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The End of the Internet.


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I really hate this country sometimes, and this is one of them. Apparently Googling "how to make a bomb" is ok, but god forbid somebody watch a soccer game or play poker online (the poker part is separate legislation, but goes to show that the government could care less about anything other than money).

 

What's next, are they gonna send people to jail for reading books at libraries because they don't own those books?

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No matter what side you stand on regarding this issue, it does appear that the protests were successful.

 

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/pipa-support-collapses-with-13-new-opponents-in-senate.ars

At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow for Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously co-sponsors of the Protect IP Act. (Update: since we ran this story, the tally is up to 18 Senators, of which seven are former co-sponsors.)
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Just adding this to status from today.

 

Feds say 7 from Megaupload.com ran massive worldwide piracy website

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/#ixzz1jwZe8tx9

 

Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue.

 

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment.

 

The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations -- Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

 

Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

 

The Hong Kong-based company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO. Beatz declined to comment through a representative.

 

The individuals in the criminal enterprise each faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on racketeering charges, five years for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years on money laundering charges and five years on related charges.

 

Megaupload was led by colorful Australian Kim Dotcom -- aka Kim Schmitz, or Kim Tim Jim Vestor. He is a a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand, and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany, who legally changed his last name to "Dotcom."

 

The website's founder and "chief innovation officer" was once convicted of a felony but has repeatedly denied engaging in piracy, according to CNET.com -- and he made more than $42 million from the conspiracy in 2010 alone, according to the indictment.

 

The indictment comes the day after a 24-hour "blackout" of Wikipedia, a protest doodle on the homepage of Google, and numerous other protests across the Internet against proposed anti-piracy legislation that many leading websites -- including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others -- contend will make it challenging if not impossible for them to operate.

 

The Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are bills backed by the motion picture and recording industries intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights.

 

Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

 

But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/print#ixzz1jwZ1hRXk

 

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/

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I've used MU on a couple occasions but never liked the forced slow downloading speeds and the timing out if I didn't respond quick enough. Aside from my several peeves with the usability of MU, it sucks that just after probably the largest internet protest in history, this happens...a little coincidental in my opinion.

 

I should probably read the article thoroughly before I jump to conclusions, since I briefly read an article during a break earlier. But I don't believe MU was intended to be a piracy site, just a 'larger file' sharing site that became clogged with pirated files. Seems like a controversial topic since there's 2 sides to this.

 

I also read that http://www.justice.gov was attacked shortly after. Could this be the first ever 'major' cyber warfare, being the people vs the government? I do have a feeling that if things like this continue to happen, it could get ugly.

Edited by Angry_Gumball
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"anonymous" claimed responsibility for many of the site attacks, including Dept of Justice.

 

After Megaupload Shutdown, Anonymous Hits DOJ, Universal Sites

 

Anonymous was quick to target the Justice Department, Universal Music, the RIAA, and MPAA in the wake of this afternoon's Megaupload announcement, with the Web sites for all four organizations succumbing to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

 

Justice.gov and universalmusic.com went offline around 430pm Eastern and have been largely unresponsive for the past 1.5 hours. RIAA.com and MPAA.org are also unresponsive.

 

"Recording Industry Association of America—Department of Justice—Universal Music—all TT, all TANGO DOWN," Anonymous tweeted this evening with the #OpMegaUpload hashtag.

 

Earlier today, the DOJ announced the shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload. Seven individuals and two corporations were indicted for copyright infringement and could face up to 50 years in prison. Megaupload earned approximately $750 million for its exploits and incurred about $1 billion in damages, the agency alleged.

 

In its statement, the DOJ said the takedown was "among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States."

 

How does Universal Music play into this? Megaupload's CEO is Kasseem Dean, better known as hip hop producer Swizz Beatz and husband of Alicia Keys. As reported by the New York Post, Beatz asked high-profile friends like Sean "Diddy" Combs, Kanye West, and Will.i.am to participate in a video promoting Megaupload, which did not sit too well with the artists' label, Universal Music Group. Last month, Universal had YouTube pull "Mega Song," prompting a lawsuit from Megaupload, according to TorrentFreak.

 

Anonymous has never been a fan of efforts to take down copyright infringers. The group has targeted Sony over its efforts to sue PlayStation hacker George Hotz and gone after the RIAA and the MPAA on numerous occasions.

 

In a statement issued this afternoon, the MPAA championed the Megaupload takedown. "This criminal case, more than two years in development, shows that law enforcement can take strong action to protect American intellectual property stolen through sites housed in the United States," said Chris Dodd, MPAA chairman and CEO.

 

The RIAA, meanwhile, said it was "deeply grateful" for the Megaupload shutdown. "The indictment outlines a sinister scheme to generate massive profits through the distribution of the stolen intellectual property of others," RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman said in a statement.

 

The Megaupload takedown and the DDoS attacks come one day after many Web sites went dark in protest of anti-piracy legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The bills would allow the DOJ to go after overseas, "rogue" Web sites, but opponents argue that the measures are too broad and could harm legitimate Web sites.

 

The RIAA's Sherman, a supporter of SOPA and PIPA, said the Megaupload news demonstrates why the bills are necessary. "If [Megaupload] were hosted and operated, for example, in a foreign country, our government would be essentially powerless to do anything about it. That needs to change," Sherman said.

 

For more, see the Top 5 Objections to SOPA, PIPA and PCMag analysts' take on the bills, as well as the slideshow below, which features screen shots from Web sites that participated in yesterday's blackout.

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399116,00.asp

 

Going to get ugly...

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At least for now, the senate cancelled (or postponed) the vote on PIPA.

 

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled next week’s procedural vote on a Hollywood-backed anti- piracy bill, the latest blow to the legislation after a global online protest by Google Inc. and Wikipedia.

 

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said today in a statement calling off the Jan. 24 vote. “We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

 

More at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/senate-vote-on-hollywood-backed-piracy-bill-canceled-by-reid/2012/01/20/gIQAtOyeDQ_story.html

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Don't worry. These bills will be re-packaged, given an innocuous-sounding name along the lines of "But What About the Children Act" (so as to make vilification of opponents easy and to garner support from people who don't bother to look into their content), and re-introduced- probably alongside a plethora of other bills so as not to draw attention to them.

 

The reason these bills were shelved is because while RIAA and MPAA have the pockets of our politicians, so do Google and some of the others who drew attention to SOPA/PIPA the other day. If these bills are redrawn just enough so as to avoid interfering with Google's (and other's like them) interests, we won't see the same vocal opposition next time around. Does anyone think that all the co-sponsors of these bills backed off because oatmeal.com (never even heard of it before the other day) made a cutesy cartoon to protest? Or a some petitions were circulated? Or eleventy billion people "liked" an anti-SOPA/PIPA group someone created on Facebook?

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FWIW- Megaupload is a site that probably should have been taken down. "Safeharbor" is if you do your best to stop piracy. The reason I started this thread was to educate people on how draconian the government can be. It wasn't to codone piracy in any way.

 

Support Megaupload? Read this. http://www.florianpoullin.fr/sites/florianpoullin.fr/files/investigate.pdf

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I wasn't familiar with Megaupload aside from a few articles on Ars Technica that I read since the shutdown. That's just the thing, though. Megaupload was shut down, and people were arrested outside US borders under laws already in place. So what exactly was it SOPA/PIPA were needed for again?

 

As for file sharing/P2P/torrents/etc.- a buddy of mine had to fork over 5 Grand in 2007 for something he downloaded. I'd rather not test those waters, since they've only gotten considerably choppier in the 5 years since.

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^Thats the thing. Whether you think megaupload has a place in the legitimacy of the internet, or you don't; There are already enough safe guards in place to stop possible rogue sites without another law that might censor the fundamentals of the internet.

 

 

Chris "has used megaupload in a legitimate , non copyright infringing way" Connolly

or

Chris "clearly sites that actually infringe on copyright can be taken down with our current laws" Connolly

or

Chris " the last thing we need are more laws " Connolly

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Random note: This just made me think of the events on TPR last year with watermarked photos, followed by us making excessively watermarked photos (of potentially copyrighted images).

Second page, I noted that. I totally remember that, was a great way to start off the new year on TPR just prior to the Santa Claw's arrival.

Was going to post one of my heavily watermarked images just for kicks but can't seem to find it now.

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^I'm not all like "OMFG MegaUploads was shut down, so unfair." What I'm mad about is that the US did this to a company based in another country claiming the servers in VA gave them jurisdiction. I don't understand that. A raid on the VA servers seems acceptable, but how does that give them Juristiction elsewhere?

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Is that watermark thread still live on here? I want to see it again too. I loled often while reading that thread .

 

 

edit: found it http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57999

 

A lot of lessons can be learned from that thread. I have to give respect to the original poster though. I believe in the end, everything worked out and he is a still a TPR member .

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IM (humble humble humble) O, File sharing is no different than one of your friends letting you borrow a DVD of one of your favorite movies so you can watch it.

 

But profiting by use of file sharing? That's a big no no.

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Is that watermark thread still live on here? I want to see it again too. I loled often while reading that thread .

 

 

edit: found it http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57999

 

A lot of lessons can be learned from that thread. I have to give respect to the original poster though. I believe in the end, everything worked out and he is a still a TPR member .

 

1 year later, reading the watermark thread while waiting in the slowest Walmart lines ever. Still extremely funny, had to curb sudden bursts of laughter as I don't need people looking at me like I'm strange or something

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