So this happened :
Popular file-sharing website Megaupload shut down
Megaupload shut down by feds, seven charged, four arrested
Megaupload assembles worldwide criminal defense
Department of Justice shutdown of rogue site MegaUpload shows SOPA is unnecessary
And then.. This happened :
Megaupload Anonymous hacker retaliation, nobody wins
And, of course, the day before all of this happened was the SOPA/PIPA protest.
Wow.. The government, right? SOPA/PIPA isn’t even on the books, people are up in arms over it, and then they go and seize one of the largest file sharing websites on the planet! We should all band together and immediately protest this illegal seizure!
But wait.. hang on.. Since when does jumping to conclusions help? Let’s take a look and see what exactly is going on here.. According to the indictment, this case went before a grand jury before any takedown was performed. Additionally, this wasn’t an all-of-a-sudden thing. Megaupload had been contacted in the past about copyright violations and failed to deal with them as per established law.
There are a lot of people who are against this action. In fact, the hacktivist group, Anonymous, decided to display their dictate by performing DDoS attacks against high profile sites such as the US DoJ, MPAA, and RIAA. This doesn’t help things and may actually hurt the SOPA/PIPA protest in the long run.
Now I’m not going to say that the takedown was right and just, there’s just not enough information as of yet, and it may turn out that the government was dead wrong with this action. But at the moment, I have to disagree with those that point at this as an example of an illegal takedown. As a friend of mine put it, if the corner market is selling illegal bootleg videos, when they finally get raided, the store gets closed. Yes, there were legal uses of the services on the site, but the corner store sold milk too.
There are still many, many copyright and piracy issues to deal with. And it’s going to take a long time to deal with them. We need to be vigilant, and protesting when necessary does work. But jumping to conclusions like this, and then attacking sites such as the DoJ are not going to help the cause. There’s a time and a place for that, and I don’t believe we’re there yet.