SOPA Blackout

[MaestroZidane]

They're falling like dominos...

 

[Mint]

SOPA didnt even pass :/.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

First Row Sports is the best website in the world. ICE seized firstrow.com and within 30 minutes they were like "whatever, go to firstrowsports.eu, USA doesn't rule the world".

 

[Alex]

I think because of the timing of the case against MU, things got confused a little.

As Mint said SOPA didn't even pass. MU was basically taken to court at a convenient time around the time SOPA was hitting headlines. When MU went to court, FS, FSo etc bailed.

RS, HF and Oron seem to be where it's at now. Really it's only File Serve, File Sonic and Mega Upload that have disappeared.

 

[Alex]

First Row Sports is the best website in the world. ICE seized firstrow.com and within 30 minutes they were like "whatever, go to firstrowsports.eu, USA doesn't rule the world".

That's the attitude I want!

It's like myp2p.eu got shut down, but you really think I now can't find a stream when I want one?

 

[MaestroZidane]

Same thing happen with another streaming site I use to watch Live sports. They got shut down before last years superbowl, only for them to come back with the ".eu" a few days later.

Myp2p is still my go-to site as well

 

[ShiftyPowers]

If I'm not mistaken, myp2p started redirecting to firstrow didn't they?

 

[Alex]

Not sure. Stopped using it when it went down

 

[Jaboldinho]

I think they changed into wiziwig.tv.

 

[Alex]

Looks like it to me.

 

[Back Door Skip]

I think they changed into wiziwig.tv.

I didn't know that. Cool!

 

[MaestroZidane]

I found it at myp2p.pe

 

[Alex]

myp2p.pe is a fake.

It has some streams, but it's someone else cashing in on myp2p's good name. The other one is the real deal.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/04/megaupload.htm

[I've been working on this linkwrap for 3 months. Linkwraps rarely improve with age. At this point, it's not even clear the US government has a case due to its repeated gaffes. Nevertheless, I've decided to post this linkwrap now because--regardless of its disposition--the Megaupload prosecution is an incredibly important Cyberlaw development that almost certainly will make my top 10 year-end list.]

While there could be a small amount of provable criminal copyright infringement—under our modern overexpansive criminalization of ordinary daily activities—for infringing files the Megaupload principals uploaded themselves, the government ordinarily wouldn't have cranked up its massive machinery for those violations. After all, millions of Americans routinely commit violations like that, and mass panic would be at hand if the government exercises its prosecutorial discretion so loosely.

Instead, the government's prosecution of Megaupload demonstrates the implications of the government acting as a proxy for private commercial interests. The government is using its enforcement powers to accomplish what most copyright owners haven't been willing to do in civil court (i.e., sue Megaupload for infringement); and the government is doing so by using its incredibly powerful discovery and enforcement tools that vastly exceed the tools available in civil enforcement; and the government's bringing the prosecution in part because of the revolving door between government and the content industry (where some of the decision-makers green-lighting the enforcement action probably worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the copyright owners making the request) plus the Obama administration’s desire to curry continued favor and campaign contributions from well-heeled sources.

The resulting prosecution is a depressing display of abuse of government authority. It’s hard to comprehensively catalog all of the lawless aspects of the US government’s prosecution of Megaupload, so I’ll just focus on two:

1) Trying to hold Megaupload criminally liable for its users' actions. Criminal copyright infringement requires willful infringement, a very rigorous scienter level. I discuss the implications of this high scienter requirement in more detail in my decade-old article on warez trading. Megaupload’s business choices may not have been ideal, but Megaupload has a number of strong potential defenses for its users' activities, including 512(c), lack of volitional conduct and more. Whether it actually qualified for these is irrelevant; Megaupload’s subjective belief in these defenses should destroy the willfulness requirement. Thus, the government is simply making up the law to try to hold Megaupload accountable for its users' uploading/downloading.

2) Taking Megaupload offline. Megaupload's website is analogous to a printing press that constantly published new content. Under our Constitution, the government can’t simply shut down a printing press, but that's basically what our government did when it turned Megaupload off and seized all of the assets. Not surprisingly, shutting down a printing press suppresses countless legitimate content publications by legitimate users of Megaupload. Surprisingly (shockingly, even), the government apparently doesn't care about this “collateral,” entirely foreseeable and deeply unconstitutional effect. The government's further insistence that all user data, even legitimate data, should be destroyed is even more shocking. Destroying the evidence not only screws over the legitimate users, but it may make it impossible for Megaupload to mount a proper defense. It's depressing our government isn't above such cheap tricks in its zeal to win.

The government has also been shockingly cavalier about the collateral consequences of its prosecution on the marketplace. Legitimate web hosts, and their investors, are quaking in their boots that they will be next. It doesn’t help that the content industry is circulating a “kill chart” of its next desired targets.

In the end, the Megaupload prosecution demonstrates that SOPA advocates are inevitably going to win. The content owners’ ire toward “foreign rogue websites,” combined with the administration’s willingness to break the law, if necessary, to keep content owners happy, leads to lawless outcomes like the Megaupload prosecution and ICE’s domain name seizures. I'll say more about this in my long-delayed SOPA linkwrap.

From one of the links at the bottom:

Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is the former general counsel and antipiracy enforcer for the Business Software Alliance, a trade group representing software producers such as Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Intuit.

A US judge has put a bomb under the Megaupload case by informing the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen. The cyberlocker was never formally served with the appropriate paperwork by the US authorities, as it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges.

Megaupload got railroaded.

 

[Ebonix]

So Megaupload could essentially re-open?

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Probably not as megaupload

 

[Ebonix]

I could deal with that. I tend to prefer Mediafire anyway, it's just most places I find my downloads used to use Megaupload. It's just like when Suprnova shut down, give it a couple of months and the next thing comes along.

 

[regularcat]

nzbs are the way to go.

 

[RobbieD_PL]

But you have to subscribe with moneys for nzbs.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Most people seem to have flocked back to Rapidshare. And ******* Rapidshare have made free downloading HORRIBLY SLOW.