FBI charges Megaupload operators with piracy crimes

The FBI has busted the alleged operators of Internet locker service Megaupload, which had become one of the most popular video destinations on the Web, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.

Seven people have been named in an indictment and four suspects have been taken into custody, according to a statement issued by the Justice Department. They have been charged in Virginia with crimes related to online piracy, including racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, and conspiring to commit money laundering.

According to the Justice Department, the indictment alleges that Megaupload is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, a German with a colorful history who was once convicted of a felony but he has repeatedly denied engaging in piracy.

DotCom and three others were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand by New Zealand police, who "who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States," the Justice Department.

Along with Dotcom, Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand was also arrested. Authorities say that Dotcom founded Megaupload and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites.

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement. The arrests "directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime."

In August, CNET profiled DotCom after he was sued by a porn studio for copyright violations and after film industry sources told me that Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had complained to law enforcement officials numerous times that Megaupload was getting rich by helping millions of people store and distribute pirated films and TV shows.

Link

And suddenly piracy news are on a fling.

Oh well..

Megaporn is dead too.Not that I ever visited it or anything...

Arsenal_Gunners said:
Megaporn is dead too.Not that I ever visited it or anything...

Sure, you did.

They are goners. :-(

New Zealand police arrested Megaupload founder.
Megaupload Shut Down
The real question is are these sites not ready for something like this. They should have some reasonable excuse to put in court to keep their business running.

Stay on topic, people. No "Support" piracy crap.

SOPA thread is this - *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/technology-news/150426-sopa-death-internet-we-know-3.html

The main point of piracy is cost. If the softwares, audio, videos are available cheap, no body will indulge in piracy. And truly speaking it feels nice when you buy something original.

In Assam, in order to stop piracy, video and music discs are priced between Rs 25 to Rs 50. So you will get very little Assamese videos online or pirated discs in the market because people buy original discs.

And mostly illigal downloads are made by people who cannot pay for it. So the companies are not loosing much money. Such people will not by because they can't afford to buy.

As Gabe Newell said to stop piracy a better service has to be provided to the customers than what pirates can offer. Have to say Steam does well there.

Regarding Megaupload, there's no escape if the allegation about the e-mails are true. Though I cannot rule out the mafIAA digging up e-mails from just random employees and using it in the worst possible manner.

Megaupload Shutdown

*www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html?_r=1

OpMegaupload
#OpMegaupload - Pastebin.com
Elephants dont disturb hornet nests.

no price is not really the problem, in fact, if the movie is selling for 2000 rupees, more people may buy it than if it is selling for 700 rs, and ofc, there will be those selling movies for 50 rs and 0 rs as well
the prolem is its a fight between screens - TV and PC, if the ISP could charge your bank balance for the month for all your content needs, then the theatres, and DTH and cable companies have no eyeballs to sell the advertisers

this transition is late, could have happened at least 10 years ago, or even 20-50 years ago they could have maintained one line for phone and television instead of two

digital delivery offers some exciting options, and its inevitable that things will head that way, meanwhile those affected immediately by the transition will fight for things to say the same

yeah Steam does well here, so does the iStore, but they deal with software, for music and movies computers are very disruptive to the industry

I agree to you but price is surely a problem. Who can buy a Rs 2000 movie ? Those who can pay for it. Right? What about others ? I am not supporting piracy but suggesting a way to tackle it.
There are guys who connect their mobile phones to their PCs the whole night so that they can download stuff using GPRS. Why they do so? GPRS cost Rs 98 for 2GB. Isn't that piracy ? Do you expect them to buy a RS 2000 worth movie ?

Anorion said:
yeah Steam does well here, so does the iStore, but they deal with software, for music and movies computers are very disruptive to the industry

That is not true really to be fair. Whatever damage is caused is simply because the big labels are like dinosaurs who are simply not accepting new technology and innovating to keep up with the technology and only smash DRM on the faces of the customer and even further damaging their quality of service. Whatever innovations have been there in that industry with respect to internet has profited them immensely - iTunes, Spotify, Netflix, etc.

bubusam13 said:
I agree to you but price is surely a problem. Who can buy a Rs 2000 movie ? Those who can pay for it. Right? What about others ? I am not supporting piracy but suggesting a way to tackle it.
There are guys who connect their mobile phones to their PCs the whole night so that they can download stuff using GPRS. Why they do so? GPRS cost Rs 98 for 2GB. Isn't that piracy ? Do you expect them to buy a RS 2000 worth movie ?

As Gabe Newell said, bring a good service. Unlimited fast and cheap internet, music and music streaming from cloud at say Rs.5-10 per track (Indian) and Rs.50-100 per movie will get plenty of customers in India. Yes there would be plenty of pirates but at least legitimate users will get proper service as they deserve. Not a worse service which they often get with idiotic DRM.

N

Whats next? Amazon S3? Dropbox ?

Check this Anonymous Goes on Megaupload Revenge Spree: DoJ, RIAA, MPAA, and Universal Music All Offline

bubusam13 said:
The main point of piracy is cost

Humble Indie Bundle & Android apps. both these cost a few dollars. but still almost half of the download comes illegally.

cost is not the point, its the ease of the distribution channel. if payment and delivery are easier than piracy, then it wont get pirated. price will tend to reach the lowest possible levels.

A few dollars make a sense in India since 1$ = about Rs 50

In those days of black and white phones, didn't people downloaded picture messages for Rs 5 and Ringtones for Rs 15.

Just as I said above about GPRS cost. Pay for the app and also internet on phone and plus broadband on PC. And again most people does not have internet on their phone and android market needs internet on your phone. So they download from other websites where its mostly cracked version.

And secondly most people using android handsets doesn't know what the android market app in their phone is for even they have internet in their phones.

I think the discussion is leading in a different direction till it become a debate between us.

As posted by Liverpool_fan

As Gabe Newell said, bring a good service. Unlimited fast and cheap internet, music and music streaming from cloud at say Rs.5-10 per track (Indian) and Rs.50-100 per movie will get plenty of customers in India.

And yes I agree, proper distribution also matters. Why would people use songs , pk if the CD is available at a store near you at a low price. CD sounds great than MP3s

And as said by bubusam13 :mrgreen:

You cannot stop a thief from stealing but you can definitely reduce the number for people becoming thieves.
-bubusam13

Humble bundle could have been bought for even $0.01(₹0.50) (if someone wanted to be that cheapo) so that should tell you how "much" cost has relation to piracy. Android apps are normally less than ₹200 as well.

$500 Million of lost revenue?

According to what scale? The scale that consumers have been rejecting for the last 10 years?

[Interesting discussion over at reddit]

R

What about the torrent sites?

N

rajeevk said:
What about the torrent sites?

they dont host actual content on their website.

rajeevk said:
What about the torrent sites?

You want the torrent sites to be dead or what ?

N

*i.imgur.com/GB51e.png

Liverpool_fan said:
Humble bundle could have been bought for even $0.01(₹0.50) (if someone wanted to be that cheapo) so that should tell you how "much" cost has relation to piracy. Android apps are normally less than ₹200 as well.

I would definitely pay for it.

rajeevk said:
What about the torrent sites?

You may want to check the "legal subaddress of a famous torrent site".

Well, meh

You cannot stop piracy but can reduce it. Piracy was there even in the days of VCR s and cassettes. Low cost will reduce it to some extent.

N

ha ha ha..I <3 reddit

iconrunner comments on Feds shut down Megaupload

Arsenal_Gunners said:
Megaporn is dead too.Not that I ever visited it or anything...

And I used to wonder why "most" whine about internet speed/plans.
Lol

R

bubusam13 said:
You want the torrent sites to be dead or what ?

If we are talking about piracy then torrent sites are greatly involved in piracy. As we all know we can get everything for free there.

rajeevk said:
If we are talking about piracy then torrent sites are greatly involved in piracy. As we all know we can get everything for free there.

Torrent is decentralized.

Update : And more and more sites are falling by Anonymous' hands.

rajeevk said:
What about the torrent sites?

Well, 'google' and you will get countless answer for this old question.

Prime_Coder said:
Update : And more and more sites are falling by Anonymous' hands.

What's the point? They will be backed up inside 2-3 hours. :-?

V

What trouble me is none of those indicted or arrested were U.S. citizens or had likely even ever set foot on U.S. soil. Even if you're in another country, you had better make sure you're not violating U.S. law. Here's a full list of those foreigners who foolishly thought they weren't under U.S. jurisdiction (from the DOJ website [justice.gov]):

Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand. Dotcom founded Megaupload Limited and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites.

Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the chief marketing officer;

Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, who is the graphic designer;

Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, who is the head of business development;

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;

Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, who is a software programmer and head of the development software division;

Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, who oversees programming and the underlying network structure for the Mega conspiracy websites.

all of them are arrested in newzeland warrant issued by US authorities..

By the same degrees, even without setting the foot in US soil indians can to be arrested if USA wanted the Indian torrents sharers..With or without SOPA already make it presence worldover...

It depends on the country's extradition treaty with the US.

bubusam13 said:
The FBI has busted the alleged operators of Internet locker service Megaupload, which had become one of the most popular video destinations on the Web, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.

krishnandu.sarkar said:
Check this Anonymous Goes on Megaupload Revenge Spree: DoJ, RIAA, MPAA, and Universal Music All Offline

And the war has begun. The DOS attacks by Anons may give fuzzy feeling to the people who oppose SOPA (including me, yeah right), but I wonder these temporary attacks may not bear any fruitful result for the bill to decline. More so, this may lead to pass it faster because of the fear which these attacks may induce into those rusted minds.

rajeevk said:
What about the torrent sites?

Haven't you heard of pirate bay turning to magnet links only site? Please go find the thread, which is this same section of the forum.

Prime_Coder said:
more and more sites are falling by Anonymous' hands.

vaithy said:
By the same degrees, even without setting the foot in US soil indians can to be arrested if USA wanted the Indian torrents sharers..With or without SOPA already make it presence worldover...

That's the real danger for us. Even without SOPA, they are taking such actions, what will happen, if SOPA gets passed?

Prime_Coder said:
That's the real danger for us. Even without SOPA, they are taking such actions, what will happen, if SOPA gets passed?

With SOPA they don't need the feds.

How Anonymous took down the DoJ, RIAA, MPAA and Universal Music Websites | ZDNet

Sums up the dangers of fiddling with DNS. I mean imagine users losing their passwords in similar targeted phishing?

*i.minus.com/jbdrUj8AxVwW9Y.jpg
power to the ppl! its not much 5-6 people r enough to start a raid, even if 50-60 join in the first few hours and 100-500 over the next 2-3 its enough to take anything down all the sites were managed in under 5000 people max

Liverpool_fan said:
Stay on topic, people. No "Support" piracy crap.

Atleast its not hypocritic crap like ^.

Anyways Anonymous took down a bunch of IMP websites.... coz they took down MU...

W

Even if you're in another country, you had better make sure you're not violating U.S. law.

just to clear this where many are believing US has wrongfully detained persons in other countries.USA has every right to go after people who committed crime in USA just like any other country even if they are not present in that country.in megaupload's case they have servers in virginia,usa which hosted pirated material & that's why USA got the right to go after these people.if the servers in question were located outside of USA then the best US govt could do was block the site in USA only.

$$Lionking$$ said:
Atleast its not hypocritic crap like ^.

Hypocritic what? What you posted clearly violated the forum rules and off-topic to this thread. Read the rules and FAQ.

NOTICE
Megaupload is NOT back up. The 109.x.x.x IP is being used to DDoS attack on the major US government sites. Do NOT post that IP. Anyone posting that IP again = Instaban.

Oh, the link I posted was fake. :-(

R.I.P. megaupload.

Liverpool_fan said:
Megaupload is NOT back up. The 109.x.x.x IP is being used to DDoS attack on the major US government sites. Do NOT post that IP. Anyone one posting that IP again = Instaban.

No, that IP is a residential IP from Netherlands, by which I understood that's fake. :evil:

d6bmg said:
No, that IP is a residential IP from Netherlands, by which I understood that's fake.

That IP has been posted in the Anonymous twitter account.

Read this as well if you've missed.
How Anonymous took down the DoJ, RIAA, MPAA and Universal Music Websites | ZDNet

Liverpool_fan said:
Read this as well if you've missed.
How Anonymous took down the DoJ, RIAA, MPAA and Universal Music Websites | ZDNet

Oh sorry. I missed.

US Gov Thinks they can just put any web service to its end just by their whims
:ban:

^^ They not only "think". They DO.

getting crazy, thing seems to have caught steam over the past couple of days, ppl are knocking anything and everything down, going after individual artist pages atm... and splinter factions are claiming responsibility for individual attacks so now LOIC is firing round the clock

Why megaupload was actually shutdown [*plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq#111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq]

^^ MegaBox hmm. It was obvious, that there was something more to the story.

W

please people no more conspiracy theories.it is my favorite past time to read comments regarding such conspiracy theories & laugh at comments especially by US citizens(remind me of stereotypical dumb guy in hollywood movies).megaupload founder is a known offender convicted & accused of many crimes including financial in nature in germany(most probably why FBI included money laundering in its charges)& it just defies common sense to even suggest that megabox was such a revolutionary innovative concept that it shook the foundations of music industry in USA.there are many websites offering similar services like megabox for a long time now.

whitestar_999 said:
please people no more conspiracy theories.it is my favorite past time to read comments regarding such conspiracy theories & laugh at comments especially by US citizens(remind me of stereotypical dumb guy in hollywood movies).megaupload founder is a known offender convicted & accused of many crimes including financial in nature in germany(most probably why FBI included money laundering in its charges)& it just defies common sense to even suggest that megabox was such a revolutionary innovative concept that it shook the foundations of music industry in USA.there are many websites offering similar services like megabox for a long time now.

UMG blocked megaupload's video on the ground of copyright infringement when there was absolutely none. Turns out, they were abusing their power. So yeah, they probably don't have good relationships with this company to appreciate such a product. Neither do I think they want any kind of competetion that'll effect their income.

The hollywood and music industry of the US is widely known for their extreme asshattery. So yeah, they can do this for the sake of it. Your stereotypical dumb guys are these industries (please remove this reference though, sounds racist).

Also, someone should compare Kim dotcom's wiki page with Hitler's. Kim's is worse.

Protesters go after the wrong SOPA

^lol, yeah not the only ones NDTV was reporting the privacy story but totally covered it with the piracy angle

sygeek said:
Why megaupload was actually shutdown [*plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq#111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq]

Something this world really needed.

W

i totally support the shutdown of megaupload even if i find the procedure followed a little disturbing.back in 2006 when most people use 128/256kbps connections one of my cousin who had access to a 10mbps corporate connection used to download from rapidshare & MU.he told me that initially when RS was the king MU started this lucrative payout program for the no. of times someone's uploaded files are downloaded.he started seeing more & more of MU links & also read about people actually receiving enough money to buy $500 computers(no joke!).you can imagine how much the owners were earning when the middleman was getting this much.MU is the one which started this trend of so called"professional uploaders"who upload only for money.obviously it does not take a genius to figure out that these professional uploaders mostly uploaded files which were most in demand or in other words pirated material.in later years many other filehosters came up with even better payouts & affiliation programs which were nothing but making money out off pirated material.i do not support RIAA/MPAA but i also do not support making money out of piracy.both are wrong & just because 1st is wrong does not make the 2nd right.

Well, this isn't related to Piracy etcetera, but nevertheless....

Grooveshark Shuts Down In Germany – Could See Similar Fate In Other Regions

Grooveshark, who recently launched a beautiful new web app for their service, has been shut down in Germany. It’s a sad day for German music lovers, because in Germany there are not many other options for listening to music. Spotify is not available and neither is Rhapsody. Even Google Music, which only uses the music you already have, is not available.

One option that is available is Simfy. Simfy offers subscription models like Spotify, where you can get access to music for free, with ads, or pay a monthly fee for a premium service. Grooveshark also offers a method for German users to export their playlists to text files.

The difference between Simfy and Grooveshark is that Simfy was able to work with GEMA, the body that controls most music licensing in Germany. Grooveshark was unwilling to pay their “unreasonably high” licensing costs and has decided to pull out of the country. A Grooveshark representive said they offered GEMA “€150,000 to officially enter the country and a sustainable rate moving forward.”

Be wary, because Grooveshark is facing lawsuits in regions all over the world, and your country could be next. I recommend looking at SciLor’s Grooveshark Downloader or Groovedown to download your playlists, for when they shut down in your country as well. Once they are gone, users can look at Spotify, Rhapsody, Google Music, iTunes Match, the aforementioned Simfy or one of the many other legal music distribution platforms on the web. Or maybe you could recommend another?

^^Wow!! This sucks....

SOPA, PIPA, China's the Great Firewall, Indian Ban on file sharing and N Korea's Internet isolation, GOD! All this happens to us(the end user) and no one ask us before doing anything like this. Not even the Biggest Democracy in the whole world(that is India if you don't know

).

No one seems to care what we want. Just one request guys, please use TOR and run TOR relays to counter such bans for us and for any one in other countries.
And pray to the god of internet, may be something will happen.

Now the worse things: after the take down of megaupload several other file-hosting sites are as good as dead. :-/

hmmm
dont think the music thing was a big threat
whenever a TV serial, song, game or ebook bundle is uploaded on a file sharing site, there are many people who share these links on say twitter or even facebook. Now there is someone paid to protect all this intellectual property, and they send cease and desist notices and report each and every one of these users, or at least, many of these users, for a site like twitter, they have to necessarily ban the account, and remove the tweets that link to the infringing content
in short megaupload was actively encouraging piracy with its very existence, so they made many, many others commit the offense
think this played at least a partial role in the kind of action taken against them

To hell with FBI, VPN+Torrents will reap the heart out of MAFIA/RIAA, I've seen VPN services for 7$ a month(BTGuard), 350/- is cheap for such high speed services.

PS: I do not support piracy, but they crossed the line this time, I use filesharing sites to send bulk images, videos to friends, now its shut down. I didn't use megaupload, but hosts like filesonic, fileserve were good.

Will the data be deleted by thursday = > mega-crash!!

Most of the megaupload users would be apprehensive about this...

buddyram said:
Will the data be deleted by thursday = > mega-crash!!

I don't have any personal data on megaupload servers, but it would be a tragic end to a lot of legitimate megaupload users!

And I vote totally against the act of deleting it!

O

My life time account on mu is useless now. Purchased it for about 9k 7-8yrs back when mu was launched. This is bs.

Sorry for waking up this thread again. But I think I got another answer (relate to page 1).
I want to purchase Humble Bundle. I put 9$ in it. But proceeding towards payment I see I need PayPal account for payment. I even tried to open a PayPal account but its not acepting my VISA debit card. So what would I do now if I want the bundles? Move to pirate sites ?