The demise of megaupload ..your views please

I’m gutted ..had a load of nice maps i’d been meaning to download ..all legal of course 😉 Looks like several linked sites are also not available . Not a big user myself but it’s been v useful over the years.

I was staggered at how much money they were making. Kim Dotcom made $42 million last year 😯

No icefilms at the moment 🙁

Never heard of it before the news this morning

I think they had a good run. It was fairly obvious most of the content was copyrighted material. Those that run it let it happen though, as they were cashing in a shitload of cash due to advertising revenue.

They got too big I guess.

Was it just a big file sharing site? Or was there more to it?

Cos there’s loads of them hotfile, filesonic, uploaded, filejungle… etc.

Are they all likely to go?

Never heard of it before today.

the whole internets going to go dezbinald! we’ll have to resort to carrier pidginz by oct 2012!

Are they all likely to go?

I do hope so.

it’s like having a shop selling stolen goods on every street corner.

Congress has, effecitively, tried to bring in legislation that would just close all the shops on the High Street rather than just the ones selling stolen goods.

Jamie – Member
I think they had a good run. It was fairly obvious most of the content was copyrighted material

are you talking about megaupload or the internet in general?

it’s like having a shop selling stolen goods on every street corner.

Congress has, effecitively, tried to bring in legislation that would just close all the shops on the High Street rather than just the ones selling stolen goods.

i do hope thats original material and you haven’t forgotten to credit the original copyright holder? 😈

(i’m stealing that as its the clearest explanation of whats happening i’ve read)

@Dez

It was, but it was one of the biggest, along with RapidShare.

The full indictments can be seen on WSJ.

are you talking about megaupload or the internet in general?

Megaupload.

Congress has, effecitively, tried to bring in legislation that would just close all the shops on the High Street rather than just the ones selling stolen goods.

And the ones that happen to be nearby… Or the ones where someone has decided to take an item from one shop into another.

Good Riddance!

Big fileshraing site which pays you if people download the content you upload. In file-download guise, as well as flash video guise (Imagine youtube with no content restrictions, but wants you to pay to access more than ~42 mins of video a day) and some other guises too.
Content generally not accessed directly through the site, but through other websites which provide links.

It’s fair enough. The founders made a lot of money directly out of the distribution of copyrighted material. I’d have more to say if less money was involved.

The Free Music Archive’s point of view:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) would give the mainstream entertainment industry new powers to shut down websites that threaten their established way of doing business. No due process necessary; just add a site to their blacklist, and service providers’ arms would be twisted into actively monitoring and censoring independent voices.

i do hope thats original material

all my own typos and everyfink 🙂

Hmm… interesting developments.

13th most visited website on the entire Internet

Impressive!

the only good thing about big money corporations running the world like this is that soon we’ll get to play rollerball. roller derby is a poor imitation but a clear sign we’re heading that way IMHO.

Can count the times I’ve used it on the fingers of one foot. Guess we’ll have to use one of the 47 other near-identical services instead now.

BoardinBob – Member
I was staggered at how much money they were making. Kim Dotcom made $42 million last year

Yet people have a problem with Record Companies & Artists earnings

wwaswas – Member
it’s like having a shop selling stolen goods on every street corner.

Well put!

parkedtiger – Member
The Free Music Archive’s point of view:

pointless ‘what if’ article.

As I understand, it was actually American legislation that protected these sites in the early days, obviously no longer.

Be interesting to see if this continues & what happens when it comes to the Russian sites, sadly probably nothing!

No icefilms at the moment

This…………. [sob]
So my AppleTV is not fulfilling its potential at the moment as Icefilms linked to files on MU – I’m hoping that an alternative pops up.

That sort of copyright theft isn’t illegal in Russia. Why do you think Microsoft used to give away copies of Windows in their offices over there?

Kim is a dodgy bugger anyway, always has been so you can be sure any company he’s associated with is ducking the law in some way. Megaupload have known about the piracy on their platform for years which is what have sunk them. Youtube at least got some safe harbour coverage from working actively to stop it, MU has always tacitly (if not explicitly) welcomed copyright theft.

What were megaupload doing that youtube aren’t? When requested megaupload removed copywritten material just like youtube didn’t they?

chvck – Member
What were megaupload doing that youtube aren’t? When requested megaupload removed copywritten material just like youtube didn’t they?

Come on now, have a think 😕

I wish the film industry would put equal effort into creating legal decent on-line resources. It costs more to download a film that it does to buy a disk from play or Amazon, including postage. And its virtually impossible to get original English language versions of films on-line in Germany (and I guess all other non English speaking countries).

They are profiteering from their sales methods, and they are getting governments to crush consumer protections to do so.

Oh yeah, they were hosting a shit-ton of illegal stuff, no arguing against that but as a genuine question, if they removed files when asked to how is it effectively much different to youtube?

I wish the film industry would put equal effort into creating legal decent on-line resources. It costs more to download a film that it does to buy a disk from play or Amazon, including postage. And its virtually impossible to get original English language versions of films on-line in Germany (and I guess all other non English speaking countries).

Netflix has just launched in the UK with online streaming from £5.99 a month. Amazon is also launching rival service soon.

Edit: Ah, I see your in Deutschland. Ignore the above 😉

<shocked> You mean there was more than just pr0n on there? </shocked>

Yep, I can buy a DVD from a UK company, and it can be posted to me in Germany. But I can”t download the same content from the same company! I can’t think of any other industry where market protectionism is so extremely exerted as film and music.

IMO the industries greed is a major contributing factor to on-line piracy.

What were megaupload doing that youtube aren’t? When requested megaupload removed copywritten material just like youtube didn’t they?

No. It removed the link. Not everything tagged with the same fingerprint. Youtube also dont pay people for infringing.

IMO the industries greed is a major contributing factor to on-line piracy.

Indeed, but with faster internet rolling out all over the place and services like netflix and spotify etc… getting better and better I think that piracy will decrease as people just won’t see the need to illegally download. Those services also have the bonus that you can watch/listen easily where-ever you go without having to lug around your external storage or whatever.

EDIT: “No. It removed the link. Not everything tagged with the same fingerprint.” – ahh ok, cheers!

it’s a shame to be honest

I got all manner of great stuff off there over the last few years that was either out of print or not available any more

While this was not technically ‘legal’ I do think that the creators of such content would sooner people see their stuff than it just not be available (other than a clips on a crap 240p youtube video)

Is anyone using netflix ? You can’t seem to search on the site to see what films are actually available on it.

Jamie (or anyone), any idea of how the content on netflix compares with that of icefilms?

parkedtiger – Member
The Free Music Archive’s point of view:

Interesting stuff. If SOPA is designed to protect copyright, all well and good. If it is designed to protect the dinosaur distributors who can’t get with the times, all well and bad…
Call me cynical on this one.[/url] 😀

Netflix has just launched in the UK with online streaming from £5.99 a month. Amazon is also launching rival service soon.

Amazon own Lovefilm?

Also netflix is useless, good quality stream on my xbox but similar to lovefilms streaming service you dont get the latest releases on it. so end up watching older movies or tv shows.

And SOPA and ProtectIP are pretty much useless all they will do is host it outside of the us on a non us domain, and make the IP address publicly known. Then they cant close it down and when the DNS entry is blocked people will just use the IP address. further anyone who will want to do illegal downloads will use foreign DNS servers to get around it.

It is another example of media corporations not meeting the demands of the market. They just need to make it easier to get legal stuff than illegal stuff, and price it attractively.

I’ve used Megauploads to watch US TV series which aren’t available here. I’d have happily have paid for them.

MSP – Member
IMO the industries greed is a major contributing factor to on-line piracy.

Can you justify this statement with an example?

timc, check don simons link.