FBI Closes Megaupload and arrests several of their employees

[amazingcomedy]

What the US government doesn’t understand is, the world is changing thanks to the internet. There’s this ad that says “You wouldn’t steal an album, but what if you can make a copy of it?” That’s what the world is changing into, Internet Piracy isn’t stealing, it’s just copying. Plus (I believe Gabe Newell said this), to fight piracy, you don’t make it illegal, or jail people who partake in it, you provide something better then piracy. I mean, once I pirated a copy of Postal 2 since the one on RWS’s site was way too fucking expensive for my tastes ($29.99 for a game I finished in three days), and ALL of my music in my computer is from BeeMP3, and I get it from here since the cost for the mp3 is like $10.00 when sold from the artist. This Sopa bill will only benefit corporations like WMG, and of course, it will benefit the government as well since Sopa will give them the power to censor whatever they feel is “wrong”.
Sorry for the long rant, lol.

[gibbelin]

@Winged One

Yeah, maybe they were used predominantly for illegal means (even though they were also used by independent artists and the modding community to spread free merchandise products), but legally they have no business closing down the entire site. If they want to crack down on individual users, that’s totally fine.

Actually, they do, per OCILLA guidelines. If the owner of a site knows they are hosting infringing material and fails to remove it in a timely manner, they are in violation.

If they have both emails where he claims to have known about the infringement and proof that he ignored DMCA takedowns, then he is definitely liable.

[Kairouseki]

@Bolteh

If legal filesharing is so important to you, there’s still a ton of alternatives that won’t be taken down due to the very fact that are less conventional to use as a means of mass sharing. I’m thinking about YouSendIt or personal FTP/Dropbox.

Until those get shut down as well.

[Bolteh]

And here we have another case of “hearing only what you want to hear”.

[Midnightcoast]

Actually quite a few sites have gone down. Here is the “latest” news on it…

MegaUpload - Closed.
FileServe - Closing does not sell premium.
FileJungle - Deleting files. Locked in the U.S.
UploadStation - Locked in the U.S.
FileSonic - The news is arbitrary (under FBI investigation).
VideoBB - Closed! would disappear soon.
Uploaded - Banned U.S. and the FBI went after the owners who are gone.
FilePost - Deleting all material (so will leave executables, pdfs, txts)
Videoz - closed and locked in the countries affiliated with the USA.
4shared - Deleting files with copyright and waits in line at the FBI.
MediaFire - Called to testify in the next 90 days and it will open doors pro FBI
Org torrent - could vanish with everything within 30 days “he is under criminal investigation”
Network Share mIRC - awaiting the decision of the case to continue or terminate Torrent everything.
Koshiki - operating 100% Japan will not join the SOPA / PIPA.
Shienko Box - 100% working china / korea will not join the SOPA / PIPA
ShareX BR - group UOL / BOL / iG say they will join the SOPA / PIPA

Japan, China and Korea have a say NO to the FBI and that even if laws are passed in the USA will not have any value within the sovereignty of their countries!

P/S: mediafire has start deleting copyright protected files. Only left is the personal files.

Source: https://www.blackhatworld.com/

[Bolteh]

Funny that it takes a bust for business to realize they shouldn’t just sit idly by. Deleting copyright protected files should have been happening from day 1. It’s better to prevent than to cure.

[gibbelin]

@Midnightcoast

Japan, China and Korea have a say NO to the FBI and that even if laws are passed in the USA will not have any value within the sovereignty of their countries!

Where do you guys come up with this stuff? I’m serious. How can you just make things up out of thin air with no research and then actually be mad about the thing you just made up?

The U.S. DOESN’T have jurisdiction over other countries. Sites that are prosecuted in the U.S. have to have a U.S. presence, and people charged with a crime can only be extradited from countries who have signed an extradition treaty with the U.S.

China does not extradite Chinese nationals to anywhere – especially the U.S. – so that’s a non sequitur.

Korea and Japan have signed extradition treaties with the U.S., so sovereignty is not an issue at all.

[Bolteh]

I also heard that the FBI cloned Hitler and that they put him in charge of deporting everyone that has ever watched a YouTube movie that had copyrighted material in it.

I heard it on a hitler-conspiracy-theory website, so it must be true.

[Kairouseki]

I kind of want this to go somewhere just so you’ll stop being so freaking sarcastic .

[gblake]

These people’s names are ridiculous. One of them actually has a domain name as his name.

[Guzzi]

@gibbelin

Korea and Japan have signed extradition treaties with the U.S., so sovereignty is not an issue at all.

It was legal for Hitler to extradite the Jewish community from France, Italy, and other various countries at the time.

 I'm just sayin =/ ...

[geekofalltrades]

Why must Hitler always make his way into any sort of debate?

[mankyman6]

They think it helps their argument, when in fact it makes them sound like a douche.

[danielsangeo]

Because, Hitler.

Also, Stalin.

And maybe Pol Pot and Mao.

[Guzzi]

I just use the Nazi party as a means of common ground to communicate a point.

The context was an example of extradition powers being exercised while a country still retains it’s sovereignty.

Not purely about OOooooOOO big bad mr hitler.

Apply some thought.

[Kairouseki]

Isn’t there some sort of internet law that states that arguments have to be started over once someone brings Hitler/Nazis into it?

[Maverix26]

I know piracy is bad. Artists, music makers, and a bunch of other people suffer from it, theres no doubt about it.

Do I give a shit? No. I’ll just find another download site and carry on with my life.

[gibbelin]

@Guzzi

I just use the Nazi party as a means of common ground to communicate a point.

The context was an example of extradition powers being exercised while a country still retains it’s sovereignty.

Not purely about OOooooOOO big bad mr hitler.

Apply some thought.

It was still a terrible point because it addressed nothing I said. Can extradition be abused? Yes, any government power can, which is why they need to be held accountable to the highest degree when abuses occur.

Is extraditing a multiple felon bad? I’d prefer America didn’t extradite U.S. citizens to other countries for IP violations, so I guess it’s less than ideal. But it’s still nowhere near the gross fascism that half this thread is implying it is.

[amazingcomedy]

@Zuul

I’m sure everyone gets a big pile of money anyways. Shit, if I pirate an album and like it, I fucking buy it. And go to their concerts. If I really like a game, I fucking buy it again. I have a 112MBit connection and all the means in the world to “pirate” shit but I don’t. I want to have the original legit shit. US is just stirring up a shitstorm in a waterglass so to speak. And as mankyman6 pointed out, and you, it’s the arrogance and "we are number one " attitude that spawns these kinds of bullshit bills…Hollywood will still make their billions despite of what I, as a “pirate” do.

EDIT: By the way, it’s not the bands that make the money by selling albums, it’s the fat fucking corporate pigs that do. I know. Unless you are Michael Jackson or Madonna or something. The small bands get their money by touring. I’ve been on the ass end of that business.

^This

Exactly what I was thinking. It’s not like entertainment corporations really lose a lot from this, I mean, do you know how much artists like WMG, UMG and etc have under their sleeve? Do you really know much they make? I tell you, it’s a lot. I doubt Piracy has any effect on them. Sure, it may seem that way, but you have to think just how much money they make from their artists. And plus, I think all pirates would buy the real thing, like the person quoted above me said, it’s just a matter of what the price is for the thing we’re trying to buy, and it’s worth. If something like an album or PC game costs a lot, and doesn’t seem worth it’s money, then Pirate it, I say! And if you like it enough, buy the real thing, I’ve done that to a bunch of movies, games, etc.
I feel as though corporations in the entertainment industry just really don’t want to make an effort to compete with Piracy.

[Kairouseki]

Somebody posted this on another forum I go to.

				[img]https://www.apforums.net/images/misc/quote_icon.png[/img] Originally Posted by [b]Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web (X)[/b] 					 				
			When the web started, I  used to get really  grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They  put my stories  up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief,  which was  completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the  web and  you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your  copyright,  which actually, is simply not true.

And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent.

I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”

What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.