MEGAUPLOAD taken down. Big read!!

[TriplexDread]

MegaUpload one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Internet has been shut down by federal prosecutors in Virginia.
The site’s founder Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested by the police in New Zealand at the request of US authorities.
MegaVideo the streaming site belonging to same company and a total of 18 domains connected to the Mega company were seized
and datacenters in three countries raided.

Just a few weeks ago MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak that his Mega ventures have nothing to worry
about as they operate within the rules of the law.

“Mega has nothing to fear.
Our business is legitimate and protected by the DMCA and similar laws around the world.
We work with the best lawyers and play by the rules.

“We take our legal obligations seriously.
Mega’s war chest is full and we have strong supporters backing us,” Dotcom said.
But behind the scenes powerful forces were at work plotting the forceful demise of MegaUpload one of the world’s biggest websites.

An indictment unsealed today by the Department of Justice claims that MegaUpload has caused the entertainment industries more than $500 million
in lost revenue and generated $175 million “in criminal proceeds.”

Two corporations Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited were indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on January 5th 2012
and charged with “engaging in a racketeering conspiracy conspiring to commit copyright infringement conspiring to commit money laundering
and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.”

Today the authorities executed in excess of 20 search warrants in the United States and eight other countries.
Data centers in the Netherlands, Canada and Washington housing MegaUpload’s equipment were raided.
In an apparent reference to the latter location a source has just informed TorrentFreak that the FBI
are currently detaining everyone at the ISP Cogent Communications’ headquarters in Washington DC in connection with a Mega related search warrant.

In addition to MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom who was arrested today in New Zealand another six alleged members of the Mega “conspiracy”
were charged in the indictment:

- Finn Batato, 38 Mega’s chief marketing officer and a citizen and resident of Germany
- Julius Bencko, 35 Mega’s graphic designer from Slovakia
- Sven Echternach 39,Mega’s German head of business development;
- Mathias Ortmann, 40 the German CTO co-founder and director of Mega
- Andrus Nomm 32, programmer and head of the development from Estonia
- Bram van der Kolk 29 a Dutch citizen who oversaw programming and network issues.

Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand by authorities there.
Bencko, Echternach and Nomm are still at large.
The authorities seized approximately $50 million in assets which appears to include Kim Dotcom’s treasured collection of several dozen cars as detailed below.



A total of 18 Mega-related domains were also seized by authorities including Megastuff.co, Megaworld.com,
Megaclicks.co, Megastuff.info, Megaclicks.org, Megaworld.mobi, Megastuff.org, Megaclick.us, Mageclick.com,
HDmegaporn.com, Megavkdeo.com, Megaupload.com, Megaupload.org, Megarotic.com, Megaclick.com, Megavideo.com,
Megavideoclips.com and Megaporn.com.

According to the Department of Justice the individuals named in the indictment face a maximum penalty of:
20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering
five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement
20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering
five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.

The legal action against Mega will be essential for similar cloud hosting services.
The MegaUpload site itself had no search function to discover content directly
but according to the indictment this was done to conceal the scope of its infringement
Would the same be true for services such as Dropbox?

.........................................................................

In response, the recently famous group Anonymous;

takes Down Websites In Response To Megaupload Shutdown Anonymous Takes Down DOJ, Universal Music, RIAA, MPAA Websites In Response To Megaupload Shutdown

Anonymous has been quiet for the last few weeks but today in response to the US Governments'
sudden and unexpected move to take down Megaupload the group launched a denial of service attack on the
Department of Justice website rendering it unusable for the last hour.

To many it appeared that the website had crumpled under the amount of users accessing the site after the news of the Megaupload
arrests and takedown but it appears there may be more to the story.

According to The Next Web, while the "official" Anonymous Twitter account hasn't taken the blame for the attack the Swedish branch has.
Chatter is all over the #OpPayBack hashtag about the "success" of the attack and that the group took down the Department of Justice
in just 15 minutes of the news breaking.

Does this mean Anonymous is back?
If so, it could be in a big way.
This is the first time the group has made a direct attack (and admitted it) on a US Government site meaning the FBI is likely to respond swiftly.

Update: The Universal Music group, as well as the RIAA websites are currently offline too (or, very intermittently available)
the group is yet to publicly comment but this appears to also be the work of Anonymous.
See below update.

Update 2: The MPAA website is also offline.
Tweets are claiming Whitehouse.gov is the next target.

Update 3: Anonymous just confirmed their involvement in the attack on RIAA/MPAA/Universal.

Update 4: We've heard that the FBI website may have been hacked.
More soon...

Update 5: Copyright.gov is offline now too.

Update 6: FBI.gov is the next target according to this tweet.

Update 7: This is getting personal. MPAA chief Chris Dodd's personal website is now under attack.

Oh dear.
Update 8: Anonymous just dumped the database of the Utah Chiefs of Police association website with personal details and logins.
We won't link this for obvious reasons. USDOJ.gov is down too.

Update 9: Twitter has manually removed the #opmegaupload and #oppayback hashtags from trends and appears to be actively ripping out anything related.

 

[bootneck02]

BIG Brother is watching you.

 

[TriplexDread]

I certainly don't think its fair twitter is actively censoring peoples right too chat about it

So much for freedom of speech huh

 

[Taffycat]

Does anyone remember reading this article from 2009? Can't help wondering whether the "cyber war" they spoke of is beginning.

Considering the ease with which Annonymous and their ilk are able to sabotage government/FBI websites, in retaliation for their moves to censor the internet... seems like it might already have begun.

 

[crazylegs]

Not being funny but I have never heard of that website!

 

[floppybootstomp]

I'd never heard of it either but chances are if you've used a bit torrent client it may have linked to it.

I know a lot of these goings-on are aimed at illegal file sharing and I have to watch what I say here but let me just say I know which side I'm on and my feet are not currently sharing floor space with the Blue Meanies

People get ready for the call up...

 

[TriplexDread]

This is scary now. Anonymous mean business. Glad they aint after me.............

Bad language in the comments don't read if you are offended

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[V_R]

Was always going to happen........

 

[nivrip]

It's escalating.

THIS at 3.30PM

 

[nivrip]

Now anti piracy bills halted.

HERE

It's all getting very exciting.

 

[Anon_F]

Not heard of the site until a few days ago.
I get all my software through a recommend & legal source's, as does everyone.

 

[bootneck02]

I have just received this email on the subject and here it is:-


Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game. You were heard.

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday. See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.

The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."

Tweet with us, shout on the internet with us, let's celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause


We're indebted to everyone who helped in the beginning of this movement -- you, and all the sites that went out on a limb to protest in November -- Boing Boing and Mozilla Foundation (and thank you Tumblr, 4chan)! And the grassroots groups -- Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, CDT, and many more.
#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form. But when they do, we'll be ready. Can you make a donation to Fight for the Future, to help us keep this fire going?

We changed the game this fall, and we're not gonna stop. $8, $20, every little bit helps.
13 million strong,
Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore... Fight for the Future!


P.S. China's internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:

In the New Yorker: "Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).
...
After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’"

#######
(press release is here: https://fightfortheftr.wordpress.com/press-releases/)

________________________________________

This email was sent to:


To unsubscribe, go to:
http://act.fightforthefuture.org/unsubscribe

 

[bootneck02]

P.S. I do not download music as I prefer to have as hard copy in case my hard drive goes down also I believe that the musicians and recording technicians deserve to be paid, but have no sympathy for the greedy record producers.

 

[TriplexDread]

Power too the people huh?

 

[bootneck02]

Not Half

 

[floppybootstomp]

I guess we can breathe easy for a while but rest assured the blue meanies will return with a revamped, rejigged and reworded proposal, they want to control what is basically the last bastion of true freedom people - the internet.

Freedom does come at a price - there are lots of loonies out there but all in all, overwhelmingly, the whole world wide web is packed with a zillion good things - all at your disposal for your knowledge.

The blue meanies would change this.

Interestingly, there are a lot of music artists who supported Megauploads and are against their closure. A lot of them are super rich already and just want to be heard.

 

[historian]

If these people have been misusing the internet and not paying copyright to the writers and producers of their interlectual property,surely thay deserve the full force of the law. It`s like someone selling stolen goods at a boot fair or pirated goods. Or am I being naive?
historian.

 

[TriplexDread]

Its not jsut about copyright mate. Theres a lot more too it than that

Its about freedom to use the net without being monitored etc

A lot of professional artists use Mega aswell and disagreed with the SOPA enforcement.

 

[floppybootstomp]

If these people have been misusing the internet and not paying copyright to the writers and producers of their interlectual property,surely thay deserve the full force of the law. It`s like someone selling stolen goods at a boot fair or pirated goods. Or am I being naive?
historian.

You're being naive. Sorry, but the proposed legislation went a lot deeper than just attempting to stop piracy, it would have effectively controlled our Internet and censored it in the way that Russia did and China still does.

One small example is that Youtube would be in a world of hurt if those bills had gone through. And as mentioned opposition to the proposed bills came from unexpected quarters, which was kinda refreshing.

 

[EvanDavis]

How many more of these bills are there going to be. SOPA, PIPA, NDAA (which was signed in by Obama ) now there is ACTA which has been going for a while. And who seems to be behind it all ? US government after world control. New World Order springs to mind.