First MegaUpload - Who's Next?

[Rob Williams]

As we posted yesterday, popular file-sharing website MegaUpload was taken down by US authorities for a number of different reasons. A big one was that the company behind the site was accused of taking in $175 million in "criminal proceeds", while at the same time causing loses of $500 million to the affected companies. One thing I didn't catch in the story is that there are numerous other charges laid on the site's founder and his staff - all of which by itself could put them behind bars for a long time.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[Doomsday]

Totalitarianism has begun!! Its just like those 80s Hollywood movies of the future, it all looks so real now!

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Careful of the Thought Police!

 

[Kougar]

Given some of the evidence behind the Fed's case, I can totally understand the take down. This case is nothing like Youtube and all those music videos... there was some genuine piracy and profiteering going on with that site.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Kim Dotcom. That's quite a name.

 

[Rob Williams]

Kim Dotcom. That's quite a name.

His real last name is Schmitz... he changed it to Dotcom after facing a lot of legal battles within the last decade.

 

[Kougar]

Kim Dotcombusted

 

[Rob Williams]

Kim Dotcombusted

Hah!

Something interesting I found out about the guy the other day is that he's also the #1 ranked player in Modern Warfare 3 for the X360:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ltcCF_cAQ

 

[Kougar]

Interesting... makes a sort of sense though, oddly enough. Given just how much money those guys were making off the site they probably had a ton of free time to kill.

As a side note, it is interesting that Filesonic and FileServe both have pulled link sharing from their sites. They only allow the original uploader to download, now.

 

[eunoia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WAsQ1hsNk

 

[Rob Williams]

As a side note, it is interesting that Filesonic and FileServe both have pulled link sharing from their sites. They only allow the original uploader to download, now.

I don't blame them. Get out while the going's good. I'd do the same. No doubt a lot of the owners of these sites are millionaires, and looking at 20+ years in prison isn't intriguing for anyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WAsQ1hsNk

Haha, I am almost afraid to ask how that correlates with this topic!

 

[Doomsday]

http://www.techpowerup.com/159397/W...-Down-MegaUpload-To-Kill-The-Competition.html

^ Interesting!

 

[Rob Williams]

http://www.techpowerup.com/159397/W...-Down-MegaUpload-To-Kill-The-Competition.html

^ Interesting!

What am I missing? Wouldn't a music store seen by over a hundred million people be beneficial to these companies? Or was this a music store to just sell indie music or something? Or, was it going to sell music and not give any cut to the RIAA?