Megaupload

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Ghost
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Megaupload

Post by Ghost » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:18 am

I'm going to assume that everyone here has already heard, but for those of you currently living under a rock -

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story ... 52697186/1

Long story short - the US decides that megaupload is probably involved with online piracy, seeing as it's a fucking filesharing site in the first place. They turn to the MPAA, who claims that megaupload has cost them millions of dollars, but not to worry! the US government springs into action to defend the poor, taken advantage of MPAA. They formulate a cunning plan to shut down megaupload (wait... SOPA hasn't passed... LOL OH WELL), have the owner, a Finnish citizen living in New Zealand, arrested. Armed officers bust into his house, arrest him, and seize(steal) millions of dollars of his personal property including cars, cash, and firearms. They hold him, awaiting extradition to the US to be tried. All of this coincidentally takes place the day after the internet blackout protesting SOPA.

Seriously, this kind of shit makes me feel ashamed for serving this country. Why are our taxes being used to line the pockets of organizations that are already filthy rich to begin with? don't we have bigger problems? like the mass amounts of jobless/homeless citizens who have lost everything? the drug cartels who are killing us citizens in texas and getting away with it? the multiple conflicts we're caught up with in the middle east and africa? Nope, apparently the MPAA has decided they aren't quite rich enough, so put everything else on hold, we need government intervention! there must be justice! files are being copied and distributed! WE'RE LOSING MONEY!!!

Someone find me a deserted island somewhere. Fuck supporting this shit with my tax dollars, i'll opt out.
"A man's greatest treasures are his illusions."

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Re: Megaupload

Post by mib » Sat Jan 21, 2012 3:51 am

I'm interested to know more about the agencies that carried out the arrest warrant, and by whose authority.

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Re: Megaupload

Post by Psychlonic » Sat Jan 21, 2012 4:10 am

Yeah, it's fucking bullshit. I was pissed when I heard about it and I agree - the US is going to hell in a hand basket. The government does NOT enforce the will of the people. This is not what the majority of us want. They're doing their own shit based on money thrown at them by companies. If they can buy off our fucking FBI, that's pathetic.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by mib » Sat Jan 21, 2012 4:29 am

All this coincides with a desire to increase operations. The one thing I can't imagine is wanting to give it up just yet.

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Re: Megaupload

Post by Xanatos » Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:03 am

You guys hear about the retaliation by Anonymous?

Image
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Psychlonic » Sat Jan 21, 2012 9:10 pm

I hate to say it, but the Anonymous retaliation was a joke. They took down websites that aren't critical to anyone for a very limited duration. If they wanted to actually make an impact, they should have taken down a supporting website that had money to gain by their website remaining up. Very few people, be they agents of it or civilians, visit FBI.gov for example. That was a total waste of effort. All of those websites were practically formalities for the companies and agencies they represented just so they would have a website with basic shit on it.

Anonymous sometimes does great things, but this didn't accomplish ANYTHING. The owners of the websites themselves didn't even care - notice how nobody could be bothered to make a statement. Why should they? It would be more of an inconvenience to hold a conference than it was having those sites taken down for a few hours.

If anything, the feeble attacks just made everything worse. People can now sit back thinking justice has been served by Anonymous instead of remaining rightfully upset about this and now nothing that's actually effective will happen. If this is their "biggest attack yet", I don't think any of the feds or SOPA supporters will be losing sleep over Anonymous.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Xanatos » Sat Jan 21, 2012 9:37 pm

It was more of a statement than anything else. Anonymous pulling this kind of crap lets the world know that this shit is serious. The only way to make a real difference is hunting down those responsible who're pulling all the strings and end their power, one way or another. But they keep themselves so well hidden that it's damn-near impossible to find them. Anonymous can certainly drop docs on the Feds & other company personnel, but the fuckers in charge of all this are so high up you'd need to look down to see the President's office.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Psychlonic » Sat Jan 21, 2012 10:04 pm

A statement to who? The FBI? They don't care. The only people talking about this are people on the internet who found it interesting. If they want to make a statement in something like this, they need to do damage. The higher ups of the places these guys attacked people cracked a swift joke about it the morning after over some coffee then went back to pushing pencils. It's a non-issue.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Ghost » Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:07 am

I took it as a statement directed at the people, not the government. Obviously, taking a few sites offline for a few hours doesn't hurt those agencies any. But the fact that they had the balls to do it in the first place is something of a statement. something along the lines of "we may not be able to hurt you, but we're pissed and we aren't going to take this lying down".

Personally, i'll be happy when anonymous decides to step up their game, because while doing something is better than doing nothing, they're clearly not playing on the same level. It's like bringing water balloons to a gun fight. Mildly annoying, nothing more.
"A man's greatest treasures are his illusions."

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Re: Megaupload

Post by Xanatos » Sun Jan 22, 2012 7:07 am

Therin the Hand wrote:I took it as a statement directed at the people, not the government.
That's what I meant, Psych.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Psychlonic » Sun Jan 22, 2012 9:10 pm

*still fails to see the point*

If you can't hurt something, who cares if you're pissed? You either do something about it or you don't. It's been made obvious that getting angry and voicing your opinion doesn't accomplish shit anymore. Remember all of those changes made because of Occupy Wallstreet/elsewhere?

...me neither.

Same thing, really. Denying people services and attempting to inconvenience them. Except that these people were far more of an inconvenience than Anonymous has been and still no effect.

I'm starting to agree with this: http://maddox.xmission.com/
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Ghost » Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:29 pm

The point is that anonymous is essentially acting like (surprise!) an angsty 12 year old. This is their emotional outburst, their reaction. It's as much a statement made to try to reinforce their image as it is a statement about the problem.

Psychlonic brings up a good point though - we have become a fat, lazy populace. we care more about our own immediate gratification than anything else. As long as we can have our fast food, our 1000+ channels and our big screen TVs, we generally don't give a fuck about what's actually happening. We have slowly been trading our freedom for comfort, and for the most part nobody has cared. Why? because things haven't yet gotten bad enough. Since all we as a society care about are our creature comforts, it's fairly easy to keep things from getting bad enough. Allow me a quote, it goes very well in hand with what Maddox is saying.
Frank Zappa wrote:The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.
The sad truth, though, is that the illusion isn't hard to maintain at all. It will always be profitable to maintain, because as long as it is maintained, we will continue to give up our freedom one tiny bit at a time. As long as we can vote for "dancing with the stars", and order our mcdonald's, who cares if the government gets to shut down a few websites. We have settled for so little, that we have effectively named the price of our freedom. "Let us keep our reality TV and our happy meals, let us keep our 40 hour a week office jobs and our economy cars; and you can have everything else. Make the changes slowly, a few at a time, and we probably won't even notice."
"A man's greatest treasures are his illusions."

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Re: Megaupload

Post by Illusion » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:48 pm

The fallout is more than just megaupload.. Source (Lifehacker)
  • Fileserve – Stopped filesharing. You can only download your own files. Deleting multiple files. Banning Premium accounts. Closed Affiliate Program.
    Changed server location Jan 22, 2012. Taken down it's Facebook page Now using Digital fingerprinting. Files are being deleted as soon as uploaded (as Hotfile did).
  • VideoBB – Closed Affiliate Program.
  • Filepost – Started suspending accounts with infringing material (as Hotfile did)
  • Uploaded.to – Blocked U.S. access.
  • Videozer – Closed Affiliate Program.
  • Filejungle – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
  • Uploadstation – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
  • 4Shared – Deleting multiple files
  • EnterUpload - Down (Redirect)
Also agreed with that Maddox article, very well put and sums up not just Americans - but western society as a whole.
"I'm not worried about this because I am too strong, too good, too intelligent, but I want to say to the others 'don't follow the stupid'."

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Re: Megaupload

Post by Psychlonic » Tue Jan 24, 2012 4:22 am

Yeah, it fucking sucks. While we're dealing with SOPA, you guys have to deal with ACTA. Most Americans aren't even aware of what ACTA is - hell many still don't even know what SOPA is. It might not seem relevant because it's not here in the states, but if one passes then it's going to help the other. "Well, they did it and everything was fine so..." :roll:

At this rate we're fucked. Our best chance here in the states is to prepare to challenge it in the Supreme Court somehow and get it ripped down immediately after it goes up. One would think/hope powerhouses like Google would throw money required to make it happen. The moment a website gets taken down that has opinions just because of some minor copyright infringement, the first amendment gets pissed on.
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Re: Megaupload

Post by Illusion » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:20 am

Psychlonic wrote:Yeah, it fucking sucks. While we're dealing with SOPA, you guys have to deal with ACTA. Most Americans aren't even aware of what ACTA is - hell many still don't even know what SOPA is. It might not seem relevant because it's not here in the states, but if one passes then it's going to help the other. "Well, they did it and everything was fine so..." :roll:

At this rate we're fucked. Our best chance here in the states is to prepare to challenge it in the Supreme Court somehow and get it ripped down immediately after it goes up. One would think/hope powerhouses like Google would throw money required to make it happen. The moment a website gets taken down that has opinions just because of some minor copyright infringement, the first amendment gets pissed on.
I'm genuinely considering renting a VPN through somewhere which doesn't care about this. I have downloaded excessively, to the point I don't think I need anything else! However, it's just the fact I don't like the way the internet is going in general - too much talk of possible censorship, cases over here of deep packet inspection for advertising (!!!) and just a lack of any real anonymity now. Don't even get me started on some of the arguments regarding net neutrality..

They say if you have nothing to hide then don't worry, but this country has gone mad about ID cards in the past and even the mention of a DNA/Fingerprint database... yet the internet - the thing we grow more reliant on by the day? Yeah, you guessed it - Joe Public hasn't got a clue.

Today, policy in one western country will effect policy in another - and countries will be used as an example of how such legislation can be passed, implemented and enforced. So it's important that we *all* speak out against these issues. Furthermore, when it comes to America, the USA has an incredible amount of power over others. There are even some countries (forgot who, I apologise) whom have their traffic routed through american infrastructure!

Any legislation would be far more reaching than america, including not only geographically close countries but -politically- close countries. Additionally, most internet companies do seem to be from the US, so any legislation will effect the internet as a whole.
"I'm not worried about this because I am too strong, too good, too intelligent, but I want to say to the others 'don't follow the stupid'."

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