion of privacy as the files people put there were never expected to be examined by the FBI.

If SOPA had made it, data could have been lost even if stored on foreign cloud services, as access to the site would have been blocked following a complaint by a big media company. Although not destroyed, the data would be beyond the reach of it's owner unless they logged on outside the US.