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just because.: The real reason MegaUpload was shut down?

abaldwin360:

In December of 2011, it was reported by Digital Music News that the creators of MegaUpload were rolling out plans for a new cloud based music service that had the potential to change the music industry.

Called Megabox, it would have created an alternative to record labels as…

Some food for thought about MegaUpload:

If you read the indictment, it is pretty obvious that (if even some of the claims are true) MegaUpload violated numerous laws. The most damning evidence I saw in the indictment was a problem with takedown requests. I’m not an expert on tech-related stuff, so correct me if I’m wrong on this.

Basically whenever someone uploaded something on to their site (let’s say MegaVideo for convenience), their system did a check of the files already on the servers. If the file was already on there (based on some identifier, I think [1]MD5, the system would supply a unique link for the uploader but wouldn’t create a new copy on the server. When copyright holders then requested takedowns, they had to supply a link. If some copyrighted video had been uploaded by 100 different users, there were 100 different links to the same video, but MegaUpload only took down the link submitted in the takedown request.

Maybe you could argue this was reasonable, perhaps it was technically difficult to take down the video itself? Well it turns out (all of this allegedly) that for child porn links, the server kept a log of MD5 tags (or whatever they’re called) and blocked any new uploads of that same file. It also removed any videos sharing the same tag when the illegal content was discovered. But for some reason MegaUpload did not apply this rather robust approach to copyrighted material.

The reason, as alleged in the indictment, was that the owners/operators of the site didn’t want to take down the copyrighted content that made them money. They cite various emails in the indictment where the owners say that.

source

Their proposed roll out of a new music service trumps their violation of copyright law? These guys have tons of emails proving that they completely aware of the copyrighted material people were uploading and even used it themselves. Yet the government is now acting “tyrannical” because it is doing it’s job? I am firmly against sweeping legislation like SOPA and PIPA but this is not similar to that at all. Fine, you can be angry that they took the entire site down because of this but the owners knew about it all and did nothing to comply.