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Megaupload is gone!


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Canada's system is interesting' date=' but flawed as well. They basically put a tax on most forms of rewritable media (HDDs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, etc) that is then passed back to the movie and recording industry publishers. I don't think much if any of that makes its way back to the artists, and I'm not sure how (or if) other content creators are reimbursed from the tax.

 

The system basically assumes everyone is a criminal and taxes them in advance rather than enforcing copyright laws. It's an imperfect system, but it might be the best we can do worldwide. Of course it means less than nothing if the Chinese don't participate. ;)

[/quote']

True, but it's not a tax. It's a levy, there is a fundamental difference between the two. Meaning it's not touched by the government at all. Artists themselves can draw from the fund if they've published, they simply have to put in a claim for it. It's much like getting a grant under the cancon creation fund.

 

In Canada, copying protected works isn't criminal either. It most it's a summery offence(no more than 6mo in jail), and for that you have to be doing a lot of pirating(i.e. mass manufacturing), the majority of the copying laws fall back to civil areas. Even though it's in the criminal code. To be perfectly honest, if they want to bill everyone as an infringer that's fine. Because it simply means they've legalized the ability of everyone to download whatever they want, and this also fall in line with other tenets of canadian law like fair dealing.

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Don't know' date=' why so many starts to panic now because they don't know where to put the stuff up and more if they should do it or maybe they got arrested ... there are more then enough other uploadsites, like mediafire, rapidshare, filesonic, etc. to put the stuff up and no one gets arrested for uploading mods somewhere.

 

Even if MU is gone - we don't die because of it.

[/quote']

 

its not really a panic of it being shut down the thing is MU is more than likely the first of many that will get shut down.

 

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Don't know' date=' why so many starts to panic now because they don't know where to put the stuff up and more if they should do it or maybe they got arrested ... there are more then enough other uploadsites, like mediafire, rapidshare, filesonic, etc. to put the stuff up and no one gets arrested for uploading mods somewhere.

 

Even if MU is gone - we don't die because of it.

[/quote']

 

Because a lot of the stuff on there was not pirated and the FBI had no business taking it down. People lost access to private photo collections, shared study-stuff, all sorts of things. Now this was an action they prepared for a long time. But apparently with these new laws, they'd be able to do this on a whim. They can completely cripple someone's work by taking down perfectly legitimate stuff along with the rest. Wouldn't surprise me if lawsuits follow from people claiming damages. And yeah, you can easily find another site to put your stuff on, but who's to say they won't raid that one next week? Maybe you won't get arrested over it, but where can you still safely store your files?

 

It's like they walk into a bank and say, hey, some criminal has their cash stashed here, so we're taking everyone's savings. Complete stupidity, and they're probably causing more damage than they'll ever recover.

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agreed evenstar but kim dot com says it the best in an older article with torrentfreak

 

You need to understand that some labels are run by arrogant and outdated dinosaurs who have been in business for 1000 years. These guys think an iPad is a facial treatment, the Internet is the devil, and wired phones are still hip. They are in denial about the new realities and opportunities. They don’t understand that the rip-off days are over. Artists are more educated than ever about how they are getting ripped off and how the big labels only look after themselves.

[/Quote]

 

 

I totally agree with him umg and other labels are affraid and that's the main reason they're attacking MU atm i don't buy the bullshit the us government posted with reasons half of the claim in the book is a bloody joke...

 

the sad fact tho is if this get's through and MU is gone nothing stops them from taking on other cloudsharing services or take down stuff like itunes in later stages

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The prosecution of Megaupload meanwhile sparked a retaliatory cyber attack on the FBI and Justice Department websites.

 

The two government sites were up and running again early Friday after being shut down for several hours in the attack claimed by the "Anonymous" hacktivist group, which also briefly disabled music and recording industry websites.

 

I found this funny....'Hackivist'.....it was a DOS attack.....ping of death.....people really lead to learn terms before trying to prove their points.

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Taking it down is complete bullshit. Supreme Court case of Sony vs. Universal. The creator of a technology is NOT liable if some of the users use it for copyright infringement, so long as it possesses significant legal use. Another Supreme Court case, MGM vs. Grokster. A P2P service can be taken down for copyright infringement, but ONLY if it actively promotes copyright infringement as its primary use. Megaupload recently released a video with movie stars endorsing the site for it's many, perfectly legal, uses.

 

Even if many on Megaupload used it for pirated stuff, it can't be shut down. Because many also use it for perfectly legal reasons.

 

They should not have been able to take this site down due to infringement. My bet is it's the racketeering charges that got it. Of course, it remains to be seen if that has any merit to it. A more cynical person would think they just slapped that on in order to get the site taken down, since they couldn't do that for infringement.

 

 

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First, try to understand: its not about money, its about power.

 

Power to control most essential human rights or needs as you like.

In this case rights of knowledge.Right to know truth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-loses-us-extradition

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/05/us-pressured-spain-online-piracy

In some other case; right to food.

http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-s510-makes-it-illegal-to-grow-share-trade-or-sell-homegrown-food/

 

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.”

― Frank Herbert

 

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its not really a panic of it being shut down the thing is MU is more than likely the first of many that will get shut down.

 

That's the problem' date=' why many starts to panic - no one knows, if this is a start of a chain or not. I don't think, that if this'll be a chain reaction that they shut down smaller, non popular uploadsites too.

 

 

Because a lot of the stuff on there was not pirated and the FBI had no business taking it down. People lost access to private photo collections, shared study-stuff, all sorts of things. Now this was an action they prepared for a long time. But apparently with these new laws, they'd be able to do this on a whim. They can completely cripple someone's work by taking down perfectly legitimate stuff along with the rest. Wouldn't surprise me if lawsuits follow from people claiming damages. And yeah, you can easily find another site to put your stuff on, but who's to say they won't raid that one next week? Maybe you won't get arrested over it, but where can you still safely store your files?

 

It's like they walk into a bank and say, hey, some criminal has their cash stashed here, so we're taking everyone's savings. Complete stupidity, and they're probably causing more damage than they'll ever recover.

 

That's the risk, everyone had with MU. It was one of the popular uploading sites for porn, music, games, films etc. and the result in the future should be clear for everyone and it happened now. Problem is that the FBI don't really care about the legal stuff, which is on MU but we'll see, what happens in the next time.

 

The same panicing here in germany would start, if rapidshare would've taken down because it's the most popular uploadsite here and that's why I prefered MU all the time because I thought, that this'll happen to rapidshare some day and it's better to use something else and MU catched my eye :-/

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It isn't just America in the case of Mega uploads either. This was planned for months...the timing was terrible, but it didn't have anything to do with SOPA/PIPA and the black out protests. On the other hand, the timing likely couldn't be better for the anti-SOPA camps.

 

Shutting down Mega Upload was a case of multinational cooperation.

 

However, the thing that concerns me, is past precedent. The DOJ, and likely soon, the RIAA now has access to all of the user accounts as well, and what they uploaded. The RIAA in the past has gone after users as well as site operators. KAZAA is a good example of this. Both of them tried to evade the law on the ground of the SONY case, it didn't work for them.

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Canada's system is interesting' date=' but flawed as well. They basically put a tax on most forms of rewritable media (HDDs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, etc) that is then passed back to the movie and recording industry publishers. I don't think much if any of that makes its way back to the artists, and I'm not sure how (or if) other content creators are reimbursed from the tax.

 

The system basically assumes everyone is a criminal and taxes them in advance rather than enforcing copyright laws. It's an imperfect system, but it might be the best we can do worldwide. Of course it means less than nothing if the Chinese don't participate. ;)

[/quote']

True, but it's not a tax. It's a levy, there is a fundamental difference between the two. Meaning it's not touched by the government at all. Artists themselves can draw from the fund if they've published, they simply have to put in a claim for it. It's much like getting a grant under the cancon creation fund.

 

In Canada, copying protected works isn't criminal either. It most it's a summery offence(no more than 6mo in jail), and for that you have to be doing a lot of pirating(i.e. mass manufacturing), the majority of the copying laws fall back to civil areas. Even though it's in the criminal code. To be perfectly honest, if they want to bill everyone as an infringer that's fine. Because it simply means they've legalized the ability of everyone to download whatever they want, and this also fall in line with other tenets of canadian law like fair dealing.

 

Difference noted. That said, it can work, but it's not an ideal system by any means.

 

What needs to happen is the publishers that are most egregious in their bullying (MPAA/RIAA) need to get their heads out of their asses and make it easier for legitimate uses of their stuff. That gets us half way there.

 

The other half is simpler to explain: Thieves need to stop stealing shit.

 

I shudder to think what that levy would rise to if piracy was technically decriminalized, not just ill-enforced.

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I'd also like to point out to the youngsters, that long before sites like megaupload (or the web itself), we were passing binaries around on the internet.

 

UUEncode and Usenet alt.binaries.*. Learn 'em. Just in case.

 

All is not lost if some binary distribution site goes down, or even all of them. Be prepared! ;)

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Switch America to 'Western Civilization' and I'll agree with you.

Sorry to disagree, I'd rather have my civilisation without daily car bombings and teaching 14yo kids to shoot pregnant women on the basis of religion.

Now South Eastern Civilisation is cool :)

 

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@ Nonusnomeni

 

I am inclined to agree with you. Nothing changes power structures like uncontrolled communication. The political dominance of the mediaeval church was undermined because they failed to control the printing press, and in waltzed the "modern" world.

 

Job done, the new gang bosses were canny enough to castrate the "free presses" with increasingly stringent censorship and tighter licensing legislation.

 

They weren't going to make the same mistake with Film/radio/TV. As soon as these technologies began to reach a large audience they were vigorously regulated. "Pirate" channels have been ruthlessly eliminated - often claiming that unrestricted broadcast would interfere with emergency services (!) or be a conduit for "corrupting filth" (rock music and pornography).

 

The Internet has shaken the would-be governors of thee and me more than anything since the 15th century and they don't like it up 'em.

The twin attacks of "moral" crusade and commercial property legislation are the way in which they will attempt to mollify the general public into accepting the tight control of online content and distribution.

 

Docile ISPs will make it easy for them.

 

PS. In days of yore when the printed word was king, the US took great delight in sticking its finger up at anyone who complained about copyright infringement. Strange that they should now be leading the IPR crusade.

 

So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

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First' date=' try to understand: its not about money, its about power.

 

Power to control most essential human rights or needs as you like.

In this case rights of knowledge.Right to know truth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-loses-us-extradition

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/05/us-pressured-spain-online-piracy

In some other case; right to food.

http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-s510-makes-it-illegal-to-grow-share-trade-or-sell-homegrown-food/

 

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.”

― Frank Herbert

 

[/quote']

 

You are absolutely right!

 

 

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Difference noted. That said' date=' it can work, but it's not an ideal system by any means.

 

What needs to happen is the publishers that are most egregious in their bullying (MPAA/RIAA) need to get their heads out of their asses and make it easier for legitimate uses of their stuff. That gets us half way there.

 

The other half is simpler to explain: Thieves need to stop stealing shit.

 

I shudder to think what that levy would rise to if piracy was technically decriminalized, not just ill-enforced.

[/quote']

 

True enough it's not ideal, but then again we are dealing with dinosaurs that still thing electric typewriters are cool. I know the type, I had a boss over me at one time who wondered where my drafting table was, and I had to very slowly explain to him that I did all my cad work using this thing called a wacom and on the computer, he looked stunned, and didn't know these thing existed. And he was the owner. He did think it was neat as hell, that I could view all my drafting design changes in real time though.

 

I do agree, that they need to get their heads out of their asses, but they'll need to die of old age first. They've fought every new version of technology to come along, and they'll fight it until they're dead, and probably until when they're in the grave. Copyrights in the US are now creator life+70 to 120 years. I believe Canada is or did do something similar. Which means that the average song is now a license to print free money for 1 to 3 generations.

 

Also, they're not stealing either. Stealing is taking something, and depriving ownership. They're making an unauthorized copy. The original is still there, the value of the product is still there. The IP value is still there, the value that isn't diminished or increased by the copying either. As it is, music copying in canada is decriminalized. And there's no loss, in fact we're prolific purchasers of digital music. There was an article on Michael Geist's website on it a year or two back, I'll see if I can dig it up.

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Also' date=' they're not stealing either. Stealing is taking something, and depriving ownership. They're making an unauthorized copy. The original is still there, the value of the product is still there. The IP value is still there, the value that isn't diminished or increased by the copying either.

[/quote']

 

We will have to disagree here. In a legal sense the two are not the same, but in a practical sense, they are. In legal jargon, copyright infringement is violation of rights

 

I have no problem with copyrights being 100 years or 1000 years (patents are another story), so long as the copyright is passed lawfully from owner to owner.

 

As it is, music copying in canada is decriminalized. And there's no loss, in fact we're prolific purchasers of digital music. There was an article on Michael Geist's website on it a year or two back, I'll see if I can dig it up.

 

I used the wrong word. Decriminalized is not what I meant, but "made entirely legal." Also the Canadian situation is a typical legal catch-22. It's legal to download. It's not legal to upload.

 

The article you were looking for: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourinterview/2008/04/michael_geist.html

 

 

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Well' date=' on good news at least:

 

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/20/technology/SOPA_PIPA_postponed/index.htm

 

SOPA/PIPA are delayed indefinitely

[/quote']

 

I think with the megaupload case the players involved in the power struggle have finally learned what the CoS has known for many years -- you don't need new laws to shut down websites you don't like, you just need extremely aggressive lawyers.

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We will have to disagree here. In a legal sense the two are not the same' date=' but in a practical sense, they are. In legal jargon, copyright infringement is violation of rights

 

I have no problem with copyrights being 100 years or 1000 years (patents are another story), so long as the copyright is passed lawfully from owner to owner.[/quote']

They are in Canuck law. Infringement is a violation of statue law, not a violation of rights. To violate the right of the individual by copying I'd have to include the source from their product within my product, to infringe on it. That's not even touching on patent law here, to infringe on the patent they'd also have to show malice, and that I was ruining their brand, and I willfully went out of my way to steal it(all of which are very easy to prove). Patents are an entirely different bowl of wax. The problem with copyright law is as it stands now, is if you publish a work. And you die, it can be passed to your family(or a company), and continue on so forever never entering the public domain, and killing derivative works.

 

Many things today are based on the works of yesteryear. If the classic works of say Shakespeare, Jules Verne, or Hans Christian Andersen were still under copyright, would half or more of hollywood even exist? Probably not. Then again, most stuff in existence now wouldn't be out there. Actually the entire FO genre would be doa if I tossed in a couple of more authors.

 

I have no problem with reasonable copyrights. But a copyright of life+120years or more is excessive and kills innovation. I practice what I preach, my copyrights expire when I die, or whenever on a whim I decide to copyleft them.

 

 

I used the wrong word. Decriminalized is not what I meant, but "made entirely legal." Also the Canadian situation is a typical legal catch-22. It's legal to download. It's not legal to upload.

True enough on that. Even though uploading is back into a grey area--yet again in ontario, quebec, bc and alberta, after hitting the superior courts. And they ruled it can come under fair dealing, so it'll probably end up back yet again to the SCC. It's a mess, no doubt. Thanks that was one of the articles, I'm still hunting for the other. :)

 

 

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Well' date=' on good news at least:

 

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/20/technology/SOPA_PIPA_postponed/index.htm

 

SOPA/PIPA are delayed indefinitely

[/quote']

 

I think with the megaupload case the players involved in the power struggle have finally learned what the CoS has known for many years -- you don't need new laws to shut down websites you don't like, you just need extremely aggressive lawyers.

 

 

Has anyone seen or even heard of this so called evidence?

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Has anyone seen or even heard of this so called evidence?

Well the affidavit is online at torrent freak it's ~45 pages. At most it's sketchy as hell with a lot of ho-hum, the did this hear-say type of evidence, and comes off as the typical "and this person from our buddies at the RIAA/MPAA said they did this to us" type of information. Unless they've got some serious bombshells hiding, they don't have much of a case.

 

But there is other points, that they did know there was copyrighted files, and they didn't do anything or were slow to remove them. So take points one way or the other.

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Ah the history of copyright and Mickey Mouse.

These are interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law

 

But if you want the short version, just look at this graph:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg

 

That's right, between about 1909 to 1976, it was felt there was no need to extend the period and note how that period was loaded with technological innovation.

I've always thought we should have life of the originator or ONE sale/transfer only lasting 30 years. A single assignment of copyright.

 

Mickey Mouse has much to answer for, the evil rodent! If it wasn't for the legislative efforts of Disney, he'd have been in the public domain long ago, and of course, civilization would crumble if that happened. It has long been held that Disney wants to continually extend the period so the Mouse never enters public domain.

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Well' date=' on good news at least:

 

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/20/technology/SOPA_PIPA_postponed/index.htm

 

SOPA/PIPA are delayed indefinitely

[/quote']

 

I think with the megaupload case the players involved in the power struggle have finally learned what the CoS has known for many years -- you don't need new laws to shut down websites you don't like, you just need extremely aggressive lawyers.

 

 

Has anyone seen or even heard of this so called evidence?

 

Did I mention you don't need evidence either?

 

All you need are deep pockets and lawyers. Win or lose, you'll still shut the other guy down, buried in legal fees and red tape.

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