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MegaUpload Fights Shutdown With Former Bill Clinton Attorney

bennettTwo days ago a massive operation took down MegaUpload, one of the world’s leading file-storage services.

Eight people we charged with criminal copyright infringement charges, and all files hosted on the site were pulled offline.

What follows now is an unprecedented court battle, one that could possibly change the future for many file-hosting sites and cloud hosting services.

Yesterday one of the “Mega” employees informed TorrentFreak that MegaUpload has hired top attorney Robert Bennett to lead the defense.

Bennett is best known for defending President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.

The New York attorney also represented other big names including Senator John McCain and President of the World Bank Group Paul Wolfowitz

“We intend to vigorously defend against these charges.” was Bennett’s only comment thus far, but fireworks can be expected in the weeks to come.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • Anon

    Big guns are out, and more sh*t about to fly than you could poke a stick at!
    Expose those corrupt lobbyists fella!

    • Mwhahaha

      IDK… I’m pretty fast at poking stuff with sticks

      • Sgkggjks

        I bet you are.

  • TelezarZ

    I hope this guy can get them out of this deep DEEP shit…

    • Anon

      If he does ‘get them out of this deep DEEP shit…’ he will have a fan club in the billions.

      • Niggerplease

        I f he was black he could pull an OJ

  • Egržvýd Chálobodor

    Megaupload must win, there is no other option.

    • Zack_lagace

      there really is no other option

  • Guest

    Lawyers… the necessary evil in our society.

    • asdasffgsadg

      You retard, without a solid legal system and people to understand it there would be no modern society to speak of. Most lawyers are dedicated professionals. It’s just that you only hear about the corrupt money-grabbers.

  • http://twitter.com/Warezweek Warezweek

    Will be much different than past cases like Groster, Napster… MU actually has money. Very unfair to seize some of their money upfront though, how can they get the best defense possible if the government steals their funds?

    • Rekrul

      Very unfair to seize some of their money upfront though, how can they get the best defense possible if the government steals their funds?

      The government doesn’t want them to have the best defense. In fact, the government, as well as the entertainment industry, would be overjoyed if they were completely broke and had to rely on an overworked, underpaid public defender.

    • US-GVT-WOW

      in the US your incentive would be … “you get 10% of our total revenue made” and you can go defend us. Say it is 10% the guy would get 17.5M USD in the event that they are not convicted. The US provides “incentives” for lawyers to take up this case even if no cash is shown, paid up, or given at the time of the seizure. Talking about corruption at its highest scale.

      MU vs. the US govt ===== who’s going to win? I know the answer

    • Kr0nZ

      normally, when your involved in questionable activities you would have already paid your lawyers retainer. Then after the case has been dealt with you would pay the lawyer what ever he need

  • Anon

    By hedging their bets and laying off some of the money for a legal retainer.
    This day was inevitable. I knew it. They did too; foresight…Good luck to them.

  • http://www.twitter.com/echoman74 echoman

    Lights up a blunts grabs popcorn all kinds of drinks in the fridge make yourselves at home this should be interesting. :)

  • Jinglebells

    Any lawyer will defend a company as such based on good will of payment after completion. Not to mention that a lot of lawyers work on commission of success eitherway… dont worry, money is the last problem right now.

  • Anon

    Not sure if I trust this guy, but then again, he’s a lawyer……why would I?

  • Johnnydingo1

    I’m barking at the moon, its good fun, ya wanna try it sometime!

    • Guest

      I would rather drink my own piss.

      • Johnnydingo1

        Have fun with that….Seeing as its only shit that comes out’a ya mouth.

        • Guest

          I can’t help being multi talented.

  • Socrates

    A corrupt government suing a legitimate business feels like Micheal Jackson is being sued again for being dead.

  • Linton

    The copyright industry needs to sue the Justice Dept to bring back Megaupload ASAP!

    No, wait, hear me out:

    Rightsholders are owed $500M in actual stolen money, but Megaupload only had $50M in the bank. However, as a going concern Megaupload is a money making MACHINE! Put the site back up promtly on its old domains, operated in trust on behalf whoever the wronged party turns out to have been. It may take 50 years of lawyering to figure out who this is, but quick! put the site back now before anyone reuploads the most popular 1% of content to 26 other filesharing sites…

    Now, obviously the prosecution will need the existing hard drives as evidence, but don’t worry, just make a copy and pop it on the internet. If you’re thinking that might be expensive, you couldn’t be more wrong! We all know that Megaupload didn’t provide any kind of useful service, that 100% of their revenues were derived from the theft of U.S. property, and that any monies paid to hosting providers were not really for services rendered but were merely being laundered. So clearly this won’t cost a dime.

    But what about all that piracy, you ask? Well, since the aim is to cash in on all those existing links, they don’t need to enable uploads. And they already have the complete database of compaints from rightsholders. Just show an abundance of caution (=complete disregard for fair and authorised use) and delete everything that matches a complained-about file hash. Remember, the aim here is to get something up and running to milk the public for cash, not to be fair and balanced or anything laughable like that. Perhaps they should also try some filename filtering – after all, if a rightsholder can utter the magical True Name of a file, it becomes rightfully theirs to destroy. But should they have to guess only 3 words from the name correctly, or 4? Ah, the difficulties of instituting a balanced copyright system are too much for me! In case there are any infringing files left, perhaps a Justice Department lawyer could monitor the server room, and the first time a given file was requested, she could decide whether or not it was legal. You might think that determining this instantly might be hard, but you’re forgetting that Megaupload makes users wait 45 seconds before the download commences.

    • Kr0nZ

      Whaaa???

      • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

        He is showing the insane thinking of some of the pro-copyright idiots.

        • http://twitter.com/HeatPhoenix Zacharia Rudge

          No! NO! IT’S BRILLIANT.

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  • HHH

    Is it just me or TF’s lower half comments page “disappear” after you upgraded your firefox?

  • http://www.webstatsart.com/ Webstats Art

    This is the first time I have read an article on Torrentfreak and I was quite impressed. http://whoisbid.hubpages.com/hub/MEGAUPLOAD-IS-SHUT-DOWN

  • NIGGERPLEASEINEEDPORN

    The Pron industry is hanging in the balance!

    • ImeanPorn

      I meant Porn!

  • GAYFAGGETFAGG

    I like Mediafire better anyway

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Mediafire had the limitation on the size of files that MegaUpload didn’t have. That’s why I preferred MegaUpload for sharing various things from freeware games to very old, no longer sold games.

  • Alyssa Blindy

    Here we go, hold on tight and do not get out of your seats. Keep your hands, feet, shoes, phones, and tails in the car.

  • http://twitter.com/opinion_union opinion_union

    MegaUpload…Mega huhuhu

  • Gloin
  • Anonymous

    That looks like its gonna be good ddue.

  • Louissaphire

    SOPA/PIPA aren’t even a law yet and look what the Watch Dogs of Crime are doing. Megaupload’s guys are in the middle of a political coup d’état (I consider the internet to be a government of its own) to show how much power, control and fear the federal government can instill. Just read the indictment, there is a strong undercurrent that suggests that Megauploads crew are pornographers, pedophiles, mobsters, low rent con artists, extortionists, and are dangerous to the very fabric of our society. There is a lot of monetary figures thrown around as well making it seem more like its about money than anything else. Filesonic just days later tucked its tail between its legs and folded its poker hand in fear that the Dogs are coming for them next. I hear that they are shredding files and dumping data bases like mad men. All over the net there are now millions of dead links. And nobody gives a rats ass to anybody’s legitimate files ether.

    If you don’t want to buy a book you go to a library and read it for free. If you don’t need the whole book just photocopy the pages you need, because when has any governmental body shut down and seized any Libraries or photocopy makers. You can rent, borrow, buy used or lease a car or truck without prior permission from any manufacture of cars or trucks. Hell, they often encourage modifications of their products.You can go to a museum and see great works of art for free or nearly free without first obtaining permission to view or photograph such works. You ever hear of Beethoven’s descendants bitching about licensing fees and copyrights? Well they will be cause the laws are changing in the public domain sector too!

    Everyone wants their slice of pie – and everybody else’s too.The entertainment industry in America claims that piracy has cost them $500 Million (really? just how did you come up that number? Its not like the pirates are keeping books you know. Has anyone ever noticed how the number changes all the time?), yet ignores the much more provable fact the major studios last year alone lost three times that by releasing mediocre or really crappy products. I don’t think piracy is the problem – it is a crappy business model that doesn’t work with the real world is. Why keep repackaging over and over the same crap and expect everyone to pay top dollar for it? You’ve invited piracy. Begged for it. Does anyone need six slightly different choices of the same movie, only to have four of them heavily discounted or discontinued in six months when an entirely different set of choices are available at a higher price? What about the tons of films and music from the past just sitting in cold storage doing nothing but rotting because some company cannot sell enough to make a few million dollars off from one product – nobody gets to experiences these these products, ever? One would think the copyright owner or holder would have to factually prove they are losing money by the product in question being available for free. I mean HOW could ANYONE LOSE money on a product hasn’t made any money for years or have been made available in years? How does a fuzzy looking, crappy sounding camera rip of the latest Hollywood Blockbuster in theaters even compete with the theater experience? It doesn’t. The studios are slowly going broke like they did in the early seventies except this time they have found a new way to recoup their loses ten fold. Try by not making every other film on a $40 – $80 million dollar budget. That might help. There is a lot of different things that can be done with their products but it is just easier not to be innovative.

    Author Ayan Rand once wrote in the late 1950′s that the only true power governments have (outside of what its people give it) lies in in solely in the area of crime and punishment. So the objective is then is to create numerous laws, rules and regulations that are vague and ambiguous – that cannot be fully observed, enforced or understood by most. Thereby you can effectively label anyone a criminal and do whatever you want to them. Then just sit back and cash in on the “guilty” person’s guilt. And the final insult to injury want to know what they did with all those assets they confiscated? Why they put it in an INTEREST BEARING account until the court can dispose of the case. That’s right the feds are going to make something off this one way or another.

  • Ball Juggler

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  • Lolouder

    At least MU didn’t 100,000 kids in Iraq…

    Fucking criminals are running the USA.

  • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

    “Megaupload’s US attorney, Ira Rothken, has a succinct description of the US government case against his client: “wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.”

    The week has been a busy one for Rothken, a San Francisco Internet law attorney who has previously represented sites like isoHunt and video game studios like Pandemic. …”
    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/were-just-like-youtube-megaupload-lawyer-tells-ars.ars

  • Jason

    The truth is in the below link, thanks DoJ for illegally destroying our files on Thursday:

    http://pastebin.com/iquHfjBa

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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