Posted on 01/19/2012 1:58:07 PM PST by Bloody Sam Roberts
McLEAN, Va. – 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
As for the story...looks odd given the timing with Wikipedia's blackout and the fact that the SOPA debate is starting to heat up. Looks like the Feds wanted a little, "See, we told you so." to justify their drive to censor the 'net.
There’s the proof that we don’t need any more laws, the current ones do just fine.
I’ve never pirated music, but I encourage others to do so.
It’s smart. It’s sexy. It’s funny.
Hollywood is the enemy, and...what hurts them pleases me.
SORRY..!
Hear, hear! :-)
Are the Feds going after the Chinese? That’s where my past pirated video’s came from.
Funny, isn't it?
Here is where they are going to run into problems, not one single person charged is from the US. All of them are based in Germany, Eastern Europe or NZ. Also, this is not a small site and has lots of non-infringing uses, they basically just hosted files. DOJ is being tone-deaf again.
I’ve used megaupload and yousendit to forward large files to family and partners frequently. Very useful indeed. The founder of metabolize, Kim Shultz(now called Kim Dotcom), is certainly an easy flamboyant target. We shall see if this sticks. They may just run out the clock on this case to make a point.
It's more like Obama got worried about his Hollywood financial supporters getting upset over him backing away from support of SOPA so he shut down Megaupload in an attempt to show that he is really on their side. It's ALL about the Obama campaign bucks.
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