Have you heard about it? They shut down Megaupload!!!! The US Justice Department decided to kill the file-sharing company on January 19, during an ‘investigation into alleged copyright infringement’. Virginia federal prosecutors also laid charges against its founder Kim Dotcom and employees with violating piracy laws, and Dotcom was arrested near Auckland on Friday.
Of course,Megaupload not only allowed to share music files but basically any kinds of file, and was accused of ‘costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content’.
Is it the beginning of a new regulation on the internet? This is just happening the day after many websites like Wikipedia, blacked out in sign of protestation against the two bills SOPA and PIPA on their way to congress.
According to the Washington Post, just before it was taken down, Megaupload posted a statement saying that ‘allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were grotesquely overblown’, also adding: ‘The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here tostay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity,we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch’.
But people are not going to tolerate it, not too long after the shut-down, the websites for the US Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America,the Motion Picture Association of America, and Universal Music Group were attacked by hackers from the organization Anonymous, at least they claimed credit for it.
I have used the site before, who hasn’t? It had a huge traffic and even the support from high profile celebrities and musicians. Alicia Keys, but also Kanye West and will.I.am all appeared in a promo video for the website. But wait, this does not make sense, shouldn’t they be the ones complaining about copyrightinfringement? Actually a few websites (the Boom Box, Eurweb,…) are reportingthat Alicia Keys’ husband Kasseem Dean, aka Swizz Beatz, is in fact Megaupload secret CEO!!! Thisis crazy, or rather visionary in a gangster kind of way: since record sales arenot going to generate any money, producers will move to another way to make money. i am not sure about Kayne West though.
But what isnext? Are the Feds going to shut down all the sites allowing sharing files? Andif artists support this, where is the problem?
This censorship seems so pointless, eventually society will evolve toward more and more file-sharing, it is unavoidable with this ever-increasing technology, it is a techno-social evolution. Any movement going against it is a loss of time.