Protect IP & SOPA: The Internet Blacklist

[Tchay]

word.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Christ.

 

[Prog]

I was told to spread this video.


TL;DR We're all *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ed.

 

[AfroLH]

 

[AfroLH]

Oh, and do you think the FBI really has the manpower and resources to go through EVERY user, and look at EVERY file, determine whether it's illegal or not, and then find where EVERY user lives?

 

[bud]

That would be a HUGE waste of resources if they did that. I'd imagine that they'd set a trap of some sort. Keep tabs on the popular stuff or something like that.

 

[AfroLH]

Oh, and explain to me how Megaupload will have anything more than my IP address.
IP addresses CANNOT be linked to a single person.

 

[DK]

I'd love to see them try to extradite the majority of University students from England.

 

[Σigma]

 

[bic]

Megaupload's problem is they failed to comply with the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. They also increased the value of ads on download pages the more popular a file became, so naturally stolen content raked in more money for them. ("Family.Guy.The.Latest.Episode.S0x.E0x.mkv" will naturally attract more attention than "billysmamearcadecabinetblueprints.rar".)

e: From the DOJ brief:

According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies – often before their theatrical release – music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale. The conspirators’ content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet. The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy’s criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $500 million. The conspirators allegedly earned more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships.

The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. The indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The conspirators further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.

In addition, by actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicize infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicize such content on the Megaupload site. Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users.

As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. 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.

I never thought the day would come to pass that the Internet would turn to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for security...

 

[Zero]

IP addresses CANNOT be linked to a single person.

If they have the date and time of the offense along with the IP, your ISP could turn in the person's name on the account that the IP belonged to at the time (assuming they still have that on record). Even so, that still doesn't mean the account holder did it. If you tell them you have an open wi-fi network that might help your case.

 

[Abyss]

This made me laugh way more than it should have.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Someone should apply that statistic to rape.

 

[Prog]

Forget the prison sentence, do you know how ridiculously high the fines are?

 

[Zero]

http://torrentfreak.com/filesonic-kills ... ts-120122/

A bunch of other file hosts are also responding to the Megaupload drama by shutting down services. :/

 

[bic]

...Because it's easier than a system-wide piracy audit.

 

[Zero]