FBI siezes Megaupload

[Cereb Daithi]

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press- ... fringement

28-OCT-2011 - MegaUpload labelled a 'rogue' site by MPAA.

09-DEC-2011 - MegaUpload releases a music video with RIAA artists endorsing MegaUpload.

10-DEC-2011 - UMG doesn't like the video. Has it removed from YouTube.

12-DEC-2011 - MegaUpload files suit against UMG on the grounds that UMG cannot remove the content as MegaUpload holds the copyright, not UMG.

16-DEC-2011 - UMG says "So what? We can take down whatever we want!" and "You can't touch us. This isn't DMCA. We didn't take it down because of copyright. We took it down because we can."

21-DEC-2011 - MegaUpload labelled a "rogue" site by the USTR.

28-DEC-2011 - MegaUpload wants an explaination from UMG.

19-JAN-2012 - MegaUpload shut down by Feds

I might have missed some points, but this is a pretty full timeline.
Feel free to add/correct anything I have here.

It's like a glimpse into the future of SOPA/PIPA. This gives me chills and I'm not even being theatrical.

[Sabre]

This is downright scary.

[avriette]

Holy shit, this is ludicrous.

Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann, and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities, who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Bencko, Echternach, and Nomm remain at large. Today, law enforcement also executed more than 20 search warrants in the United States and eight countries, seized approximately $50 million in assets, and targeted sites where Megaupload has servers in Ashburn, Va., Washington, D.C., the Netherlands, and Canada. In addition, the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., ordered the seizure of 18 domain names associated with the alleged Mega conspiracy.

Am I the only one that read that? They were arrested in another country and extradited. They'll be going away for twenty years, and it looks like the gubmint is trying to bring $175M in damages agains them. What's also terrifying about this is they're not fucking around with petty "copyright laws" that might be hard to prove, or hard to prove harm from, they're using racketeering and conspiracy laws. I'm not a big fan of conspiracy laws in general (it equates to a thought crime; you don't have to actually do anything). But racketeering???

And why is the FBI jabbing the spear on this? Why shouldn't this be a civil matter between the MPAA and the accused? Seriously, a multinational arrest and extradition using laws designed to prosecute mobsters, and jail terms greater than those handed out for rape, aggravated assault, manslaughter, corruption (in government, naturally)....

The government is acting with a sledgehammer here, and I'm having an increasingly hard time believing it's just because they're stupid and don't understand. At some point you have to just say the simplest explanation is these fuckheads are just bowing to corporate paymasters, as much as I hate to say and sound like that.

Fuuuck. The age of infocrime is upon us.

[Cereb Daithi]

And now it looks like Anonymous just took down the FBI site along with 10 other sites so far.

[avriette]

And now it looks like Anonymous just took down the FBI site along with 10 other sites so far.

No. By their own admission, it's a DDOS.

[Cereb Daithi]

Oops. I must confess I hadn't read too far into it and didn't read the tweets since then. Site appears to be back up now.

Their recent video release is as melodramatic as ever. I'm curious to see what happens over the coming days though.

[Sabre]

lol, looks like Anon has torn a hole in a couple of them tonight!

[PGT]

justice.gov is the only one really affected

[Mr Kleen]

The long arm of the [money]...

[PGT]

Turns out Carpathia was hosting the majority in Ashburn:

The indictment makes these points repeatedly. Megaupload wasn't just some Hong Kong enterprise that "happened" to be used by US residents. The site had leased more than 1,000 servers in North America alone; 525 were at Carpathia Hosting and were located in Virginia. Between 2007 and 2010, Carpathia received $13 million from Megaupload. (Cogent Communications in the US supplied a few additional US servers and bandwidth.)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... upload.ars

Carpathia bought Servervault a couple of years back, which hosts a lot of .govs. I'm sure they were MORE than cooperative with the seizure.