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It seems a lot of people are outraged that MegaUpload has been shut down and the owners face jail. I don’t totally understand the outrage. Maybe it was because I never used sites like that – and hated when people tried to make me download from there. Why would you make me fill in Captcha’s and wait 20 seconds for the download link to appear – and then try to fool me into pressing the wrong link so you can try to sell me a premium download service – when you could just put the file on dropbox. Or puush. The whole thing seemed stupid to me.

But it wasn’t taken down for being an awful throwback.It was taken down for all the pirated shit on it. And there was an awful lot of pirated shit on it.Ā 

The thing is if someone came to me with a the idea for MegaUpload my first question would be “wouldn’t people just upload warez and tv shows to it – how are you going to stop that?”. Literally my first thought. But for MegaUpload the pirate stuff was a good thing.

They obviously ignored any DMCA’s that were served because if you went a site such as IceFilms.info yesterday you’d have seen hundreds of TV show episodes – some uploaded as long ago as 2 years. Now you’re not telling me that in 2 years of downloads MegaUpload didn’t notice these files getting all this traffic from all around the world and think to check into it? All theĀ referrersĀ from this one website? No. Because it was making them money.

Speaking of IceFilms:

That’s the mentality. “The CORRUPT US GOVT shut down this website were using to distribute all these pirate movies to you – the bastards!”.

There’s a lot of arguments to all this.

But what about the people who were using it legitimately!

Yeah it’s a shame if it’s gone forever. But I’ve gotta kind of wonder why they were hosting their stuff there. Was it because they paid for a premium account so they could download warez faster? Was it because they really didn’t know of a better place to host their priceless family photos?

But you’re missing the point – it wasn’t EVEN ON US SOIL!

It wasn’t theĀ Americans that made the arrest either?Ā JurisdictionĀ arguments are pointless. They’re not poor kids that didn’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got lawyers. They’ve obviously got money. If there’s any doubt over the legality of the arrests at all they’ll get off.

But where do we draw the line! Now they can take any site down!?

Of course they can’t. They got done for a reason. If you have a sensible policy on piracy and sharing copyrighted material, and actually act on DMCA notices then your site is fine. That’s the whole point of the DMCA.

You can’t stop piracy!Ā 

It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to stop people who are making hundreds of millions of dollars out of it.

SOPA will be next if we let this stand!

How do you figure? I’d say it’s the opposite. This has proven that you can get rid of a huge source of piracy without SOPA. So if anything it’s a case against it.

Since when were you mr fuking anti piracy shit dont smell

I’ve pirated stuff. I don’t deny that. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not hailing this as a great win for anti-piracy. If anything I couldn’t give a shit that the site is gone.

I’m annoyed at theĀ entitlementĀ people feel towards pirateĀ stuff. It’s against the law – you can’t complain that they try to stop you doing it.

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