Megaupload

Megaupload

What is Megaupload?

Megaupload is a file-sharing website founded in 2005 and at its peak, the 13^th most frequently visited website on the Internet (according to the Department of Justice). With 50 million active users per day, 180 million registered users, and about 800 file transfers a day, Megaupload quickly became a household name, but for the wrong reasons (but we'll get into that later).

Through Megaupload, one could store large amounts of data for safe keeping, post videos for your friends, or send files too large for emails. There are similar file-sharing sites that provide the same sort of services, such as Dropbox, Mediafire, and SugarSync, but none that reached Megaupload's massive audience. So what made Megaupload so popular? Before discussing that, we first need to take a quick detour into how piracy has affected the internet.

Piracy

Piracy is the act of copyright infringement intentionally committed for financial gain. Until online piracy, this usually referred to bootleg DVDs, or burned CDs. Today however, copyright holders have started to describe piracy as online copyright infringement. Piracy affects movie sales, music sales, and especially the gaming industry. Why wait for a DVD release when you can have a copy downloaded in ten minutes with high definition quality? There are even search engines that have been created and maintained strictly for searching for pirated material (the most famous is ThePirateBay).

Current page for www.megaupload.com

There are advocates both for and against piracy and the debate has a lot of implications outside of the media realm. For example, online anonymity is a large issue that is facing teens and young adults. In order to crack down on piracy, online anonymity must be wiped out. But since most people are attached at the waist to a mobile device with wireless internet access, no anonymity means everyone can be tracked. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well let's look at some security leaks over the past year: the FBI, the Pentagon, Sony's Playstation network, the Arizona Police Department, etc. The problem with tracking everyone is that all of that data is one hacker away from being public knowledge. So do we let piracy slip through the cracks and keep our personal data safe, or do we punish pirates by tracking everyone and dangle all of that personal data for the best hacker? I do not have an answer, but as we return to discussing Megaupload, I will show that the answer (whether it be right or wrong) may be coming very soon.

Megaupload vs. United States Department of Justice

Megaupload sets itself apart from other file-sharing sites by having a real knack for looking the other way. Without restricting what its users can upload to its servers, illegal content soon found its new home. It became incredibly easy to find any movie, television show, or song you wanted. No download necessary either, any video could be streamed to your computer with ease. Megaupload soon became a haven for pirates and the go to website for anyone looking for something to watch. Also, because of its large audience, Megaupload provided ease of mind for those too timid to illegal download material from the Internet by abusing the safety that there numbers provided.

On January 19^th, 2012, the United States Department of Justice shut down the website and by the next day, had arrested the CEO (Kim Dotcom) and three other executives when the New Zealand Police department (by request of the FBI) raided Dotcom's mansion. In an attempt to extradite Dotcom and company to the US, the FBI and the DoJ began building a case for copyright infringement. However, because of how loosely defined Internet law is in terms of copyright infringement, the US' case was filled with holes and mistakes. One such mistake was that the warrants used in the raid of Dotcom's estate were too general, and would leave all evidence acquired inadmissible to court. There were also many rumors circulating that the US had been spying on Dotcom for years.

The indictment on Dotcom is as follows:

• In practice, the "vast majority" of users do not have any significant long term private storage capability. Continued storage is dependent upon regular downloads of the file occurring. Files not downloaded are rapidly removed in most cases, whereas popular downloaded files are retained. (items 7 – 8)
• Because only a small portion of users pay for storage, the business is dependent upon advertising. Adverts are primarily viewed when files are downloaded and the business model is therefore not based upon storage but upon maximizing downloads. (items 7 – 8)

• Persons indicted have "instructed individual users how to locate links to infringing content on the Mega Sites ... [and] ... have also shared with each other comments from Mega Site users demonstrating that they have used or are attempting to use the Mega Sites to get infringing copies of copyrighted content." (item 13)

• Persons indicted, unlike the public, are not reliant upon links to stored files, but can search the internal database directly. It is claimed they have "searched the internal database for their associates and themselves so that they may directly access copyright-infringing content". (item 14)

• A comprehensive takedown method is in use to identify child pornography, but not deployed to remove infringing content. (item 24)

• Infringing users did not have their accounts terminated, and the defendants "made no significant effort to identify users who were using the Mega Sites or services to infringe copyrights, to prevent the uploading of infringing copies of copyrighted materials, or to identify infringing copies of copyrighted works" (item 55–56)

• An incentive program was adopted encouraging the upload of "popular" files in return for payments to successful uploaders. (item 69eet al.)

• Defendants explicitly discussed evasion and infringement issues, including an attempt to copy and upload the entire content of YouTube. (items 69i-l. YouTube: items 69 i,j,l,s)

Kim Dotcom has still not been extradited to the US, nor will he seem to be in the foreseeable future. Clinging to the protection provided him by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which acts as a safe harbor for any site that takes down illegal material as soon as it is made aware of it (proper users of this act are sites like YouTube), Dotcom will most likely avoid any legal repercussions as long as he continues to say that it would be impossible to know what on his site is illegal and what is legal.

Kim Dotcom, as he is viewed by his fans

Not only is Dotcom seemingly untouchable, but “the Internet” will defend him to the end. Without any request from Dotcom, the hacking group “Anonymous” took down the Department of Justice's website with a Distributed Denial of Service (think of this as billions of requests to a single website that will slow the website to a crawl, and even take it down completely), and then began downloading internal information when the defenses were down. This information was later released to the public on Pastebin and WikiLeaks.

Future for Megaupload and Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom has promised two sites to be released on January 19^th, 2013: Megabox (a music download site to rival Spotify) and Mega (which will be a new and improved version of Megaupload). With the US not making any progress in there case against Kim Dotcom, Megaupload will most likely find new life on Mega.