what happens if SOPA passes?

fuck i use megaupload for work and music projects quite a bit

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

Came to cry about Megaupload ;_;

in any case, this seems properly insane and like some sort of weird counting coup.

RIP. I just downloaded something from Megaupload...a =Byrds bootleg.

the counterargument is that this is more like building and running a warehouse for storing stolen goods, even though some people stored goods they legit owned there too

fair enough. the truth, i guess, is that storage space is storage space and if your space is big enough then policing its use is gonna be an inexact science. it wd be very naive to expect megaupload or rapidshare to have become so big on the back of solely legal content but the idea of criminalising sites simply because they allow the possibility of illegal content storage looks pretty laughable at this stage in the game.

Four people in New Zealand aren't laughing.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0OHbv2-K8mA/TmYXUU8M-bI/AAAAAAAAHxE/VR4XveJ2vZU/s400/406hobbit-group-lord-of-the-rings-over-sized-posters.jpg

see?

Four people in New Zealand aren't laughing.

No, but they haven't been convicted of anything yet either.

fair enough. the truth, i guess, is that storage space is storage space and if your space is big enough then policing its use is gonna be an inexact science. it wd be very naive to expect megaupload or rapidshare to have become so big on the back of solely legal content but the idea of criminalising sites simply because they allow the possibility of illegal content storage looks pretty laughable at this stage in the game.

doesn't seem "laughable" to me at all. the prosecution seems pretty sensible, really.

you're saying that existing file storage sites basically shdn't exist? cos that seems pretty unrealistic even if you consider it desirable

i'm saying that it seems reasonable to prosecute file storage sites that reap substantial profits by blithely allowing themselves to become piracy engines. i'm not saying that file storage sites shouldn't exist or that they should bear full responsibility for what people choose to store on their servers, but if piracy is rampant on such a site and the site owners don't take reasonable, proactive steps to combat it, then i'd say that there's sufficient cause to at least attempt prosecution.

how can a site as big as megaupload take proactive steps to combat it?

xps - If the principle here is carried through, then there's a possibility that will happen (whether or not it should happen). One middle ground might be to force storage sites to aggressively filter content the way Youtube does. Though if that becomes the cost of being an upload site, I'm not sure who will bother staying in the game.

youtube's aggressive filtration requires a lot of resources

Yep, it's not something that many companies could put together.

I think it's pretty hard to disagree that deliberately profiting from other people's IP is a vile undertaking

how can a site as big as megaupload take proactive steps to combat it?

register all users. block access to users who upload illegal content. delete all content uploaded by users who upload any illegal content. work with organizations like the RIAA and national governments to develop reasonable strategies for identifying illegally uploaded content (if they'll cooperate). etc.

that's what i was thinking in terms of practicality. i suppose there might be many smaller, tightly run file storage sites but i assume financially it wouldn't be worth the candle. without a bill as draconian as SOPA this is just gonna be a cutting off hydra heads exercise tho i'd've thought.

contenderizer that is pure handwaving

If true, this:

For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.

was pretty dumb of them. Maybe why they went after Megaupload rather than, say, Rapidshare, which seems to take stuff down a bit more often?

I think it's pretty hard to disagree that deliberately profiting from other people's IP is a vile undertaking

it is, yes, and yet...a lot of pirated IP is full of IP stolen willy nilly from other people, too. still, we have a legal system to stop this happening so it's probly not a problem.

probably a dumb Q, but what is the difference between megaupload and say, mediafire or sendspace? is MU just the biggest?

yep

the difference is YOU'RE NEXT

Attention: The YSI Crew

yeah they're all basically the same: free filehosting with no login/signup required, and lots of shady ads/links to spyware if you click in the wrong place

haha I had totally forgotten about the "YSI?" meme until now

I wonder if modest mickey is out of prison yet

megaupload happened to be the one that worked most easily and that had the fewest popups/porn ads so it was safe to use for work

Mediafire has a smaller file limit so it can't be used for large files like movies. Megaupload would have been top of the heap in direct downloads of movies i imagine, but in recent times Fileserve and Filesonic seem to be the market leaders. This doesn't really change much

Mediafire has a smaller file limit so it can't be used for large files like movies.

"Part 1 of 14"

yeah but then you waste a lot of time when the 13th chunk turns out to be the one that got DMCA-removed

i'd say "buyer beware" but you know what i mean

fuck i use megaupload for work and music projects quite a bit

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

― this is funny u bitter dork (forksclovetofu), Thursday, January 19, 2012 4:17 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I had a pro photographer send me a 700MB vid file of my band via megaupload just this morning after he used some other service that didn't work. I went to forward the link to bandmates and it stopped working, I was like wtf.

megaupload was one of the most reliable, fastest, no hassle storage sites, gonna miss it.

also I haven't read above but hopefully you all covered this:

The US Justice Department said that Megaupload's two co-founders Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz,

http://torrentfreak.com/images/megagun.jpg

hulkshare was my go-to for a hot minute and then they went and fucked it up
as i've gotten older, it's less about downloading and more about ease of uploading. WORK

also, as noted above, SPOTIFY

i much prefer spotify's catch and release system for listening to new music than hunting down twenty new albums a month, listening to them each twice and then throwing them somewhere down the well into the terabyte
smorgasbord is much preferable

contenderizer that is pure handwaving

i don't think it is. if MU had been more aggressive about creating an inhospitable space for illegal filesharing, then i suspect they wouldn't have been targeted for prosecution. then again, if they'd done this, they wouldn't have been the biggest fish in the pond. this suggests that this industry is financially dependent on its ability to enable piracy, which in turn justifies prosecution.

i don't doubt that one could create a useful filesharing site that would be relatively inhospitable to pirates. i only doubt that one could make much money doing so.

register all users. block access to users who upload illegal content. delete all content uploaded by users who upload any illegal content. work with organizations like the RIAA and national governments to develop reasonable strategies for identifying illegally uploaded content (if they'll cooperate). etc.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Friday, 20 January 2012 08:51 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is all fine until someone has to produce a cheque book. Content industry bodies demand ISPs police the internet but refuse to fund the policing. Same everywhere.

the issue comes down to proving that content is actually owned by the folks who are telling you to take it down. having worked at a company that was constantly trying to get content removed from websites, i can tell you it's a real hassle for both sides. and megaupload probably has had millions of albums uploaded both legally and illegally and i'm sure they complied when they were able, perhaps? it might just be a matter of being unable to keep up with the content and therefore folks were keen to just take down the whole operation.

otm. One of the biggest problems now is that current systems of managing copyrights, issuance of rights etc. were not prepared with the internet in mind and are failing to keep up.

not having used megaupload, did they have a content expiry policy? making that more aggressive (say, 48 hours) would probably have helped protect them

e.g. if you want to release a TV show on DVD and there's a four-second clip of a song in the background, sometimes it's so clunky to organise the rights and royalties for the snippet of audio that it's easier to just digitally paste it out xp

Content industry bodies demand ISPs police the internet but refuse to fund the policing. Same everywhere.

Well, that's a familiar model, right? Regulatory bodes set the rules by which the the banking and finance industries must behave, but do not typically provide funding to help those companies identify and prevent violations. The US government doesn't give gun sellers money to run background checks, but it nonetheless demands that such checks be run.

it comes down to megaupload saying "ok we'll take it down but we need to know that it belongs to you" and that shit takes time. i'm sure there are riaa drones who have the most miserable business and legal practices jobs who scour the internet for lady gaga uploads and have to draft takedown notices all day long.

exactly, the literal "right to copy" starts to break down when the ability to copy becomes so trivial and low-cost. that's basically the whole deal we're trying to talk about.

(i've hesitated to write something like this for days now cos it seems so pedantic)

ct: I agree completely, but the content industries are such tight-arses that they insist ISPs voluntarily censor sites and foot the bill. Here in Aus this has been going around in circles for 3–4 years, and it never touches down because the ISPs (rightly imo) refuse to fund someone else's grievances.