Author Topic: Megaupload down  (Read 5936 times)

norikoteiko

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Megaupload down
« on: 2012-01-20 22:09:10 »
The US government has closed down one of the world's largest filesharing websites, accusing its founders of racketeering, money laundering and presiding over "massive" online piracy.

According to prosecutors, Megaupload illegally cheated copyright holders out of $500m in revenue as part of a criminal enterprise spanning five years.

A lawyer for Megaupload told the Guardian it would "vigorously" defend itself against the charges, dismissing the criminal action as "a civil case in disguise".

News of the indictment – being framed as one of the biggest copyright cases in US history – came a day after major internet firms held a 24-hour protest over proposed anti-piracy laws.

According to a Department of Justice release, seven people associated with Megaupload were indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this month over the charges.

They included Kim Dotcom, founder of the online firm.

The 37-year-old, who also goes by Kim Tim Jim Vestor and whose real name is Kim Schmitz, is accused of heading up a criminal venture that earn Dotcom and his associates upwards of $175m.

These profits were obtained illegally through advertising and the selling of premium memberships to users of Megaupload, the justice department is claiming.

Established in 2005, the website offered a "one-click" upload, providing an easily accessible online locker for shared content.

Before being shut down, the firm boasted 50 million daily visitors, accounting for 4% of total internet traffic, the justice department claimed in its statement on the indictment.

Prosecutors allege that the website violated copyright law by illegally hosting movies, music and TV shows on a massive scale.

Those behind the website have claimed that it diligently responds to any complaint regarding pirated material.

But according to prosecutors, the accused conspirators deliberately employed a business model that encouraged the uploading of illegal material.

They say that Megaupload paid users for uploading pirated material in full awareness that they were breaking the law. In addition they failed to close the accounts of known copyright infringers.

The indictment includes chat logs with conversations between company executives, which include statements like: "we have a funny business . . . modern days pirates :)"

Alongside Dotcom, law enforcement officials swooped on a number of other senior members of Megaupload's staff.

Arrests were made at a number of homes in Auckland, New Zealand, on warrants issued by US authorities.

In all, addresses in nine countries including the US were raided as part of massive international operation.

Three men accused alongside Dotcom remained on the run tonight, the Department of Justice said.

About $50m dollars in assets were seized as part of the massive operation.

Meanwhile, the Megaupload website was closed down, with the FBI seizing an additional 18 domain names associated with the alleged crime.

In response to the indictment, the hacker group Anonymous, which is ostensibly unaffiliated with Megaupload, launched a cyber attack that at least temporarily brought down the websites of the justice department as well as those of the Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, and Universal Music.

If found guilty of the charges, the accused Megaupload executives could face 50 years behind bars.

Ira Rothken, an attorney for Megaupload, said the firm would fight the "erroneous" charges.

Speaking from his California office, Rothken said: "The allegations appear to be incorrect and the law does not support the charges."

He added: "It is a civil case in disguise."

Asked why it was being pursued as a criminal case, Rothken replied: "You'd have to ask the prosecutors."

got from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/19/us-government-megaupload-piracy-indictment.


i hope it is the right category to post this i mean its not Completely unrelated! than some files on qhimm are hostet on megaupload and will be unavailable.

greetz nori
« Last Edit: 2012-01-20 22:11:49 by norikoteiko »

PitBrat

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #1 on: 2012-01-20 23:26:56 »
Many of the Qhimm files lost on MegaUpload already have mirrored versions available here:
    The Big List of FF7 Mods

norikoteiko

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #2 on: 2012-01-21 00:13:28 »
i know  for me it is urelated becaause i have la necassery files for me

Jaitsu

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #3 on: 2012-01-21 00:18:00 »
Way i see it, it was just revenge for the protests, a sad thing.

hotdog963al

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #4 on: 2012-01-21 00:48:13 »
Perhaps now is a good time to get those files up on Multiupload.
What if Mediafire was taken down next?

Jaitsu

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #5 on: 2012-01-21 00:49:31 »
Perhaps now is a good time to get those files up on Multiupload.
What if Mediafire was taken down next?

better not be, i got my sh*t up on it.

then again SOPA got dealt a pretty big blow with the vote postponing.

norikoteiko

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #6 on: 2012-01-21 01:42:11 »
i want to host the files on my root and post as alternate download

Lionsmane

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #7 on: 2012-01-21 06:21:28 »
sopa and pipa apparently bit the big one. suckas

hotdog963al

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #8 on: 2012-01-21 16:19:33 »
better not be, i got my sh*t up on it.

then again SOPA got dealt a pretty big blow with the vote postponing.
Just keep a local copy of everything so you can re-mirror. Don't rely on one service.
I lost a ridiculous amount of links when MU went down, as well as a fresh 2-yr subscription. Gonna be more careful next time.

Jaitsu

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #9 on: 2012-01-25 06:07:17 »
Just keep a local copy of everything so you can re-mirror. Don't rely on one service.
I lost a ridiculous amount of links when MU went down, as well as a fresh 2-yr subscription. Gonna be more careful next time.

Was thinking of grabbing some flash drives, then breaking apart the big files using winrar, not as efficient as Mediafire but with the government on the warpath, i see no alternative at the moment.

Tekkie.X

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #10 on: 2012-01-25 16:30:13 »
Fileserve and Filesonic are also out of action, while they still work, they are for personal use only now, you can only access your own files.

DLPB_

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #11 on: 2012-01-25 16:47:04 »
Get a nice dropbox account or google.

Covarr

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Re: Megaupload down
« Reply #12 on: 2012-01-25 19:47:10 »
Dropbox and Google are nice, but they have their flaws. Dropbox has a combined 10GB daily combined bandwidth limit for all public files, so for example I couldn't use it to host FF7Music installer, which uses anywhere from 3GB to 20GB in a given day, often depending on either an update to either my installer or bootleg (it's a damn shame, because I'd love to separate the OGGs into a pack that the installer downloads on the fly, so as to maintain fewer installers). I'm not sure what Google Docs' limits are, since they don't publish exact numbers, but I suspect it's even lower.

Typically, I like to use MediaFire for files under 200MB and RapidShare for files that are too big for MediaFire. They're both much faster than most of the competition, they both have far fewer ads than many other file hosting sites, MediaFire has no wait times (and Rapidshare has less than most). Obviously if I could afford it I would love to use something like Amazon S3 to host files, or even a Dropbox PRO account, but that can become prohibitively expensive quite fast ($55/mo for S3? No thanks).