Megaupload...dead.

[m0ds]

Booo. I noticed an epic drive to removing copyright content from file sharing sites this last couple of weeks. Sucks that they took off Megaupload, cos that was one of the best. They could've at least nuked letitbit.net instead

[mkennedy]

Who among us can honestly say that they never pirated software, or movies, or games? Though I imagine that if you take your computer in for repair that you probably won't be busted for having MP3s or episodes of south park on your computer. Now if you were to sell that pirated material that would be more deserving of criminal charges. Of course there is a hell of a lot worse stuff than pirated media on the internet, why aren't we going after them?

The ones that piracy probably hurts most are the small and independent game developers rather than the giant corporations like Blizzard or EA.

- Is the source of the Media (meaning here, the benefactor(s) of purchase) a determining factor as to whether or not you would purchase it legally (regardless of price, etc.)?

For me, it would. I would gladly pirate stuff copyrighted by 20th Century Fox and not only share it with friends, but even share it with people I don't like simply because Rupert Murdock annoys me and I want to spite him.

[LimpingFish]

"The Justice Department's whopping 72-page indictment against Megauploadâ€"or as it's tellingly referred to in the document, the "Mega Conspiracy"â€"illuminates a cavalier operation of opulence, carelessness, and tons of money. The Mega Conspiracy crewâ€"which spanned continents, and was lead by flamboyant fatboy millionaire conman Kim Dotcomâ€"was openly, wittingly rich off of copyrighted music. They were flagrant about their intentions to squeeze cash out of Simpsons episodes and 50 Cent albums, rewarding their most piracy-pushing users, laundering money through the site, and spending the cash in the most conspicuous ways imaginable.

And the feds have records of all of it."

There's your problem!

[8BitFreak]

Yeah, this is pretty lame.  If anything, they shoulda gone after Megavideo instead.

[Layabout]

While I agree that piracy is bad, I don't trust the government to do more good than harm when the get involved. People that torrent movies and games and stuff suck, IMO. I watch a ton of movies through Netflix and Amazon. I use Hulu to satisfy my craving for documentaries and older movies. Piracy sucks because it takes money away from the people who created the product and ought to be paid for it.

That being said, the government is a big, stupid, lumbering beast. Government action is akin to a club, not a scalpel. Once the government gets involved in policing the net, then all sorts of people and sites will get hit by that club. And, as others have pointed out, the pirates will not be stopped or even slowed down very much. But lots of innocent people who made video reviews of movies or games will be shut down and the government spokespeople will hold those poor saps up as an example of the pirates that have been put out of business. 

Leave my internet alone, government. Stop trying to help. 

Imagine a situation where your favourite tv show took 6 months to air on tv in your country. Where you didn't have the convenience of being able to watch reruns on Hulu. Where your Netflix equivalent was pricey and lacked any kind of decent selection.

This is what it is like in Australia and many other countries. I'd happily pay for a service that allowed these things, but big media are too interested in the problem instead of the solution.

I buy all my games on steam (or another online provider if steam doesn't have it.)

The reason steam works and is so successful is because they provide a service that is as good or superior to pirates. If other big media could provide this, then there is a good chance I would use this.

[Noctambulo]

I'd happily pay for a service that allowed these things, but big media are too interested in the problem instead of the solution.

+1

And now, Fileserve and filesonic are changing their systems. Uploaded.to is dennying access to the US' users...

[DBoyWheeler]

MediaFire allows people who want to upload things... legally.  The terms of service probably has ways of ensuring against anything illegal.

http://blog.mediafire.com/

[Radiant]

The reason steam works and is so successful is because they provide a service that is as good or superior to pirates. If other big media could provide this, then there is a good chance I would use this.

This is very important. It's called the "Better Than Original" problem, and big media companies tend to ignore it. For example, if an original game requires that I insert the original CD while playing or find word-X-from-page-Y in the manual, and the pirated copy does not, then the pirated version is easier to use, and therefore Better Than Original. This, of course, is a big incentive to pirate things - people enjoy convenience, and many copy protection schemes are just very inconvenient to the (legitimate) end user.

[Nikolas]

Hem... If I may ask very quickly, without reading through the thread right now...

Wasn't really megaupload (and rapidshare as far as I know) filled with 'illegal content'? I mean, yes, some people were using it in legal ways, but... It was mainly used to host copyrighted material, wasn't it? at least that was my impression...

I'm not too surprised that they got them... Even without SOPA and PIPA (both of which are rubbish for the vast majority of people, including librarians AFAIK)!

Then again can they go against torrentz.eu? And the technology behind torrent is too awesome to delete from the lives and memories of people, no?

[InCreator]

Megaupload had fair share of pirated stuff RARed into volumes.

I'm glad it's down.

Sites like Megaupload, rapidshare and even imageshack are just next step in the endless chain internet annoyances. Anyone remember pop-up ads?
"Premium download!" "Wait 9999 seconds" etc bullshit is just popups 2.0

There are much more convinient sites you can upload your stuff to, like mediafire, soundcloud, youtube and imgur (I think I covered all types of media here), and they won't bug the hell out of customers with waiting times, ads and capped speeds.
And whatever was hosted on such trashy, annoying site, shouldn't be too important to start with: a bit of server room costs basically nothing these days and there's loads of user-friendlier free alternatives also.

As for piracy, who the hell hosts pirated things anyway? Bittorrent and alternative P2P technology is available for years: If torrent is rare and has no seeders, you can always find what your need in the depths of DC++ hubs or if all fails, spend a week trying to get it from eMule, which has every imaginable thing, just takes ages to get. And if you want to pirate, no point in complaining: I see no burglars complaining to police that bank has too heavy vault door. If there's a will, there's a way.

Even worse that sometimes good stuff gets lost due shitty free upload service, mostly because it's so popular. More than once I've decided not to download a game/whatever just because I had no interest in downloading from rapidshare/megaupload/filesonic due low user-friendliness.

Better close this crap down and have better quality internet.

So, bye, megaupload. Don't come back!

[WHAM]

It seems I am not the only one who believes this is a good thing and a blow against piracy. Good riddance megaupload.

To analyze things: I can see that there are legal and perfectly valid uses for services like Megaupload, torrents and the like, but the fact of the matter is that a great majority of the material being transferred is illegal copies of copyrighted material. As a personal opinion I could have let slide the sharing of material  that could be considered abandonware, (games, movies, books and the like that just aren't available in legal ways) although with the increasing number of re-releases of such material even this justification is fast becoming obsolete.

[Babar]

I dunno..aside from people who had their own upload space on the net, megaupload and mediafire seemed to be the upload sites of choice for most AGS games. It seems inconvenient more than anything else.

I'm not sure what InC means, but as far as I remember it (unless I am mixing it up with something else), megaupload seemed the most convenient of the lot...it didn't have any countdown timer or anything like that before you could download, you just had to enter some captcha. I quit uploading (and using to download) stuff from rapidshare ages ago because it just continuously kept putting more and more blocks in the way to a smooth download.

PS: Loads of other file-sharing websites are running scared now. Some have blocked access to IPs in the US, and some have disabled all "sharing" capabilities (you can only download what you yourself uploaded).

[RickJ]

Spanish Anger at Megaupload Closure

MADRID  â€" A prominent Spanish lawyer is threatening a lawsuit over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s decision to shut down Megaupload Ltd., one of the world’s most popular file-sharing website.

Barcelona-based Carlos Sánchez Almeida, a veteran of Internet privacy and piracy fights in Spain, says he’s upset at the move because it endangers the legal contents stored in Megaupload, now inaccessible for company customers. In a post in his Jaque Perpetuo blog, he’s recommending that Spanish users of the service gather information about the files they may lose due to the FBI shutdown, in preparation for a legal claim.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/01/20/spanish-anger-at-fbi-megaupload-closure/

[Radiant]

To analyze things: I can see that there are legal and perfectly valid uses for services like Megaupload, torrents and the like, but the fact of the matter is that a great majority of the material being transferred is illegal copies of copyrighted material.

That is known as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[WHAM]

To analyze things: I can see that there are legal and perfectly valid uses for services like Megaupload, torrents and the like, but the fact of the matter is that a great majority of the material being transferred is illegal copies of copyrighted material.

That is known as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Only if the baby had already stopped breathing and now had writhing tentacles coming out of it's eyes and mouth as it screamed "I will eat your soul!"
To be honest, I would have gladly kept the water but the baby had become too corrupt to risk it.

[Peder 🚀]

My material has been heavily pirated using megaupload...