On January 19, 2012 the U.S. Justice Department seized about $50 million is assets of file sharing services company Megaupload and shut down all of the websites under the Megaupload corporate umbrella. 18 domain names were seized including Megavideo, Megalive, Megapix, Megabox, and CUM.com (formerly Megaporn, Megarotic, and Sexuploader). Megaupload is accused of copyright infringement and conspiracy and more and the accused face up to 20 years in prison. The prime suspect in the case is one Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) who founded Megaupload and who appears to live a larger than life lifestyle.
Kim Dotcom, an easy target?
From the United States of America V. Kim Dotcom, et al.:
Since at least September 2005, Megaupload.com has been used by the defendants and other members and associates of the Mega Conspiracy to willfully reproduce and distribute many millions of infringing copies of copyrighted works, including motion pictures, television programs, musical recordings, electronic books, images, video games, and other computer software.
Coming just a day after widespread protests against the
SOPA and PIPA bills that deal with illegal file sharing and copyright infringement, this display of global reach and power by the U.S. Justice Department makes one wonder if we actually need them.
Here's CNET's Molly Wood with her theory for the reasons behind this strange timing:
My sources tell me the timing of the Megaupload arrests was no accident. The federal government, they say, was spoiling for a fight after the apparent defeat of SOPA/PIPA and not a little humiliation at the hands of the Web. And what better way to bolster the cause for cyber-crackdown than by pointing to a massive display of cyber-terrorism at the hands of everyone's favorite Internet boogeyman: Anonymous?
Kim Dotcom's house in Coatesville, New Zealand
In retaliation, the group Anonymous claims responsibility for taking down a number of government and related media company sites including justice.gov, universalmusic.com, riaa.org, mpaa.org, copyright.gov, hadopi.fr, wmg.com, usdoj.gov, bmi.com, fbi.gov, Anti-piracy.be/nl/, ChrisDodd.com, Vivendi.fr, and Whitehouse.gov.
It should be noted that Megaupload had many legitimate users who are now blocked from accessing their data and some of them, Premium Subscribers, paid for this service. Sites like Google and The Internet Archive have removed their cached and mirrored copies of the Megaupload sites to avoid similar legal action.
While the issue of illegal file sharing and copyright infringement are legitimate concerns and the pending case against Megaupload may serve to untangle some of the ambiguity involved, I can't help imagining what this issue would look like in the physical world. Imagine you've stored some of your extra stuff in one of those public storage facilities. One day you show up to get it but you can't because the U.S. Justice Department has shut it down and seized its assets because some of the people using the same facility were trafficking in stolen movies and music.
You'd have to wonder why your legitimate stuff was also locked down and I would suggest one very likely reason would be the inability (or indifference toward) separating legitimate customers from offending ones. Is this incompetence? Or a result of the difficulty in dealing with virtual stuff? And what about the actual offending parties, i.e. the people who uploaded and shared the alleged illegal content? Will they also be pursued and prosecuted? Or are Megaupload and Kim Dotcom the equivalent of the drug kingpin where shutting them down will in theory shut down the illicit behavior? Or will people just move to some other site with their virtual wares?
This case raises many interesting questions and I'll be curious to see how and how long it takes to shake out.
