Megaupload down?

[jack_norton]

I contacted them about this yesterday, and they said it's okay for existing vendors, but they're not accepting any new ones right now. (Maybe that'll change in the future, their wording was kinda unclear.) So BMT's probably not really something to count on there.

Ah I see. Just to be safe I'm not making any hentai, even if I have some nudity/hot scenes in some upcoming games (Loren in particular!)

[Taleweaver]

Sorry for the OT, just gotta share this:
http://kimschmitzlookingatthings.tumblr.com/

Memories of another Kim come up...

[Blane Doyle]

HEY GUYS I JUST FOUND OUT SOMETHING. Something rather sickening in fact.

The reason MU was taken down WAS because of money laundering... and maybe something else.

They were starting something called Megabox, something that claimed to allow artists to sell through them and keep 90% of earnings. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permali ... 21airvinyl
Now, this would sound great, and make it seem like big companies were throwing a hissy fit, right? WELL... that is only half of of this, and partly true.

MU was also using the affiliate program it had to pay top uploaders. To pay people for uploading. Many of the top uploaders were uploading illegal content AND MAKING MONEY OFF IT. MU was paying people to do this, and making money off it it since affiliates can only be premium paid account users.

In addition? The owners of MU and many employees uploaded, shared, and were part of this program. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... upload.ars

And more: someone did a little digging. It would seem that Megabox would have essentially put ADWARE on your computer and replace the ads you would normally see. This would allow them to take money from the ads instead of the people who have the ads up for revenue. (this one is a bit sketchy, but I would not put it past them http://shrineheart.tumblr.com/post/1641 ... monoflight )

Like... say... a visual novel development blog that ran solely on the ad revenue. Yeah, that blog would NOT GET THAT MONEY. Megabox would.

So yes. MU was in fact making its money illegally. Very much so. And it would seem that the music companies did not like this new MegaBox thing. And, if what I am seeing is right, it would appear that it would have made even more money simply by stealing it. MB could have been a coincidence, and the FBI was investigating them for YEARS for fraudulent ways of manking their money (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/techn ... .html?_r=1 as stated here). But I think MB might have kick started things, for good and bad.

I wonder what this says about sites like Fileserve that have closed their programs and banned paid accounts. Do they have something to hide as well? Or are they being over protective?

(I felt you guys had a right to know this. I personally think the owners of the site deserved to be arrested for their fraud, but simply the affiliate program of the site be shut down. I don't know much about MegaBox myself, and I am just reporting what I have found. And yes, reading this did make me sick to my stomach)

[Taleweaver]

So yes. MU was in fact making its money illegally. Very much so. And it would seem that the music companies did not like this new MegaBox thing. And, if what I am seeing is right, it would appear that it would have made even more money simply by stealing it. MB could have been a coincidence, and the FBI was investigating them for YEARS for fraudulent ways of manking their money ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/techn ... .html?_r=1 as stated here). But I think MB might have kick started things, for good and bad.

Knowing Kim Schmitz, this sounds just like everything he's done in his life - some large-scale fraud to rip off a large number of other people. It's a shame he had to set up a filesharing platform for it, which now in turn makes other filesharing platforms look bad as well even though their business may be perfectly legit.

Filesharing and copyright infringement don't go together as often and as naturally as some lobbyists claim - it's a little like the connection between Islam and terrorism. (Okay, maybe not the best of examples, but the first that came to my mind.)

[Blane Doyle]

No no, that is a very good example. At least I believe so.

I may have loved MU and it's ease of use... but wow...

[OtomeWeekend]

lol, because of megaupload's owner's arrest, other uploading sites have eventually made their sites for personal use instead of share-based... Eventually, I'm downloading a doujin game I was beta-testing and filesonic just slaps me with a "only for personal use, if you are the owner of this file, please log in". The only workable site for me now is mediafire as it has always been since before. :/

[LeandroP]

HEY GUYS I JUST FOUND OUT SOMETHING. Something rather sickening in fact.

The reason MU was taken down WAS because of money laundering... and maybe something else.

They were starting something called Megabox, something that claimed to allow artists to sell through them and keep 90% of earnings. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permali ... 21airvinyl
Now, this would sound great, and make it seem like big companies were throwing a hissy fit, right? WELL... that is only half of of this, and partly true.

MU was also using the affiliate program it had to pay top uploaders. To pay people for uploading. Many of the top uploaders were uploading illegal content AND MAKING MONEY OFF IT. MU was paying people to do this, and making money off it it since affiliates can only be premium paid account users.

In addition? The owners of MU and many employees uploaded, shared, and were part of this program. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... upload.ars

And more: someone did a little digging. It would seem that Megabox would have essentially put ADWARE on your computer and replace the ads you would normally see. This would allow them to take money from the ads instead of the people who have the ads up for revenue. (this one is a bit sketchy, but I would not put it past them http://shrineheart.tumblr.com/post/1641 ... monoflight )

Like... say... a visual novel development blog that ran solely on the ad revenue. Yeah, that blog would NOT GET THAT MONEY. Megabox would.

So yes. MU was in fact making its money illegally. Very much so. And it would seem that the music companies did not like this new MegaBox thing. And, if what I am seeing is right, it would appear that it would have made even more money simply by stealing it. MB could have been a coincidence, and the FBI was investigating them for YEARS for fraudulent ways of manking their money (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/techn ... .html?_r=1 as stated here). But I think MB might have kick started things, for good and bad.

I wonder what this says about sites like Fileserve that have closed their programs and banned paid accounts. Do they have something to hide as well? Or are they being over protective?

(I felt you guys had a right to know this. I personally think the owners of the site deserved to be arrested for their fraud, but simply the affiliate program of the site be shut down. I don't know much about MegaBox myself, and I am just reporting what I have found. And yes, reading this did make me sick to my stomach)

Making money illegaly != Money laundering

If they wanted to avoid taxes, Okay, but nothing that you've mentioned could be classify for nothing more than piracy and copyright infrigement. Now... Why does the money laundering comes out now? Because It's the only legal weapon they have to bring them to the US and make the trials.

The CIA did the exact same thing with Wikileaks, acussing Assange of sexual harassment. They needed a real reason to put him on trial.

[Blane Doyle]

"Money laundering refers to the process of concealing the source of illegally obtained money. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication."

They were hiding the fact that they made their money illegally, as many people in the general public did NOT know how they made most of their income from multiple resources. And the FBI has listed money laundering as an official reason. (and hey, if the adware thing is true, that is most certainly illegal) (and money laundering has NOTHING to do with taxes by the way)

They made money off of people uploading copyright infringing work, and then paid those uploaders a small fee to keep uploading. That is where copyright infringement comes in, as it is 100% illegal to make money by distributing another work in this way. (though why this doesn't mean GARAGE sales aren't illegal I will never know)

And, in addition, part of what I stated in the quoted text implies that music companies being annoyed by their new service might have had something to do with it.

[LeandroP]

They amount of money they have to clean is enormous at the point of being obvious... I find it rather as an excuse more than a real reason.

[dott.Piergiorgio]

I'm wondering what people would think of an LSF-specific upload site.

The new forum server (which I ordered last Friday, will begin building this week, and will probably deploy sometime next month) will have 2x2TB of disk on it. (Raid 1, so 2TB useful storage.) Upgrading it to a 100mbps connection, while not free, would be relatively inexpensive.

Having our own upload service would be nice. Probably the biggest advantage is that we don't have to worry about it going down for legal reasons - since it would only have legit works on it, and we could choose people to patrol it for copyright infringement. We wouldn't have to worry about peoples' works being deleted due to lack of downloads, either.

It would take me only a few hours to make - once the new server exists, the coding is easy. We'd need volunteers to patrol it for copyright infringement. I'd want it to break even on a month to month basis - I might just do that by (finally) putting together the Ren'Py store, and making this associated with it.

I can only fully agree with PyTom's initiative. and, I can also suggest that can be used as e-shop for commercial Ren'ai (at least for US indie devs), and this can help defray the expenses for the server ? seems a good idea, but is economically feasible ?

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

[Princess Akina]

- MegaUpload - Closed.
- FileServe - Closing does not sell premium.
- FileJungle - Deleting files. Locked in the U.S..
- UploadStation - Locked in the U.S..
- FileSonic - the news is arbitrary (under FBI investigation).
- VideoBB - Closed! would disappear soon.
- Uploaded - Banned U.S. and the FBI went after the owners who are gone.
- FilePost - Deleting all material (so will leave executables, pdfs, txts)
- Videoz - closed and locked in the countries affiliated with the USA.
- 4shared - Deleting files with copyright and waits in line at the FBI.
- MediaFire - Called to testify in the next 90 days and it will open doors pro FBI

TORRENTS

-Org torrent could vanish with everything within 30 days "he is under criminal investigation"
- Network Share mIRC awaiting the decision of the case to continue or terminate
Torrents everything
- Koshiki - operating 100% Japan will not join the SOUP / PIPA
- Shienko Box - 100% working china / korea will not join the SOUP / PIPA
- ShareX BR - group UOL / BOL / iG say they will join the SOUP / PIPA

So this is all true?
And I think this person meant SOPA, unless there is something I haven't heard of called SOUP? o.O

[LeandroP]

As long as TPB is up and running, I will complain nor cause any sh**tstorm...

[LVUER]

We could take a little breather with Mediafire though...
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/22/media ... el-piracy/

[Dollywitch]

What bothers me the most is the sheer amount of data, much of it legitimate that was lost with Megaupload going down. And even the not technically legitimate stuff, could have been things like rare comics/doujins, games, albums or god knows what else that might not be available anywhere else anymore. I know myself from being into 80s goth and the lot that there's a lot of rare, interesting music out there that may have only even been uploaded in one place.

Someone compared it to the online equivalent of burning the library of Alexandria.
If it continued in this direction, that's pretty much what it would be, but most people don't understand this. It's aggravating.

In many cases, what they have done is no different to book-burning and anyone involved in their job should lose their job over it. People should have been given a chance to get down whatever important files there were first. It really bothers me when clueless, anti-intellectual little shits get to decide the fate of the internet like this when they should be let nowhere near positions in government, corporations etc.

[LVUER]

I know. That's why I also repeatedly mentioned that I hope Megaupload will be operating again and still keep all their "not-so-infringed-copyright" contents. There are also lots of precious rare free stuff or stuff that even the owner doesn't mind it's freely distributed either.

I hope people that upload their stuff to Megaupload still around and have their stuff, and reupload them again on other sites.