Popular file-sharing website Megaupload shut down

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/19/national/a113757S64.DTL ^

[chessplayer]

One of the world's most popular file-sharing sites was shuttered Thursday, and its founder and several company officials were accused of facilitating millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content.

[chessplayer]

See what obama can do when he puts his mind to it? 5% of the largest communication network in human history has been eradicated just like that. All the stuff people had stored on it, and paid to store it, gone, just like that.

[Para-Ord.45]

Wonder what would happen if all these companies got together and created another Lightsquared, launch a satellite into space for the internet, buy an island and run servers from there thereby becoming untouchable.

[JRandomFreeper]

It's back up under a different url now.

The DOJ and FBI websites, however, are still hosed in retaliation. Along with a bunch of stuff like RIAA and record labels.

What a cluster....

/johnny

[Jeff Chandler]

Will YouSendIt be next?

Will the servers farms in the U.S. face an exodus of customers?

[Kieri]

I'm using Tweetdeck to watch commentary on the GOP debate in one column, and Anonymous in another. It's surreal.

Then there's this:

Joe Biden went trolling through Silicon Valley looking for campaign funds a day after the Blackout!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120119/00492717468/joe-biden-picked-interesting-day-to-raise-money-silicon-valley.shtml

The DOJ.gov site is down via DDoS attack, supposedly by Anonymous. It's almost funny...they admit experiencing a "degradation in service." Yes, since Holder and Obama moved in!

[ElkGroveDan]

If they had heeded the notices sent under the Millennium Copyright Act and removed stolen material that other people worked hard on to create, then they’d still be in business. Reputable Internet sites remove copyrighted material immediately when notified by the copyright holder.

My family’s bread and butter comes from copyrighted novels. How do you think it feels when your morning Google alert contains a subject line “DOWNLOAD *****’s LATEST BOOK FOR FREE!” and you know that thousands of people are going to take advantage of that, rather than paying for something you own?

This has nothing to do with Obama or liberals. There’s a reason we have copyright laws and patents. This problem is identical to Napster or the Chinese mas manufacture of American movies on DVD and smuggled into the country. Good riddance. I hope they shut down as many of these scumbags as possible.

[RobinMasters]

With Obama in office, we've lost a lot of our freedom.

Then they may as well shut down YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Photobucket, and all other upload sites of any form because people are able to upload files of which they might not own the copyrights.

[JRandomFreeper]

then they’d still be in business.

They are still in business. FBI and DOJ are still down.

Raw force isn't going to fix this.

/johnny

[null and void]

Raw force isn't going to fix this.

[dfwgator]

Just goes to show that we don’t need SOPA, the current laws already in place are sufficient.

[NoLibZone]

Shut down with due process.

One would be nuts to start a tech business in the US.

All it takes is a few Union reps or Hollywood liberal to shut you down.

I am moving all my stuff offshore.

[NoLibZone]

"Will the servers farms in the U.S. face an exodus of customers?"

Soros et all already bought up the trunk lines!

[max americana]

I know someone who personally set up kickasstorrents. They changed their domain names so many times it’s now based in the PH.

[battletank]

Yes. Well. I hope you were also complaining loudly when the regime shuttered millions of people’s accounts when the king shut down the internet poker sites too.

[ElkGroveDan]

Just goes to show that we don’t need SOPA, the current laws already in place are sufficient.

We don't need SOPA, that's for sure. However additional tools are necessary to shut down the online pirates. I takes way too long to stop them and by then individual authors take a beating on book sales (as one example).

[microgood]

My family’s bread and butter comes from copyrighted novels. How do you think it feels when your morning Google alert contains a subject line “DOWNLOAD *****’s LATEST BOOK FOR FREE!” and you know that thousands of people are going to take advantage of that, rather than paying for something you own?

The problem is, they are taking down the paying customers as well. There is a lot of legimitate content there, and those that have paid for that content are now screwed. It is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and while I realize our Justice Department is not too bright, they should have used a more intelligent approach than this.

[Revolting cat!]

We successfully defeated Spam (You all remember Bush’s ‘Can Spam’ legislation, don’t you? And yes, that was the name!) so now we can turn on the “pirates”. Government serving the people.

[Randy Larsen]

Never heard of them.

[CharlesWayneCT]

The sad part of this is that the same site was used at one time by lots of people for legal transfers. The Minecraft people used to use it for map transfers for example.

[ElkGroveDan]

The problem is, they are taking down the paying customers as well.

That is the fault of the company for repeatedly ignoring the complaints submitted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Believe me they knew what was going on and repeatedly chose to ignore the complaints from copyright holders and authorities.