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MegaUpload Users Plan to Sue the FBI over Lost Files

megaIn most reports following the MegaUpload shutdown, the site is exclusively portrayed as a piracy haven.

However, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people used the site to share research data, work documents, personal video collections.

As of today, these people are still unsure whether they will ever get their personal belongings back.

In a response, Pirate Parties worldwide have started to make a list of all the people affected by the raids, and they are planning to file an official complaint against the US authorities.

“The widespread damage caused by the sudden closure of Megaupload is unjustified and completely disproportionate to the aim intended,” they announce.

“For this reason Pirates of Catalonia, in collaboration with Pirate Parties International and other Pirate Parties, have begun investigating these potential breaches of law and will facilitate submission of complaints against the US authorities in as many countries as possible, to ensure a positive and just result.”

“This initiative is a starting point for legitimate internet users to help defend themselves from the legal abuses promoted by those wishing to aggressively lock away cultural materials for their own financial gain.”

Legal experts and citizen rights groups have taken an interest in the issue as well, TorrentFreak learned. The Pirate Parties are the first to make an inventory of the damage, but not the last.

MegaUpload users who want to join in on the action can do so here.

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
  • Darkwiz666

    HA! FBI cowboys gonna get it good, unless they play the red-tape card to slow people down…not every single file in that site was infringing, so they had no reason to shut it all down.

    • Standingo

      if by “gonna get it good” you mean hand some files back, then yes. But I would reserve that phrase for something more grandiose unless you’re all bout hyperbole

      • Poop

        dude. shut the fuck up

        • Troll

          I would like to slow clap to that.

        • FakeEmail

          Why, because he made a perfectly valid point? Dude, wise the fuck up.

      • http://www.facebook.com/jasonofcompsci Jason Mitchell

        If by get it good you mean have the tax payer pay off the bill. This is part of the problem. The government is never responsible for its doings. We take a hit from their thoughtlessness and the only recourse is to charge ourselves. Mean while the people who produce this crap policy have no incentive to correct it so this goes on.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.htm…

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488018464 Chad Watterson

          Yea I honestly think I am more pissed then the people that lost data, We the people of the United States are the ones that will now have to pay the legal fees because of Obama helping out his buddies stay on top of the music distribution racket. They all knew Megabox was poised to capture a large percentage of the 50 million daily visitors and Megabox would have put a serious hurt on companies like apple with iTunes and the record companies because those 1% pricks don’t get all the money, the artists would have gotten a larger percent, they said well Megavideo and Megaupload have pirated stuffs, lets just use that as an excuse even though Kim dotcom does not know whats there and removes what he finds. (which we all know is true we have all gone to watch a video or download something and it say “removed due to copyright infringement”) So basically all this ILLEGAL activity perpetrated by my government was to save the music industry’s ass because they make money by screwing the artists and now a shitload of people are going to sue the FBI and we have to pay for it… thanks Obama you crooked piece of shit!

        • dude

          Don’t forget to vote Republicans or Democrats in next election because they both have the answers for all of this lol. If it were me, I’d vote for someone else besides these two creep parties that got used to power and tax payers money.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

        site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

      • Anon

        Really?

      • Anon

        Yes, shallow and pedantic

    • Anonymous

      the US is way beyond any law at this point, I doubt anything will come of this.

      • AaronD12

        Not only are they “above the law”… they ARE the law! Oh, sorry… Judge Dredd flashback.

        Isn’t it impossible to sue the US Federal Government? You can sue at the state level and lower, but not the feds.

        • Gjtyfjxtjrtjrtj

          you can sue the president if you want. This is supposed to be America. No one is supposed to be above the law. remember richard nixon.

        • Stevo

          I AM THE LAW!

        • Biggiesmalls

          No, the guy who was originally charged with the Anthrax attach (Hatfeild??) sued the FBI and won 5 Million dollars.

        • Chas

          It is quite possible to sue the US Government. The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1948 allows individuals to sue the US Government for loss or harm.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act

        • Picasro

          You can sue anyone in America for any reason. Granted, you will most likely not win if you sue someone random for a random reason.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.htm…

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

        • Davidhoffman6692

          The USA federal agencies can be challenged in USA federal courts. Some federal judges will be somewhat aggressive in asking what kind of process can be put into place for legal users of MegaUpload to get access to their files.

          In the future I think cloud storage users will be required to buy the physical hard drives or server rack of hard drives. The cloud service provider could then physically and electronically label the drive or server rack as the private property of Real World Legal Name Person or Corporation, Located at Real World Physical Address or Mailing Address. The USA Federal agencies would have a more difficult time doing massive shutdowns if it can be shown that companies like MegaUpload are only providing communication connection, electrical, and environmental services to keep the drives accessible. Yes, this is a much higher upfront cost to cloud users, but it would help establish that the investigators need to focus on the actual particular drive owners who are copyright infringers and only get warrants to access those particular physical hard drives. With a hot plug and play drive system, the law enforcement agencies would only take physical possession of those particular hard drives listed on the warrant. The rest of the users would be undisturbed.

        • Redhook

          You can sue the U.S. Federal Government for this sort of thing under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act

        • Firant

          What you’re referring to is Sovreign Immunity — and yes, it is a blanket bar to law suits against the federal government — however, the U.S. Congress (in its infinite wisdom) has drafted several laws that allow you to sue both the government and specific law enforcement agents (no, not the attorneys general, sorry) when they breach your constitutional rights.

          Won’t go anywhere for other reasons — i.e. the FBI didn’t actually destroy the data, those corporations are going to do so. Sure it’s a result of the FBI taking all of Megaupload’s money away — but its still abstract enough to protect them. Now, filing in some of the international and EU courts might result in an interesting result.

          Again, probably not dangerous to the US, but interesting.

        • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

          You gotta love Judge Dredd! The FBI, however, you don’t gotta love them…

          It’s not completely impossible to sue the US Federal Government, though very nearly so. They have Governmental Immunity, a legacy from the autocratic monarchs, specifically the English Common Law.

          Not authoritative or complete, but as usual a starting point if you want to know more:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States

          Essentially, this means that you can’t sue the government, unless the government gives you permission. So, good luck with that…

          It’s not entirely doom and gloom, though. There are already some permanent waivers in place, mainly through the Federal Tort Claims Act. If you can get the judge to agree that it applies in your case, you can sue.

          Oh, yeah, state governments also have immunity.

      • no one

        They are actually persuing a case of legitimit piracy. Look up some figures on the value of copyrighted software that people have downloaded for free off megaupload and you might realize why the FBI deems it so important to shut down the site.

        • You are an idiot

          That is completely besides the point. Sure there was piracy going on, but many people used MegaUpload for legitimate file sharing, and those files are now gone. Guess who is accountable? The US government.

        • Razzeka

          Just an fyi for you, piracy “loss” is a totally bullshit number. For instance, when figuring out how much a movie lost, they add together the cost of the ticket to go see it and the cost of buying the DVD (or blu-ray or whatever). That’s how the numbers get so incredibly high. It’s a bullshit math and they’re trying to rip people off even when they’re suing them.

          Not to mention, piracy isn’t technically “theft”. When you steal something from a store, they lose that inventory, it costs them money to replace the object and they no longer have it. When you download something, nobody gets anything taken from them. The fact that they treat it as theft of a physical object is absolutely ridiculous.

        • no one

          This is true, but how would you like it if you wrote a program that got cracked and put on megaupload to download? Also, it’s megaupload’s responsibility to filter their sites and prevent people from using it illegally. If they fail to do this, they are breaking the law. They may not be actually posting the software, but they are facilitating the illegal downloads. It does suck that people lost files, but I know that at least some of the files were recovered/saved elsewhere. Plus, people were downloading software that cost around $900 for free with megaupload. The site didn’t do an adequate job of making sure what went on on their site was legal, and for that it got taken down.

        • no one

          WTF do u mean it’s not theft??!! Have you ever heard of theft of intellectual property?? Did you think that meant someone drilled into someone else’s head and litterally stole the idea from them physically?? No, many of the illegal software downloads fit the description of theft of intellectual property.

        • Childofbodom

          Piracy is theft. As When you pirate something ya you dont steal it from anyone. what you do do is Not Buy the DvD or Watch it in theaters causing sales for that item to be severly reduced. One person pirating is not a big deal but the amount of people pirating items is MASSIVE and its causing a giant financial drop in Movie/Gaming/Music sales.

        • LOLOLOLOL

          That’s not really theft. Is it theft if I break in your house and use your microwave to cook some ramen? No, I don’t believe it is. The other point you’re missing on is that the only people missing money is the CEO’s of the major corporations that own the copyrights, not the actual people that produce the content.

        • LOLOLOLOL

          To make the above post even better, is it stealing if I use the 7-11 microwave to cook my ramen instead of buying one?

        • Dynamite970

          For those claiming that MegaUpload should be charged for the ‘theft’ of copyrighted materials which was enabled by their site. Ask the question, do you hold the car manufacturer liable as an accessory if someone uses their brand of vehicle as a getaway car in a bank robbery? If you find that acceptable, then do you force them to take all their vehicles off the road?

          As for the theft of games/movies/music asinine argument. Take a look at the “pay what you want” digital distribution model, from indie game bundles to radio head albums there seems to be an awful lot of willing customers. I pirate games to demo them and purchase full versions of the ones worth my time, I download movies and if I enjoy them I purchase DVD’s to add to my collection, and I download albums which if I like I buy concert tickets/cd’s/merch.

          The US governments blatant attempts to control media on behalf of the upper class corporation owning ‘old dogs’ has you fooled. Open your eyes, the light is bright but it’s also warm and sunny here in reality.

        • Dynamite970

          For those claiming that MegaUpload should be charged for the ‘theft’ of copyrighted materials which was enabled by their site. Ask the question, do you hold the car manufacturer liable as an accessory if someone uses their brand of vehicle as a getaway car in a bank robbery? If you find that acceptable, then do you force them to take all their vehicles off the road?

          As for the theft of games/movies/music asinine argument. Take a look at the “pay what you want” digital distribution model, from indie game bundles to radio head albums there seems to be an awful lot of willing customers. I pirate games to demo them and purchase full versions of the ones worth my time, I download movies and if I enjoy them I purchase DVD’s to add to my collection, and I download albums which if I like I buy concert tickets/cd’s/merch.

          The US governments blatant attempts to control media on behalf of the upper class corporation owning ‘old dogs’ has you fooled. Open your eyes, the light is bright but it’s also warm and sunny here in reality.

        • no one

          Megaupload has the power to prevent the theft of the materials, car companies can’t do that. There is a major difference. I’m sure that if there was a dramatic increase in the number of Ford cars used as getaway vehicles, Ford would do something to prevent it. Megaupload is guilty of seeding the download of illegal material.

        • no one

          Also, if you download a demo of a game then that is fine. In fact, many games have free versions of themselves available for free download on their site to try to entice you to buy the full version. Download a product that is freely distrubuted by the owner is completely fine, but downloading the full version, even if you intend to pay for it later, is not.

        • STFU

          If I borrow a book from a library to read once instead of buying a copy, am I stealing from the author?

        • Zacker150

          Yes those numbers are made up by HOLLYWOOD. That’s why they are total bullshit. In fact, some experts think that the number is negative. That’s right. Piracy is GAINING them money.

        • Anonymous

          this is as if the DEA came and burnt your house down without any warning because all your neighbors are drug dealers. Not everybody was breaking the law, there must have been loads and loads of legitimate files there.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.htm…

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488018464 Chad Watterson

          The problem there is they are going after the people that own megavideo/megaupload/megabox like they are the ones who are doing the piracy and that is the fundamental problem, I can’t wait to see how they are going to charge him with this because it’s not like they can monitor 50 million accesses a day and know what is in every single zip/avi/mp3/etc plus megavideo was active about removing illegal content, why do you think that Kim dotcom was smiling in his photos, because he knows he gets all his stuff back and he gets to sue once he beats it, I think he actually has a good chance at beating this too!

        • Thoth

          @no one You say “Also, it’s megaupload’s responsibility to filter their sites and prevent people from using it illegally. If they fail to do this, they are breaking the law.” First, this is not correct. The DMCA offers a safe harbor provision if sites such as Megaupload remove copyrighted content when served with a DMCA takedown notice. Time-Warner alone had some 5000 such takedown notices available per day. Sites are NOT responsible to proactively monitor what users post. Instead, copyright holders are responsible to monitor sites and serve takedown notices if they see a violation.

          Second, if what you say was true, why aren’t ISPs also required to filter everything as well, and not permit transfer of copyrighted content? The answer is because it’s insane, even with a fixed list of known-copyrighted material, to expect an ISP to monitor and censor that, much less monitor and filter anything that happens to be copyrighted. How would an ISP, or a site, know whether the copying happened to be legal in that case (me transferring my own files to Megaupload for later download by myself, for example)?

        • http://twitter.com/erikqj Erik Q.J.

          Childofbodom, you wrote: “its causing a giant financial drop in Movie/Gaming/Music sales”

          Nice theory, but completely wrong. On the contrary, sales are up. What the copyright holders are arguing is that the sales should have been even more up. However, they’ve failed miserably in documenting that in any peer reviewed and replicable manner (which is the standard for all serious research). Again it’s the contrary. Serious research shows the opposite: Without “piracy”, the sales would be lower than they are.

          In the long run file sharing will destroy the music labels in their current form, because the artists will become independent of their marketing service. However, going after a technology because it will make you obsolete is absurd. It’s like a horse breeder going after the automobile industry. An obsolete industry is supposed to go under. Not that I have anything against horses, mind you.

          There will be a similar effect in movies and games, as independent developers and movie makers will have a much more level playing field. It’s unlikely to be to the same extent, though, since movies and games are much more complex productions. Still, there’s no doubt that they will have to make major adjustments to their business models.

      • GizaDog

        The US does not think this. They want control of everything.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

          site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488018464 Chad Watterson

          The US Government you mean, I’m american and i totally disagree with what our government is doing. I’m not alone either! Obama will not win the next election because of the lies and the wars and illegal activities he’s done. my only hope is that we don’t get another muppet dictator :/

      • Rohe

        If money is a motivator to shut it down, there will be people who want to make money out wrongdoings. In theory, the government has unlimited pockets when it comes to fining them. Usually, they don’t try to make such brash errors that they are required to pay huge fines.

        But this is different. The same greed is available on both sides of the fence. Since the fall down of Wallstreet, I can see lawyers looking at the facts and seeing a potential windfall. Disrupting services without due process etc.

        This will take years to sort out. And some want some big plate of dough while they are doing it.

      • Scott

        They only think they are

      • Hollywood-exorcist

        exactly!
        You are free to do as we tell you!!
        Sincerely -your government

    • Teejones1766

      Oh, so you mean all those people are suing because they had COPYRIGHTS on their material?

      LOL.

      • snakeboy666

        No… They are suing because personal files may have been deleted without their say. Copyright laws had NOTHING to do with it.

      • no one

        You do know that despite all that, Megaupload contributed a lot to copyright infringement and stuff like that. I think they should be allowed to start back up, but they need a much more rigorous screening process on what you are allowed to upload.

        • no one

          Also, the files weren’t necisarily deleted.

        • Gareth Roberts

          That’s precisely the issue here, there is no way to ‘screen’ content from millions of users. You can take it down after someone has clicked that its been uploaded but you can’t stop it going up.

        • no one

          What about Youtube? People post many more video files and they remove a lot of them because of copyright infringement. There are some of them that are still there, but they definitely do a much better job then megaupload, who censors virtually none of the downloads.

        • http://www.facebook.com/billyup Jesse Jones

          Might as well blame google, too. While you’re at it blame Microsoft and Apple for facilitating the pirates with their OSs.

        • Jak

          Something people don’t consider is the difficulty of screening much of this material. The site is based upon uploading content and storing it, that’s all. This isn’t to say they couldn’t have done a better job – they most certainly could have – but ANY site that provides this type of service will be unable to go through and scan through thousands of compressed, password-protected archives named “123.rar” etc. So then the issue becomes, is the service itself illegal simply for being difficult to regulate? It’s not likely that ANY service like this could be regulated to the point where there wouldn’t be copyrighted material. Even if Megaupload comes back and starts removing all the files named “(insert movie title).dvdrip.avi”, there’s still the potential for abuse in the aforementioned method.

          The issue then becomes, is it worth the amount of taxpayer money going into prosecuting this issue in order to prevent some losses in revenue for the various multibillion dollar companies that produce the electronic media. I’m not really arguing for either side, but I think it’s a much more complicated issue than most people give credit to. Sure you can say “just regulate it better” but the truth of the matter is that it’s a service that doesn’t lend itself to being regulated easily, and if it continues to run you must assume there will be some abuses. So perhaps it isn’t worth the money to police such a system and it should be restricted in the US, but then you run into the question of how much power should the government have to regulate everyday life?

          Personally, I don’t think that the filesharing sites are the sole problem. I believe they facilitate the spread of illegal material, but so do various other outlets, all of which are available, and many of which are extremely difficult to stop. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of the internet around the world makes policing extremely difficult, and in the end it will take a whole lot of effort to do very little to assuage the problem: People who are intent on getting their programs for free will continue to do so, even if the method has to change. In the end, I don’t think that the government should have the level of control that the recent proposals (SOPA/PIPA) would allow, and I don’t think that any sort of rational level of regulation will prevent the piracy. I believe that it SHOULD continue to be illegal, as it would be unfair to the producers themselves if it weren’t, and steps SHOULD be taken to punish those who are providing this media (i.e. require filesharing sites to keep logs of who uploads what; steps can also be taken to circumvent proxies that would obscure uploaders) in order to keep it’s prevalence down, but they SHOULDN’T spend an undo amount of taxpayer money on something that is only directly beneficial to some of the wealthiest people in America.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488018464 Chad Watterson

          i agree no one, i think there should be ACCOUNTS on megavideo/upload/box then the people that do wrong are truly held accountable. Granted you still can not screen 50 million plus users daily but when something is found they can track it back to the source…

        • Tsavory

          I am replying to this
          “What about Youtube? People post many more video files and they remove a lot of them because of copyright infringement. There are some of them that are still there, but they definitely do a much better job then megaupload, who censors virtually none of the downloads.”

          Youtube is able to do this better because all files uploaded to them are of certain formats .mov .flv .mp4 and so on the one thing they all have in common is that once uploaded they all become .flv for resolutions that the original file was not uploaded in they can scan the flv for certain characteristics with contentID http://www.youtube.com/t/contentid there is no system that can scan these other types of files.
          I know what the next question is why not, well one there are just to many different types and each type would need it own database and you can’t open password protected or encrypted files to scan them but I am sure that if you are able to build a system that could without using too much of a the systems resource you can make a killing.

      • Drak

        I had videos I made of my daughter’s music concerts, plus sound files of my original music so … yes … we did own the copyrights. (Naturally they weren’t the only copies, but it’s the principle of the thing).

        • no one

          If they were the only copies, I have to imagine that the FBI didn’t delete all the data in the computers. They need all the files as evidence if they want to convict the people at megaupload. It is very likely that people will end up getting the files that were legally uploaded back.

    • no one

      Are you retarded? They actually did have a good reason to shut the whole site down. If they didn’t shut it down, people would probably still be uploading pirated software to it right now. If megaupload does go back up, they need to create some major restrictions on what people are allowed to upload to the site.

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TTNO2IQZ7DR3QQRSQEEGY6XQUM Tom

        its impossible to enforce millions of files with the limited resources they get. They didnt make moey from the pirated software. THey offered a dropbox that people abused. Go after the offenders not the site. What is so difficult about that concept?

        • Davidhoffman6692

          They made money from the storage, movement and copying of files, both non-infringing and infringing. That was the basic business model. The main owner may have ended up much wealthier than many other cloud service owners by his exact business practices, but the basic service concept is the same. Many of the other similar businesses are probably a lot duller than MegaUpload and may request users to have stricter access controls over file usage. I can imagine industrial product designers would have multiple layered password protected compartmentalized access to design and engineering files that need to be shared with collaborators globally.

      • Rui

        you should shut up your fucking mouth, i doubt a son of a bitch like you nevewr downloaded even one mp3 in your entire fucking life.

        • no one

          I hope to god you don’t have an account on this site, because if you do, you basically just admitted you download pirated software. I have seen tons of posts on this site that literally say they download pirated shit, and this is one of the first things that shows up in google when you search this topic. Better watch your back next time you try to steal a game, a movie, or one of your mp3′s.

          P.S. Of course i’ve downloaded an mp3 you fucking numbskull. Who hasn’t? the only difference is I support the artists who make the music by buying it.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488018464 Chad Watterson

          say it with me now.. .WOOOOSAAAAAAHHHHH WOOOOOOSSAAAAAAHHHHHH

          feel better? now calm down and come back and comment when your less angry :/

      • http://facebook.com/Brent.Taylor007 Brent Taylor

        Ok so if I wanted to I could upload a file named summerpics.rar; Now in that Rar I have a file named 2011_Beautiful.JJJ. In reality that file is The_green_mile.avi, but since I renamed the extension to .JJJ there is no way a scanner can tell what that file is since it does not contain a valid extension. So, how can companies protect against this?

        • Rohe

          First, if you don’t add passwords/cryptography, there are tools that can dissect your files until they know whats in there. Just renaming will not do the trick. Try that with a virus and your favorite virusscanner ;)

          There are specialized companies, who send out deletion requests to file lockers. Many react to that and thats how it has to be. It takes less than a month to write a scanner for 100s of blogs. There where independent movies that where quite hard to find as a rip because all the links where dead. It isn’t really hard if you really want to.

          I even believe that many companies have seen now, that Torrent is more likely a 0-day activity (where seeds are gone after 7 days tops) and it doesn’t harm as much as cyber lockers that never delete a file and never react to deletion requests.

          I want to see some legal questions answered to the MU downfall. This went way to smooth in my eyes, and it never works that way ever.

        • Noemail

          This is at Rohe. In reality no they cannot know what it is with 100% accuracy with a scanner. Every file just boils down to bytes of data, if you knew the machine code of your computer well enough you could potentially make a text document that you could use ascii characters to write an executable (the work would be tremendous). The reason virus scanners work is because they are looking for chunks of a known program or specific changes to a system or program (why do you think you get false positives sometimes with virus scanners?). So no there is no 100% fullproof way to tell what a random extension file is, you can make a guess that it is an AVI and decode it some but unless someone is watching the decoded video the computer doesn’t know if its copyrighted material or not.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=554203929 Kyle Ray Spier

        No, no they shouldn’t, megaupload made it easier to store files, and share files with each other online. Something that should be (and technically is) legal because our computers have plenty of files that aren’t copyrighted. images we take, videos we record, songs we helped our friends composed. you name it, and megaupload was being used for this.

        It wasn’t a small minority using it legitimately either. I’ve uploaded sets of pics i took to it, video files I recorded of siblings playing, and what not. Look at dan bull, all of his music he made he uploaded to megaupload and put a link in the description of his YouTube videos. Dave Days on youtube used to do the same. The only restriction they need to put up is no copyrighted content without the approval of the copyright owner.

        As for enforcement. Should they have to proactively enforce this? What happens when someone owns the content they are uploading? What happens when a cover song that is legal under fair use is uploaded, and the person reviewing content doesn’t know the song well enough to know its a cover.

        And remember, until said file’s link is given out to other people no copy right laws have been violated. No one can download with a link, and search places can’t index the link unless its been posted. Having the content on the servers does not violate copy right law. MU provides a service, and they have marketed their service as also being a backup service.

        • Davidhoffman6692

          IF the intercepted e-mails and other electronic messages are as indicated by the indictment, then MegaUploads owners and employees were using the MegaUpload equipment to engage in copyright infringement. So they alone could have caused the investigation by their careless use of the corporation’s physical equipment, That the legal non-infringing customers ended up getting locked out of their files because of that behavior is aggravating. But arrogant corporation owners, executives, and employees have done similar things in other industries. Entire employee pension plans have been reduced to a tiny fraction of their original value after being raided by corporate executives for some scheme to boost stock prices or “grow the company”. So the lower level retirees take up jobs as greeters and clerks to make up for some of the lost pension money, when they would have been participating in more enjoyable retirement pursuits. ENRON was a great example of this.

      • Notme

        Do you really think there are no other sites where content can be downloaded? Taking MU down only stops one thing….. It stops people from downloading from MU. It does not stop file sharing. MU was only one place of many.

      • Kim Dotcom

        Quote: “Better watch your back…”

        Or what? Send in your fbi to terrorize our [women/children/grandmas/insert etc]? :D

        mafiaa paid troll eh?

      • Hasalafar

        Please, Shut the fuck up. You’re an idiot for taking the side of the billion dollar company CEO’s who aren’t going to lose that much money, what are you? Fucking stupid is what you are. Shut the fuck up please.

      • Guest

        If you had a legitimate point, you wouldn’t need to bracket it in ad hominem.

      • Disgruntled US User

        How do you monitor every locker in every gym and bus station in a region to make sure that people are not putting illegal items in there and passing the key (or combination) around?

        With encrypted archive files, which can be REQUIRED for health care information in the USA and many other countries, being used for legitimate business purposes, the legitimacy of files cannot be guaranteed without potentially violating privacy rules set by the SAME government. Granted the chances of any health information being stored on MegaUpload are small, but similar applies to any file that people want to keep confidential.

        There is virtually no way for a drop box provider to control what is uploaded. They can ONLY be reactive, which they have been.

        As one of the users who has LOST ACCESS to files I LEGALLY OWN and can LEGALLY share (about 500MB of digital photographs of a friend’s wedding, to be precise), I agree with the people in this argument. Even though I have the files still, I can no longer easily provide them to the couple. Now, why am I being punished because someone else misused the service?

        If they had cared about the LEGITIMATE business involved, the takedown could have just stopped all uploads, and stopped downloads without logging into the account.

        Another example:
        Since there are known drug deals in my neighborhood, the police stop ALL access to the neighborhood INDEFINITELY, and do not even let the non-drug people go to their own home for ANY reason. Is it my fault that one or more of my neighbors, who I probably don’t even know, is a drug dealer? Or is it a case of using a sledgehammer to drive a nail to hang a picture?

      • supernautus

        Oh you mean as opposed to the same people still doing exactly the same thing on other such sites, yeah, they really stopped them. Megaupload is known to take down infringing material when they find it, often the files themselves have titles which do not relate to the title of the item being downloaded, which increases the difficulty of finding it. Meanwhile, the musicians who were making money by putting up their own material to receive money for masses of downloads lose their revenue stream. Meanwhile corporations who stored very important data on megaupload are now without their files, and if rumors are to be believed, those files are going to be deleted without the option for legitimate files to be retrieved.

      • MegaDownload

        Talk about retarded…

        You are driving down the road at 90 mph, you are tweeting about how you are doing 90 mph while picking your nose, suddenly you smash into the back of a stopped car and kill all the passengers… do you blame the car you are driving ? the stopped car ? the dead people for being in the car ? the road perhaps ? your phone ? network provider ? your nose ?
        Or the moron that upon receiving a drivers license agreed to abide by all traffic laws, especially when cars were being manufactured, the manufacturers had no idea that ‘hands free’ to most translated as no phone attached to ear….. no it implies no phone attached to hand !
        You get my point ? The internet facilitates billions upon billions of financial gain through illegal means every year, lets shut it all down ? Megaupload (the spam crap site that it was) at every request removed copyright infringing material on a daily basis as was required by law. They had a ToS that users agreed to, and as such removed liability for what was stored on their servers. The curious thing about it all is that there has been no mention of the FBI hunting down the users that stored the alleged pirated material… oh smells like MPAA are back at it again… But i digress… I’m more interested in how a medium such as skype allowed access to its servers for monitoring of calls between the staff of MegaUpload… you can transfer files between multiple users in Skype, perhaps we should be arresting them for not filtering content too ?

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

      site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.htm…

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

      site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.htm…

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

      site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

    • Dr Bellamy

      The world should boycott buying ALL media that is produced by the aggressive companies behind these actions.

    • Paulstewart

      You store files on an illegal site, then complain the site is taken down. LOL
      “This crack dealer had my Aspirins and the police took them and threw them away. So I’m going to sue the police.” LOL LOL LOL

      • supernautus.

        except it wasn’t an “illegal” site, it was one of the top ten file storage sites for businesses across the world. It was used by musicians to present their original material directly to their fans whilst making them money due to the volume of downloads. It was used for a large number of legitimate reasons. And then there were those committing piracy, whose files were taken down from the service as soon as they were found. By all means, believe a government that is known to lie to its people.

    • Anonymous

      it’s not the FBI cowboys, it’s the MPAA and RIAA hired cowboys.

  • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

    I posted this advice and strategy a week ago – glad to see folks are now catching onto the claim for damages against the US government.

    Go for it guys – regardless of how small or even valueless your u/l’s to Mega may seem.

    • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

      Doesn’t matter what any1 had in Mega. An important service with plenty of legal uses was shut down with no due process and no real charges. The US need to be severely punished for abusing their power.

      • Anonymous

        not gonna happen.
        there are no happy endings in the real world, in the real world the bad guys win.

      • Anonymous

        not gonna happen.
        there are no happy endings in the real world, in the real world the bad guys win.

        • Drak

          Well, there certainly won’t be any happy ending with that attitude … revolutions HAVE been won by the good guys — but they weren’t wimps and whiners.

      • http://www.facebook.com/Amak1131 Samuel Anderson

        If foreign nations would stop bending over to us and take a stand, things may change. Until then, we will continue to abuse our power.

      • no one

        That is true, yet just because it has “plenty of legal uses” doesn’t mean that it isn’t also used for illegal things. Tons of people uploaded things illegally to the megaupload servers, and many copy-writed programs were stolen. A lot of people don’t think of downloading games and movies illegaly as stealing because it doesn’t have the same generalized image as physically taking someones property. Yet nevertheless, a lot of hard work was spent creating those things and the people who did make them are getting ripped off. This also played a large role in the music industry.

        • http://www.thefiretree.com/ Joe144

          As a musician I am in complete support for megaupload, to have a song shared is great for your business, it brings people to your live shows which is your product. Your song is only your business card in the digital age. so if siting back and trying to sell business cards in your fancy pad is not working any more, maybe you should get out of your house and do some work. This is just more protecting the rich in any of their chosen fields. There are so many more important thing that need to be addressed on a global scale before we spend more money protecting the rich

        • Tobo

          Just because something is being used for illegal things doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Using your logic, guns should be illegal because they are frequently used to shoot people, yet it is legal to own even assault rifles in some states. Should the FBI be shutting down gun manufacturers?

        • Davidhofffman6692

          To: Joe144
          Why should a musician have to do live shows to be compensated for their work? If they are living in the remote regions of Siberia, how much income are they going to get from live shows? They can have their work copied 1 million times without any compensation from the copiers. I think their is a better method. A lower cost system similar to iTunes would help. Instead of a dollar per song it might be a dime per song. Then 1 million copies might be $100, 000. Subtract costs to provide server hosting, marketing, office and travel expenses, and recording studio time and they might net $10,000 per song.

        • Tomblata656

          Shut The Fuck Up holy shit who cares if you download stuff off a site? my god seriously? if I want to download something im gonna ok??? and im sure your bullshit hasen’t influenced anyone and it never will. theres plenty more of these kinda sites so fuck off. :D

      • Scuba

        Actually there was due process and they spent months collecting evidence. The owners of mega upload were paying for pirated material and using it as their personal pirated server.

    • FBI-IS-LULLING

      want to see how the US govt is going to pay people back. All they will do is stick their nose in the air and push you to the floor so you have no say.

      • Anonymous

        they wont and US is still in debt :) they need to show their power and muscling in the internet and have war with the general public

        • Jbuohdoe

          that must be sad

  • http://twitter.com/Aranjedeath Jacob Taylor

    Dude, that’s fucking pro. Seriously. Props to the Pirate Parties.

  • http://kawangeek.com/ EddyGeek

    interesting to see how it end.. power to the people!

    • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

      This may be some what of a surprise (rather than a shocker) but YOU are “the people” and all it takes is a quick email to local MP to say that the USA (plus NZ and other Countries too btw) was naughty to do this to the Megaupload folks, whilst depriving 15 million Members of their lawful service and original works.

      See how easy it is to be a power, an influence AND a be member of “the people” too?
      :)

      • http://twitter.com/arron62 arron

        15 million?
        mega had 180+ million users

        • Goblom

          1 billion + actually

        • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

          Oops, my bad! Thanks arron :)

      • Drak

        Indeed! People power may have stopped SOPA/PIPA … if you don’t try, you can’t win.

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  • Pantalon

    If I was in the same position as the affected users, I’m not sure I would want to be represented by “pirate” parties.

    • Oli

      Hey, you should be glad SOMEONE’s supporting you. If it wasn’t the Pirate Parties, it would be who, exactly?

      Damn straight, no-one. Stop being ungrateful. Also, try reading up on them before you dismiss their help – http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/20/why-the-name-pirate-party/

      (Yes, I know you said ‘if you were in their position..’ but that still means you don’t appreciate them)

      • guest

        I just wish they wouldn’t call themselves “pirate parties”, it seems to be a good way to lose credibility before they even do anything. Why they don’t call themselves “internet freedom” parties I’ll never know.

        • Faken1

          Start an internet freedom party then, nobody is stopping you, and hell… I’ll join.

        • Guest

          Look at it this way. It sounds a lot more credible than “Lawyer.”

    • Anonymous

      or you wont be in a similar position in the future!

    • Guest

      Tosser.

    • Kr0nZ

      Freedom is illegal if you want freedom you have to pirate it, hence pirate party (fighting for your freedom)

    • http://www.facebook.com/newton.antony Newton Antony

      “pirate” parties….this org. will be taken seriously
      /sarcasm

  • http://twitter.com/Warezweek Warezweek

    Was waiting for this!

  • OmegaZero

    The effort to show that nobody is above the law is about to blow up the FBI’s face big time. Seems like the governing powers no longer have full control over the people. The power of petitions and protests are steadily increasing. If a billion or so people rally to get Megaupload back it just might happen. Me i’m going back to pen and paper to share my info….maybe.

  • Membrane

    I find it interesting that everyone assumes that megaupload won’t be back. they have very good laws on their side and were run a legal service.

    • http://twitter.com/arron62 arron

      i think they will win
      if the do they will sue the usa gov

      the settlement will be:
      the united states of megaupload

    • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

      Even if they do come back it will take YEARS of legal wrangling to get all their property back, servers, paid lawyers fees, etc. By then they will have been left in the digital dust.

      The FBI/ICE isn’t suddenly going to give up and give in and hand it all back to them.

      • cheese wagon

        you have to remember that megaupload it isn’t the first place to ever get their stuff seized by the government. the pirate bay had all their stuff seized and were back quite quickly and without millions of dollars of funding which megaupload has. and once megaupload wins its courtcase the government will have to return their stuff unless they want to get sued.

        • http://www.facebook.com/hopeyoufsckingdie Hope You Die

          Have you ever seen what happens to computer hardware before it’s returned in these types of situations? Even IF they get it back in a timely manner the majority of it could be trashed or dismantled to the point where it’s not worth trying to put back together.

    • Anonymous

      if the law had any say they would not be offline in the first place

      this is just a case of governments bending over to the US

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  • FuzzyDuck

    The complaints should also demand seizure of US government property in countries around the world, as compensation for the losses suffered by innocent people.

    • Kr0nZ

      Seize all their assets until proven guilty/innocent

      • Victorsmegma

        What assets are you going to seize? Their debt? The US govt. is running on Chinese loans and Obama’s ear wind. The only people who pay taxes in the USA anymore are Mexicans and the middle class, and there are only about 50 middle class people left. Everyone else is out of work. I guess the good thing about that is once all the Mexicans move to the US, we can all move to Mexico. Once all the Mexicans are gone Mexico will be a nice place to live, not the shit hole it is now. Let the US government rule over the Mexicans. They all pander to the Mexicans anyway.

  • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

    How about complaints to have the US govt return subscriber fees paid to MegaUpload that they can no longer use?

    • Guest

      How about complaints to have the head of the US Government indicted for abuse of powers NEVER granted to him by the PEOPLE he supposedly serves.

      • cheese wagon

        how about wait for the the sentence before jumping the wagon

        • Guest

          Hello Mr. Obama. Sorry, sir (NOT).

        • Iamautumn S

          Obama had nothing to do with the termination of Megaupload. That was all by people below him. The FBI isn’t the President…

        • Guest

          It was on rulings passed by the Presidnt himself, you tithead.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Maverick-Wolfe/100003268812253 Maverick Wolfe

        How about we have YOU prosecuted and thrown in jail for being a communist RACIST PIG?!?!?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=609750279 Justin Sawchuk

    I think the FBI should refund me 40 dollars because I was not done with my 2 months yet

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  • Tammanator

    I’m pretty sure anything would get thrown out of the US courts because of Sovereign Immunity. I guess they could try an international court, good luck collecting any money.

    • La Trappe

      As far as i know usa doesn’t recognize the ICC in The Hague

    • no one

      “Sovereign Immunity”? really? despite what it would seem like, after looking at all the posts on this page, is common belief, Megaupload wasn’t perfect, and they do have serious violations of the law to answer for. It is true that not all of their users were maliciously infringing on copywrited software, but the overall property value that was stolen due to megauploads inability to uphold the law and allow people only to download things legally.

      • Scuba

        To go further on what you were saying. The owners of Megaupload were using their own service to download illegal materials and were paying people to load that material onto their servers. Also when they were informed of a copyright-en file, they would just remove a specific link, not the file and not other links to it.

        • Tsavory

          As to if they themselves downloaded or uploaded anything IS a Civil Case.
          Many other site reward users for bringing traffic oh and have you heard of an affiliate program users place ad on there site to get paid for generating traffic to the advertisers. The paid for traffic to their site which they got money from their advertisers. I see many sites that get paid for their traffic but don’t pay out.Look at CNN NBC and the list can go on but I don’t see any of them offering to share the wealth. So yeah they paid those that helped make them money weather it was though legal content or not.
          As for the removing the link yeah its a practice call DE-duplication designed not to have the exact same file on the server. Not all files linking to the same content where infringing lets just say my buddy Joe (who is signed on to UMG) made a great video of his band practicing he decided to upload it to the site and gave three friends permission since its practice and just a few friends but one of them decided to re upload it and share that link. The system finds that both files are the exact same so it removes the one and redirects the link towards the first file. next thing you know. many people are getting this though link 2 and UMG since its a singer that’s signed on with them sends the DMCA So the site removes the link Now if they had removed the file it would have taken down the file the one that belonged to the creator would have been gone as well. Point is the same content can be both legal and illegal at the same time depending on the use and uploaded. End of Story Either way though members of the company MAY have done wrong it will be hard to prove much more than Civil crimes The indictment was a long reach for criminal action. No matter how much the ‘AA’s want it to.

      • Rigelito

        The truth is that the legallity of a thing or an action depends only on the subjetive view of the powerfull (in this case the record label, and movie studio), you say that the megaupload owner have done illegal stuff, thell me what ?
        they just provide a service, like does the car or gun manufacturer, they say they are guilty because they know their services were use in an illegal way… if you take exemple of car manufacturer, they make car that are capable of going way above what the legal speed limit….I believe they know that, what are waiting the FBI to seize them… and i don’t even speak of the arm manufacturer.

  • Anonymous

    How far do Megaupload’s lies extend? If you’ve ever wondered about the answer to that question, then read on. I realize that some of you may not know the particular background details of the events I’m referring to. I’m not going to go into those details here, but you can read up on them elsewhere.

    Megaupload’s reinterpretations of historic events have merged with interventionism in several interesting ways. Both spring from the same kind of reality-denying mentality. Both consign our traditional values to the rubbish heap of militarism. And both spatter my reputation. A word to the wise: Megaupload once tried convincing me that “the truth”, “the whole truth”, and “nothing but the truth” are three different things. Does it think I was born yesterday? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that Megaupload’s fastidious, abominable proposed social programs are to politics what the blitzkrieg was to international diplomacy. Why do I tell you this? Because these days, no one else has the guts to.

    You’ve never heard that Megaupload’s intention is to identify political and religious groups that are its political enemies and re-label them as “addlepated doofuses” in order to justify operations against them? That’s because its protégés have been staging a massive cover-up for quite some time now. But if you keep your eyes open you’ll notice that it is not interested in what is true and what is false or in what is good and what is evil. In fact, those distinctions have no meaning to it whatsoever. The only thing that has any meaning to Megaupload is revisionism. Why? That’s not a rhetorical question. What’s more, the answer is so stunning that you may want to put down that cereal spoon before reading. You see, Megaupload wants to prevent us from shaping a world of dignity and harmony, a world of justice, solidarity, liberty, and prosperity. If it manages to do that, it’ll have plenty of time to focus on its core mission: locking people who need our help into a vicious cycle of indigence and ignorance. There will be public outrage if Megaupload tries to transform fear and its inculcation into the preeminent force ruling human existence. Period, finis, and Q.E.D.

    • http://twitter.com/kinglewy00 Gaz Lewis

      I use pakin.org to generate rants too.

      • Victorsmegma

        Dude, he was totally serious.

    • no one

      It’s true that megaupload did some bad things, but what you have posted above is complete garbage. Megaupload was a site that allowed people to download and upload files, nothing more. Its goal was not to distort our view of reality, and their crimes extend to nothing more than enabling internet piracy. While this is in fact a serious infringement of the law, it doesn’t extend to the psychological/political warfare that you have created in this post. What is interesting to me is why you would take the time to come up with such eloquently phrased bullshit and then post on a website called torrent-freak.

      • Anonymous

        I wanted to respond to Megaupload earlier, but I was so busy, I simply did not have the time. Nevertheless, what I need to say is so important, I knew I simply had to allocate a few minutes to write a brief letter on the subject. For the sake of review, Megaupload claims to be fighting for equality. What it’s really fighting for, however, is equality in degradation, by which I mean that of all of Megaupload’s exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: “Individual worth is defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin.” I don’t know where it came up with this, but its statement is dead wrong.

        Megaupload’s legates don’t see the chaos that will be unleashed if they get their way and erect a shrine of adventurism. And I can say that with a clear conscience because I will stop at nothing to embrace diversity and encourage others to do the same. My resolve cannot fully be articulated, but it is unyielding. As evidence, consider that in the Old Testament, the Book of Kings relates how the priests of Baal were slain for deceiving the people. I’m not suggesting that there be any contemporary parallel involving Megaupload, but Megaupload motivates people to join its band by using words like “humanity”, “compassion”, and “unity”. This is a great deception. What Megaupload really wants to do is sucker us into buying a lot of junk we don’t need. That’s why I should note that I myself want to unify our community. Megaupload, in contrast, wants to drive divisive ideological wedges through it.

        • http://www.facebook.com/hopeyoufsckingdie Hope You Die

          Or this.

        • LOLOLOLOL

          Once I saw that you quoted the bible I immediately stopped reading.

        • Anonymous

          did not read, fuck off with your crack.

        • no one

          WTF??? No they don’t. Megaupload isn’t a political group, its just a facilitator of illegal downloading.

    • http://www.facebook.com/hopeyoufsckingdie Hope You Die

      I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t read this.

    • http://facebook.com/Brent.Taylor007 Brent Taylor

      Put down your crack pipe and go to sleep.

    • Anonymous

      What in the fuck is this bullshit?
      I can basically replace Megaupload with *Any* website and it still wouldnt make any sense what so ever.

      • Victorsmegma

        No, this time he’s spot on.

    • Victorsmegma

      You do ramble on don’t you? What exactly was the point you were trying to get across other than you are a boring windbag?

      • Anonymous

        The only thing worse than being ignorant is not knowing how ignorant you are. That’s Megaupload’s problem. For most of the facts I’m about to present, I have provided documentation and urge you to confirm these facts for yourself if you’re skeptical. Megaupload contends that oligarchism is the only alternative to antiheroism. Sounds rather disaffected, doesn’t it? Well, that’s Megaupload for you. Finally, to those of you who are faithfully helping me expose false prophets who preach that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength, let me extend, as always, my deepest gratitude and my most affectionate regards.

  • http://www.facebook.com/xEchox Ryan Aguiar

    1: its not impossible to sue the government you can sue any single person in america, winning depends on the case.
    2:the governments going to be in deep shit here, refunding people money AND giving compensation for the lost files. Because if they have completely shut down the site it could mean that every file on there is already permanently gone.
    3:the government will not only have to refund & compensate for Americans, they will have to for every other person as well no matter what country they live on. remember it wasnt* US access only.

    • no one

      You are aware that they need the contents of megauploads servers as EVIDENCE if they want a chance at winning a case this public. It is highly likely that the files HAVE NOT BEEN DELETED because to do so would be incredibly stupid. Just because you disagree with the FBI doesn’t mean they are stupid.

      • Victorsmegma

        This is the first sensible thing you’ve said. the FBI isn’t stupid because he disagrees with them. They are stupid because they lack intelligence.

        • Guest

          It’s call the Federal Bureau of INTELLIGENCE, they got lots of it, on everyone.

        • Larry

          Actually, It’s the Federal Bureau of INVESTIGATION…

      • Disgruntled US User

        Yes, they probably have most, if not all of the data, but depending on how they extract it, it may not be in a usable form if/when the data storage units are returned, and they are not required to return the data itself – only the physical things which were seized.

  • Remydown

    One more example of putting corporate profits before the good of society all they care about is money,they don’t seem to care that the freedom the internet has had is one of the biggest reasons it has transformed our lives so drastically for the better.

  • Maz

    I used Megaupload to send a video to my friends because you can’t send it through an email. You upload it and they download it. Nothing Copyright about that. Fuckin idiots. They wanna a problem with the internet they have one. The art of war is don’t start a war.

    • Anonymous

      With all the assault on our Liberties it is only a matter of time till the hackers who really know Computers start an assault of their own.
      I am waiting to see the real dirt MAFIAA has hidden away from the Public

    • no one

      So why do you care if megaupload got shut down? You didn’t lose the file you uploaded to their site.

      • http://twitter.com/haplesscloud Clarisse F.

        But the link’s broken now.

        • no one

          …

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  • m3w1thoutY0u

    Governments rolling in the $$$ and now theyre going to pay up! Oh wait…

  • http://www.nissanpacific.com eDDi Hughes

    Think of all the dead links on XDA Developer Forums! Android community just took a huge hit, those forums provide a thriving community of up and coming Android developers!!!

    • no one

      Finally, the first legitimate complaint I’ve seen. This complaint actually makes sense, and I’m sorry that you lost such a great resource. There are however, sites that are even better for such things. Stackoverflow offers a great variety of programming help, and I think that you might like it.

      • Adam Honse

        It isn’t just help, most of the stuff on MU was source code, (legal) ROM images of Android builds, kernels, etc. These files are large and MU was a great place to host large files and still get good high-speed downloads.

        • http://www.nissanpacific.com eDDi Hughes

          Exactly! It’s really unfortunate for the developer and the users seeing those builds. I’ve already had a couple of friends get stuck on dead links. :(

  • tomie

    to Gjtyfjxtjrtjrtj comment above. actually congressmen are above the law. They can not be arrested for any crime by any one until they are discharged. then as regular citizens they can be found accountable. not even the president has that.

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  • Random_Redditor001

    Worst Reddit redirect ever. Didn’t need a bunch of people arguing over something this stupid. Can’t we just let the legal system do what it does? We’re not getting Wikipedia to shut down, nothing you comment here matters.

    commonsenseisnotcommon

  • Bobdole

    If any of you knew ANYTHING about copyright, or copyright laws I think your opinions would be changed. The actual creator of the program, song or movie doesn’t own the copyright. The industry giants making billions of dollars OWN the copyrights.

    • Davidhoffman6692

      Only if the creator has agreed to that arrangement is what you state true. I can write a book, get copyright protection, and print multiple copies. I can then sell those books. But I will not necessarily get the larger publicity, marketing and distribution a publishing corporation might provide. If I go to a publisher to get my book distributed, they have a financial interest in seeing the copyright enforced. And I, the author, must agree to this in order to use their services.

  • SuperiorAnonymousCoward

    What the hell is wrong with you people. This is about people who had perfectly legal files on megaupload trying to get them back, some people probably lost their jobs because they couldn’t get the file out of storage or send it.

  • revolutionary

    This is all about power, if you think about the context around this, If the majority of credit card fraud was conducted via VISA the FBI wouldn’t shut down the entire VISA coorporation just to stop fraud, nor would the owners of VISA be arrested and charged with racketeering, money laundering and credit card fraud, obviously because they are in bed with the US government. But think about it, is this the type of world we want our children to grow in? Where you can be held accountable of what your clients do as a service provider.

    • Davidhoffman6692

      If the money laundering charges are true, that is a criminal offense and you get arrested for it, just like drug dealers, gun smugglers, embezzlers, and art thieves do when they launder money.

  • Nick

    For one thing taking down MegaUpload has caused many FileSharing sites to go into hiding, block the U.S. IP addresses, and/or create sensor blocks to reject copyrighted materials. (Crowd begins to clap.)
    However, does that REALLY stop ANYONE from obtaining that same Illegal material?

    NO.

    In a matter of speaking, those same pirates have found their new caves to hide in.
    In some ways, they’re just making use of some of their old ones that have proven to work thus far. (ISOhunt/PirateBay/Demonoid) Torrent sites have been challenged for the last decade, but I have as of yet to see any of them to be taken down. In fact the courts have only seemed to make them stronger.

    Considering the masses, if this turns out to another ISOhunt lawsuit or PirateBay lawsuit, then the United States will have REALLY outdone themselves this time. Deaming MegaUpload UNTOUCHABLLE as ISOhunt and PirateBay seem to be today.

    For those “Copyright” holders, these are much worse sites than MegaUpload could ever be…. then again I guess we’ll see what’s to happen soon.

    For the argument about Software and Hollywood Movies:
    Most of the ISOhunt/PirateBay movies available are all dead films. (Films that served their market years. Obsolete.) These films couldn’t possibly make Hollywood any real money anymore at this point. Not that I’m really defending it, but even I will admit when I see a movie that’s been released over 15 years ago and hasn’t seen a single DVD release in years, and I find it released on ISOhunt, if Hollywood can’t promise
    me that DVD, I’m afraid I DO download it.
    To be fair, if the movie is still within a legit Market Year, I WILL buy the film. No hesitations. As I should. However, there are indeed many TV shows, movies, made for TV movies that make excellent teaching/learning material and/or bring back good memories. Another example is when the DVD has been released, but it was released in such a rediculously low number that the average folk don’t know of it’s release. And when we finally DO find out about it, the Amazon price for it is “Out of Print” and $400 for a USED copy. Let me spell it out: “I don’t have that kind of money.”

    As for software: ADOBE – AUTODESK – PIXOLOGIC – TOONBOOM
    For starters- are some of the MOST pirated name brands in the industry.

    I WILL say that Demonoid is the only Name that comes up when I think about this.
    As much as I hate to admit, being a college student, I still find that even with the “Student Discount” that many of these software programs are JUST TOO EXPENSIVE. I mean you’re talking thousands of dollars. Some of these programs are worth more than my MacBook Pro! And that’s saying something! I am already paying monthly payments on my MacBook Pro as it is. I really don’t have that kind of money to be forking out 2000 dollars for Adobe Design Suite, or AutoDesk’s 3D software or any of these other programs that I have to use in schools on a daily basis.
    —Although Autodesk DOES cut people a break, thank goodness for that. For 3 Years their software is free for Students.

    But for the average person out there who cannot pay for a 90 Grand school, these programs are even more out of reach. I can’t imagine how anyone’s supposed to have a hobby in a design field…. (Macintosh is king of graphics programs :D)

    Then there’s the ultimate downloaded material:

    ANIME

    Let’s face it. The United States doesn’t have a prayer for these Dubbing Animation companies anymore. I mean FUNimation is all there is left.
    As much as that saddens me, I’d be a fool to let that stop me from seeing some of the best animated wonders Japan has to offer.
    I feel bad for Japan, however, they haven’t given their American fans an alternative to what’s happening here in the States. If you’re a fan, and the Licensing companies are all but dead, then an addicted fan is going to resource to Downloading Illegally these episodes. HUGELY GUILTY HERE.

    I doubt Japan can listen to reason, but here’s their solution:

    RELEASE THE EPISODES IN DUAL-LANGUAGE/ DUAL SUBTITLES
    THEMSELVES!!!
    -If they want to make money off of their international market, they should take a few moments to Dub-Over (or Simply Subtitle) their episodes without going through a middle-man (Licensing company). Just Release the DVDs with multiple languages.
    If they did that with every series they ever released (just as America releases DVDs with English and Spanish and sometimes French) they’d have money again!

    Anyway’s that’s my two cents on this whole thing.

    Amen.

    • Davidhoffman6692

      The out of distribution situations was one of the reasons for Napster’s original supporters. People would search for hours to find legal affordable WWW sources for specific pieces of music that they knew had been recorded on records decades earlier. They could not find any, so they used what was available through Napster. I read that many people looking for recordings of specific orchestral performances did this. They knew that a particular orchestra had performed in a specific concert hall on a particular date and that the performance had been put out on a record. They wanted that, could not find it from a legal pay site, so they used Napster. You have certainly highlighted a huge problem with existing copyright regulation and law. We need to come up a better system to deal with those issues.

  • Rohe

    Funny you say that. Currently, media people in France are puzzling about high downloads of US movies and TV series in original English. The reasoning by the french youth is, that you can’t really understand the jokes and context when they are dubbed in french. Since years the whole European industry of dubbing stuff is now in the crappers. In the 90ties, we had professional actors lending their voices to dubbing endeavors, thus watching dubbed stuff was ok, since it was high quality.

    Now its not anymore. Nonactors having to dub 12 hours a day with very bad translations for very low hourly rates destroying the content for those how care. Series like HIMYM or Breaking Bad are practically unwatchable when dubbed.

    Did they offer any remedy? No. Not in France, not in Germany, not in Russia. There is rampant copying of US TV because there is no other legal way to get it early and original. Hulu is IP locked and many pay 80€ to VPN/Proxy companies get access.

    The whole system is crooked and 10 years behind the technological possibilities.

  • Carrie Parsons

    Though MegaUpload was breaking copyright laws in some ways, it was used by many innocent people and perhaps, just the infringing material should’ve been removed.

    On a side note, sometimes the copyright laws were broken for a good reason.
    Have any of you, being dwellers of the internet, watched an anime that has only aired in Japan? How hard is it to find a video on-line, without MegaVideo? Pretty tough to find a fast loading, High Quality video now isn’t it? So why try watching something on-line? Well, because the internet is a community, and most of the internet follows a share and share alike policy. With SOPA/PIPA/ACTA and anything else aimed to change the internet, including the FBI shutting sites down, I’m surprised Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networking sites still exist, because users all link to copy righted material, quote copy righted material, everything about the internet as we know it will end if we continue to let people, no matter who they are, try to change our on-line community.

  • Bustedmirror

    WTF, doesn’t anyone backup their chit anymore?

    • Quentin Stockdale

      Invalid. If these companies didn’t back up their paid files then the FBI stole them when they seized megaupload’s assets. However, if a company has backed up their files and someone shares them with me for free even though they still have it I supposedly stole them too. i demand the FBI shuts themselves down for stealing all those important irreplaceable files.

      • Bustedmirror

        No, I’m saying back up your own damn files….don’t rely on Cloud services for you alone…..

  • Scottie

    Technically all the files on megaupload was user submitted. this means that they aren’t responsible for what gets uploaded and not uploaded. they just have to create a way to remove copyrighted materials in which they did have those tools. FBI are operating above the law and deserve to be sued. They were just setting an example to show that they don’t need SOPA or PIPA to shut down websites.

  • kate

    Well l for one am/was a legit user who had some pretty damn important tutorials uploaded there too which I could send out to my team. I had very IMPORTANT documents for my team with business information. So I want to join in the lawsuit as a lot of my work is lost – nah – let’s say STOLEN by the FBI. I just renewed my premium membership too make my life easier in my work life and want to know how I join in the law suit.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=695383478 Facebook User

    sssssssss

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  • Anon#123,053,789

    You guys are forgetting Media fire..

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  • Anonymous

    lol, good luck with that. Should be interesting to see how that turns out. What files? lol vpn-privacy.tk

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Curtis-Isabell/1036013363 Curtis Isabell

    i’m surprised anyone used mega upload to pirate anything, if i looked at something and it was on mega upload it was always locked.
    piracy numbers are false… people need to understand this.
    i would never buy family guy episodes, but i’d pirate them
    i won’t buy an old game again, like roller coaster tycoon, but i’d pirate it play it a bit then delete it.

  • http://twitter.com/haplesscloud Clarisse F.

    That’s funny. Usually the ones attacking piracy don’t realize that the ones stealing intellectual property are those big Recording companies, which only give artists about 0,01% of the profits for each album sold. The artists profit better by sharing their music for free and having more people know it, so they can live on the shows budget. Tryind to convey the world before Napster is a dream that those recording companies are not getting back.

    Yes, I downloaded maaany songs illegally, but if I could I’d buy all the albums of those artists I love (I have bought some and am starting a collection of my own). And no, I’m not in danger for saying this, as I’m not american, HA.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003313595481 Wlad Manana

    site down and hacked by anonymos :http://www.wlad04.com/sopa.html

  • The guy who cares

    At the risk of sounding like an untoward prætorianism enthusiast, I will attempt to humbly set forth a brief précis of megaupload’s most muddleheaded invectives in hopes of convincing you, the reader, to help put an end to phlegmatic, particularism-prone careerism. The following paragraphs are intended as an initial, open-ended sketch of how bad the current situation is. Megaupload may have modernized the appeal and packaging of its proposals, but crass proposals are crass proposals regardless of how they’re presented. Megaupload’s method (or school, or ideology—it is hard to know exactly what to call it) goes by the name of “megaupload-ism”. It is a duplicitous and avowedly argumentative philosophy that aims to work hand-in-glove with narrow-minded, uneducated maledicent-types. You don’t have to say anything specifically about megaupload for it to start attacking you. All you have to do is dare to imply that we should prevent the production of a new crop of meddlesome numskulls. Megaupload can’t possibly believe that the world is crying out to labor beneath its firm but benevolent heel. It’s grotty but it’s not that grotty.

    To be quite frank, megaupload commonly appoints ineffective people to important positions. It then ensures that these people stay in those positions because that makes it easy for megaupload to issue a flood of bogus legal documents. Will megaupload’s wishy-washy spin doctors harvest what others have sown? Only time will tell.

    In point of fact, what megaupload seems to be forgetting is that there is no time and little temptation for those who work hard on their jobs and their responsibilities to dismantle the guard rails that protect society from the paltry elements in its midst. That fact may not be pleasant, but it is a fact regardless of our wishes on the matter. Well, megaupload, we’re all getting a little tired of you and your kind messing up the world and then refusing to accept responsibility for what you’ve done. We’re fed up. And the day is coming when you’ll be held accountable for your distasteful editorials. Megaupload’s statements such as “Everything is happy and fine and good” indicate that we’re not all looking at the same set of facts. Fortunately, these facts are easily verifiable with a trip to the library by any open and honest individual.

    If megaupload feels ridiculed by all the attention my letters are bringing it, then that’s just too darn bad. Its arrogance has brought this upon itself. Megaupload is the embodiment of everything petty in our lives. Every grievance, every envy, every self-aggrandizing ideology finds expression in megaupload. Although megaupload won’t admit it, it is terrified that there might be an absolute reality outside itself, a reality that is what it is, regardless of its wishes, theories, hopes, daydreams, or decrees. Although megaupload has never read carefully anything I’ve written, it repeats the term “stereophotogrammetry” over and over again in everything it writes. Is this repetition part of some new drinking game, or is megaupload merely trying to confuse us into believing that everyone with a different set of beliefs from its is going to get a one-way ticket to Hell? It is only when one has an answer to that question is it possible to make sense of megaupload’s goals because we wouldn’t have a problem with antidisestablishmentarianism if it weren’t for megaupload. Although it created the problem, aggravated the problem, and escalated the problem, megaupload insists that it can solve the problem if we just grant it more power. How naïve does it think we are? Truly, megaupload is not at all apologetic for the harm its followers, who are legion, have caused. At the risk of sounding a tad redundant, let me add that I have a tendency to report the more sensational things that megaupload is up to, the more shocking things, things like how it wants to exhibit a deep disdain for all people who are not snooty, treasonous scaramouches. And I realize the difficulty that the average person has in coming to grips with that, but its screeds symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided rebellion—extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us lose more than a little freedom.

    Ladies and gentlemen, to get even the simplest message into the consciousness of petulant loonies it has to be repeated at least fifty times. Now, I don’t want to insult your intelligence by telling you the following fifty times, but to megaupload’s mind, its reports prevent smallpox. So that means that it knows the “right” way to read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli, right? No, not right. The truth is that we must stop tiptoeing and begin marching boldly and forthrightly towards our goal, which is to solve our problems over a negotiating table instead of resorting to the battlefield. Even the most rigorous theoretical framework megaupload could put forward would not leave it in the position of generalizing with the certainty to which it is prone in its rantings. Sadly, lack of space prevents me from elaborating further. Considering that we must shake off our torpor, ignore the siren songs of fogyism, and introduce an important but underrepresented angle on megaupload’s disgusting tactics, I find it almost laughable how it remains oblivious to the fact that I sometimes ask myself whether the struggle to express my views is worth all of the potential consequences. And I consistently answer by saying that while it has been beating the drums of authoritarianism, I’ve been trying to rally good-hearted people to the side of our cause. In doing so, I’ve learned that we have a choice. Either we let ourselves be led like lambs to the slaughter by megaupload and its encomiasts or we enhance people’s curiosity, critical acumen, and aesthetic sensitivity. While I don’t expect you to have much trouble making up your mind you should nevertheless consider that megaupload keeps trying to deceive us into thinking that clever one-liners are a valid substitute for actual thinking. The purpose of this deception may be to unleash carnage and barbarity. Or maybe the purpose is to perpetuate myths that glorify terrorism. Oh what a tangled web megaupload weaves when first it practices to deceive.

    If one dares to criticize even a single tenet of megaupload’s hastily mounted campaigns, one is promptly condemned as power-hungry, bloody-minded, maladroit, or whatever epithet megaupload deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Megaupload is lying to itself if it thinks that 75 million years ago, a galactic tyrant named Xenu solved the overpopulation problem of his 76-planet federation by transporting the excess people to Earth, chaining them to volcanoes, and dropping H-bombs on them. I don’t think anyone questions that. But did you know that its little world is far from reality? Megaupload should start developing the parts of its brain that have been impaired by irrationalism. At least then it’ll stop trying to delegitimize our belief systems and replace them with a counter-hegemony that seeks to batten on the credulity of the ignorant.

    Often, the lure of an articulate new pundit, a well-financed attention-getting program, an effective audience generator, hot new “inside” information, or a professionally produced exposé is irresistible to contumacious junkies who want to concoct labels for people, objects, and behaviors in order to manipulate the public’s opinion of them. Megaupload proclaims at every opportunity that it’d never discourage us from expressing our orations in whatever way we damn well please. The organization doth protest too much, methinks. Megaupload likes values that give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments. Could there be a conflict of interest there? If you were to ask me, I’d say that there are few certainties in life. I have counted only three: death, taxes, and megaupload announcing some vainglorious thing every few weeks.

    Megaupload is fluent in the jaded patois of hooliganism. End of story. Actually, I should add that it, who has posed as Savior of the World, is nothing else but the world’s seducer, its destroyer, its incendiary, and its executioner. And let me tell you, it attempts to sound intelligent by cramming as many big words into a sentence as possible, whether they are used correctly or not. Let me rephrase that: It simply wants to win at all costs the war against our individualism and our liberties. But that’s not all: I suppose it’s predictable, though terribly sad, that repressive barmpots with stronger voices than minds would revert to biased behavior. But in a vain effort to exculpate itself, it has been proclaiming to the world that it has done no wrong. Rather, it was its fans who have been using both overt and covert deceptions to call for ritualistic invocations of needlessly formal rules. I suppose the next thing it’ll have us believe is that it has the linguistic prowess to produce a masterwork of meritorious literature.

    Let us not sink to megaupload’s level. Let us combat Maoism by exercising our right to speak out, to denounce megaupload’s smears as totally unrepresentative of the values of this society. I want to build an inclusive, nondiscriminatory movement for social and political change. But first, let me pose an abstract question. How can megaupload prop up corrupt despots around the world and then turn around and shed tears for those who got hurt as a result? While that question may not be as profound as “What’s the meaning of life?” or “Is there a God?”, purists may object to my failure to present specific examples of megaupload’s fickle, filthy treatises. Fortunately, I do have an explanation for this omission. The explanation demands an understanding of how megaupload is not interested in what is true and what is false or in what is good and what is evil. In fact, those distinctions have no meaning to it whatsoever. The only thing that has any meaning to megaupload is sadism. Why? The only clear answer to emerge from the conflicting, contradictory stances that megaupload and its associates take is that scrutinizing megaupload’s stratagems may be instructive in this regard.

    If an attempt to kill the goose bearing the golden egg isn’t reprehensible, it certainly is mutinous. I wonder what would happen if megaupload really did impale us on the pike of autism. There’s a spooky thought. Make no mistake about it; megaupload ignores a breathtaking number of facts, most notably:

    Fact: Our situation is snowballing.

    Fact: Megaupload’s actions are uniformly riddled by an unbelievable degree of ignorance.

    Fact: I, not being one of the many vicious saboteurs of this world, fear the shallow orthodoxies of megaupload’s antihumanist, homophobic form of heathenism.

    In addition, if the past is any indication of the future, megaupload will once again attempt to gum up what were once great ideas. To summarize what I’ve written up to this point, megaupload utilizes a narrow and static view of human nature. You know I’m right. Now what are you going to do about it?

    • david

      just to let you know, there are these things called “blogs” that are perfect for people like you who want to share pretentious, rambling, and verbose commentary with other people on the internet. You should get one.

    • Guest

      FAIL!!!

      on a side note… I think we need to have a physical protest in D.C. in order to get it back, otherwise the feds will just ignore us.

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  • Anders Lunde

    What fool uses a digital online storage as their only backup source??? I don’t see them winning this lawsuit.

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

      Then you are an obtuse idiot, to be totally blunt.

      • Anders Lunde

        Idiot???? Read the Terms of agreement the next time you use an online storage service!

    • Anonymous

      The type of people who are not technically minded and not able to afford physical storage.

      Comprende dick head?

      • Anders Lunde

        Why attack me in such a way? It does clearly state in the Terms of Agreement that the backup is to be just that…a backup. Not to be used as an only source of storage.

  • Jordi Saez

    is it just me or #fuckthepolice fits perfectly rigth here.

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

      This is the kind of bullcrap and bullshit that turns people against the police. This is equivalent to the police shutting down an entire business solely because they think some criminal acts are going on.

      That is NOT how it usually works. A court-appointed person is usually put into place to monitor the business and sign off on outlays. The businesses are extremely rarely shut down totally. In fact, that only happens when a business is SOLELY involved in criminal stuff, such as a pot growing operation.

  • Anonymous

    Here’s the thing: It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been some kind of warning. Kind of a ‘hey, get your shit off here. It’s getting deleted’. No one was given that courtesy.

    I have original documents of every single recording that I have ever made since I began making music nearly ten years ago. These files are irreplaceable. I feel violated, and abused by the US authorities. These things are of no value to them. But to me, they’re priceless. I have recordings of songs that my deceased grandfather and I recorded together.

    I will never get these files back, because I’m guilty until proven innocent.

    • Davidhoffman6692

      There are physical back up multiple hard drive systems with RAID 1 designs available for purchase. Buy a few. Buy a high grade media safe to store one set of drives. Purchase one ore more safety deposit boxes at one or more banks. Store one of your back up hard drive systems in each location. Update each drive as needed. Create an update schedule for you to physically up date each drive system. That way, the probability of you simultaneously loosing all your data is reduced. The MegaUpload stoppage would have annoyed you, but your data would still be available.

      • Anonymous

        Yes, but that isn’t the point. I stored these files there for safe keeping. I’m a college student, working three jobs paying my whole way entirely. I’m getting no help whatsoever, so I don’t exactly have $50 to drop on a new harddrive. If that would have been the case, I would have done so.

        My point is that I’m being treated like I’m a criminal simply for storing my own files that have sentimental value. These aren’t even covers. This is My. Own. Work.

        It’s almost like someone my memories away from me because they’re illegal. They had no right to do what they did. Not without some kind of fair warning to MU’s users.

    • Anonymous

      Sue them for all the pennies!

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  • melonofwater

    They do it cause it makes them feel badass to delete innocent peoples files. They feel in control when they can hurt people who can’t fight back.

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  • Eville_dradnaught

    Hmm… I wonder how many people have seen through “No One”‘s little ploy, using info clippings from other sources, on other subjects, and simply replaces the original topics to include “MegaUpload” in order to villify them further. “What a tangled web one weaves, as we practice to decieve” – Original saying as an example.

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  • Marco Meli

    the article is also now in italian language with the link to the catalunian pirate party in order to join the action

  • http://www.thetechgame.com/bradford-guy-52 Ttg99

    I literally just Jumped in to minecraft and built this. I couldnt resist !!

  • Johnny

    What the FBI has done now is that they are the real theft. Not only did they steal DotCom’s bank account but also kept the money belonging to millions of users of Megaupload worldwide. FBI stole the files and money of millions of users worldwide. This is not about USA, this is theft at global level.

    FBI, US legislation, DOJ or whatever you call it, you are the Devil, the Illuminati, you took my money and my files, you are the real theft.

  • Johnny

    What Law are you guys talking about? The FBI stole money and property belonging to millions of non-US citizens worldwide. You are no different from Hitler, Kim Jung or Sadam. You are no different from the soldiers who kill innocent people, taking their properties and robbing their money in others’ countries.

    You are starting a new World War. FBI, I am telling you to return all our money and property, we are not under your legislation.

    Please do not start the World War and get yourself killed.

    • http://www.thetechgame.com/bradford-guy-52 Ttg99

      He speaks the TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • Johnny

      Re-edited quote:

      What the FBI has done now is that they are the real thief. Not only did they steal DotCom’s bank account but also kept the money belonging to millions of users of Megaupload worldwide. FBI stole the files and money of millions of users worldwide. This is not about USA, this is theft at global level.

      FBI, US legislation, DOJ or whatever you call it, you are the Devil, the Illuminati, you took my money and my files, you are the real thief. F you.

      What Law are you guys talking about? The FBI stole money and property belonging to millions of non-US citizens worldwide. You (FBI) are no different from Hitler, Kim Jung or Sadam. You are no different from the soldiers who kill innocent people, taking their properties and robbing their money in others’ countries.

      You are starting a new World War. FBI, I am telling you to return all our money and property, we are not under your legislation.

      Please do not start the World War and get yourself killed.

      P.S. Photo about piracy below.

      • Asdas

        Stupid rant but great picture

        • Johnny

          Retarded comment but at least you care to read my post :D

  • Nmtrx6

    gimme my code …….i want my code………..

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  • http://profile.yahoo.com/UCTWTGXPHA6HW73XMDSKFCKCOY Ruuupert

    it’s like suing an alien in an alien territory
    well… good luck

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  • Guest

    you know what really sucks. I can’t even prove what I have on the server anymore. I had two link files I uploaded to MU and one thats in my Gmail. I have the adress of the two list files but they just point to the actual files I want back. I don’t even have the ile names anymore. what I want back most is my Demo Reel. I can care less about 50 petobytes of porn and tvshows.

  • http://www.the-retro-gamer.com/ Retro Gamer

    I don’t get it, Kim dotcom had such a small piece of the pie when record companies and movie studios are making TONS more than he ever would. Let him have his small slice like holy shit FBI. No webmaster ever got a bailout, where’s my bailout? Oh yeah, its so the boys at the big banks didnt have to sell their yachts and porsches and dont have to stop sipping dom p and eating caviar. Pathetic

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  • http://www.thriftstore-finds.com/ Mike

    I was one of the people who actually used this site for legit reasons, I would transfer my raw video footage to my classmates for group projects. It was way easier than using an FTP program especially for the idiots in my college program.. thanks FBI now I have to teach people how to use filezilla.

    • Asdas

      What about dropbox?

    • http://twitter.com/ZeaForUs ZeaForUs

      Always good to know more than one way to achieve the same result. All things with or without bells and whistles you picked up by chance or on purpose may become handy in the future. With information business one has to learn the entire lifetime.

  • joelly

    Just a thought, why not shut down the ISP’s for allowing pirated information to be transferred….Better yet….SUE THEM.

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  • http://twitter.com/ZeaForUs ZeaForUs

    One of the lessons learned: Always keep a local copy. Leaving the key only at the neighbors in case of loss or theft can be more disastrous if criminals enter their house. Two families losing stuff, perhaps even more, possibly up to an entire street.

    BTW a law similar to SOPA, PIPA called ACTA will be subject in EU parlement.
    http://bit.ly/zyoOUm for a video about protest in Sweden, perhaps more countries on Feb 4. More info with live feed: http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_tech_a/?vl

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  • Lemar Smith

    I was walking down the street the other day and I passed Tom Cruise. I shit you not. Tom Cruise, sitting on the pavement with a begging bowl in his lap looking for a hand out. An emaciated Ron Meyer lay across his lap. “See what they’re doing to us, to our industry!” Tom screamed as I tried to scurry by. Next thing, fricking Gene Simmons ambushes me. He’s set up a stall at the back of one of his Limousines to sell Kiss memorabilia. “$40 for a doll that cost $1 for a child in China to manufacture. Is it asking too much? Goddamit, I’ve got homes to run, a private jet and a lifestyle of absurd excess to finance. Can’t get anyone to go to our concerts and no-one buys our records any more, all the kids want to do is sit at home and listen to pirated copies.” He may have had more to say, but I was distracted by a man playing the smallest violin in the world.

  • Anon_Coward

    Yeah, Good luck with that…
    It is known as Civil Forfeiture. http://goo.gl/cqnOU (Forbes article) More links: http://goo.gl/2k3XZ

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  • Surreal70

    Our US government is based on a monetary system and and the internet is based on the freedom of information… they will never work well together… and the land of the free is also dying.

  • http://twitter.com/shelholtz Shel Holtz

    The phone company is not liable for crimes committed by conspirators planning their crimes on the phone. Why should MegaUpload be liable for crimes committed by customers using its servers? And if they are, wouldn’t server farms that host the servers also be liable? Explain to me how it’s different. And while you’re at it, explain how a company like MegaUpload or any of the other file-hosting services can make a profit if they need to monitor every folder with files in it.

    In the U.S., if the government suspects someone is planning something illegal on the phone, they get a warrant from a judge who agrees that there’s enough evidence to tap the phone. Again, how is this different?

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  • Guest1

    Everybody that owns legitimate data will get it back eventually. But it’s going to take some time to return that information while the FBI filters out exabytes of copyrighted information.

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

    In my opinion, MegaUpload should not have been shut down. Monitored, yes. Shut down if AFTER the court case was done, they were found to be operating illegally and there was no way to ‘make them legal’, yes.

    Not before the goddamned trial has even been done. That is like saying that I have to close my bread baking business just because they think that someone in my business has connections to the Mafia and is funneling money through my business, with or without my knowledge.

    It just doesn’t make sense.

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  • Paulstewart

    Seriously do these people have a clue? Good luck suing the US Government or the FBI.
    Was MU an illegal operation? The courts will decide. If they decide no, then the wronged might have a chance, but they will need very deep pockets. If the courts decide yes, then those who were 100% legal, will be told they were at fault for doing anything with an illegal operation.
    That’s how it works in the real world.

  • Paulstewart

    This is the level of the debate? LOL

    “That’s not really theft. Is it theft if I break in your house and use your microwave to cook some ramen? No, I don’t believe it is. The other point you’re missing on is that the only people missing money is the CEO’s of the major corporations that own the copyrights, not the actual people that produce the content. ”

    When you break in to use my microwave it’s theft of my electricity. When you break in, it’s a crime. When DVD stores close because of piracy, you steal someones job and sometimes future, family, etc. Thinking that everyone in the chain isn’t getting paid out of sales forces me to ask. Do you actually have a job yet? So if you do what do you think pays your wages, if not your Dad’s wages?

    I’ve seen people lose jobs, income and profit to pay workers because of piracy. If you were at risk, you might think differently.

    • Anonymous

      Your causality is all sorts of wrong! Stores aren’t closing because of piracy, they are closing because people order from online retailers now.

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  • Theonemirrorseesitsself

    Having the word “Pirates” in the name of your group -”Pirate Parties “,”Pirates of Catalonia”,etc complaing is sort of like having the Lucky Luciano Admiration society trying to defend the mafia

  • Populus117

    Imagine this:
    Facebook gets taken down because it did not stop online bullying, which lead to the deaths of many young teenagers…

    Yea right, because we can filter through all the information the web has just to make sure everything is legal.

    Guess what? I just discribed China’s great firewall. You want 100% legal? You have censorship. Then it will just spiral out of control as definitions of the law get twisted around by coorporate and government lawyers for the corporations’ and government’s own benefit.

    Also in this day and age, many artists (musicians, actors, directors…etc.) became famous from the internet… if laws were put in place where media could not be distributed without the owner’s consent, noone would post any video, and those same artists would be left unknown… now those ungrateful (not all but many) artists are going against the same system that allowed them to be famous in the first place?

    Seriously, if I looked through a window and saw a clip of a movie (that the owner of the house bought), am I already breaking the law?

    Ok I brought it to a quite extreme point of view, but that’s the point, we *had* a balance (if the entertainment industry was so ripped off by piracy, how come they’re still one of the the richest industries in the world?), now the Feds are breaking it…

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Sue-Clarke/100002277210168 Sue Clarke

    Anyone have the contact details or address of where to put in these complaints to the FBI. I am in the UK, but had family/holiday photos and videos on MU,now nothing.

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  • Juan

    so i can legally back up my movie, burn it and lend it to a friend. In turn he lends it to another friend. whats the difference if i do it through MU? i’m just sharing it to other friends across the world without sending it slow mail.

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  • Trollie

    The FBI aren’t doing anything wrong. If you take the piracy argument. They are only copies of files. No one is really losing anything :)

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  • Say Goodbye! to your files…

    Everyone’s fucked.
    All it takes is for any legal entity (the FBI in this case) to find any evidence of illegal activity and they will have the legal right to shut down *ALL* of that site/service (with a warrant of course), regardless of any presence of legal files or other persons personal posessions.
    Imagine your dry cleaner gettting busted for selling drugs through their storefront. Do you really expect the DEA would try to get you back your 3 missing shirts? “Siezed as Evidence” is the only term your ever likely to hear, possibly with a recommendation to take your own legal action against the business owners since it was their alleged activities which caused your loss, not the legal enforcement agency involved.

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  • guest

    Some examples that I see are almost laughable but I have yet to see anyone expressing in the way I see it.

    Imagine this scenario:
    I create a piece of software and upload to Megaupload for backup. Then I find some other people spreading their links containing my software. If Megaupload removes the file rather than links, that would mean I will lose my own (legitimate) backup since the servers only store a single copy (after hash check).

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  • Pranav_mann91

    i had my many files on magaupload which was great help to share,i lost my all work.want it back.

  • guest starr

    Whole current civilization is WRONG. Until greed, recklessness and wickedness are normal, we are terribly lost. Spreading knowledge,information AND material goods should be normal in society in which people are supporting each other.

  • Iub

    I’ve lost hundreds of pictures that were very memorable to me. My fault for not backing up, but still!

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