Megaupload

Today one of the most visited websites and its related websites (18 domains in all) went dark. Megaupload, a file sharing website, was taken down amid many allegations, most of which focus around copyright infringement and stretch into some potentially bogus money laundering and racketeering charges.  I've already written up a post on this on facebook so I am just going to paste it in here to save myself some time from writing a new one.  Just a heads up, "wrt" is an abbreviation meaning "with respect to."  It is a habit I picked up in some of my more theory based college math courses.

My take on Megaupload. I've downloaded a few things off it in the past, not anything of real impact, typically documents and sometimes doujinshi not available here. I don't think it was the right approach to take wrt the arrests because in the end the "users" are just going to switch to one of the other many sites. If those get shutdown, more will pop up. I don't support said piracy but it is an unfortunate reality right now, it happens, it will continue to happen, there is huge demand for it and therefore someone will always step up to meet the demand. The only way to combat it is to find a way to redirect the demand back to legal and clearly more moral channels. From reading a bit of the indictments, it seems pretty clear there is large grounds for arresting, but at the same time the language used takes advantage a little bit of many peoples unfamiliarity with the website and how the internet works. It is the precedent set by this that I don't like. The authorities using big confusing words to people who don't understand them to inflate the fiendishness of the crime of the defendants of future cases.

There are also some other legal ramifications that upset me, some more than others.  The internet does not belong to the United States of America.  It belongs to all people of the world.  The idea that USA officials can seize domain names of companies based in other countries is a little bit scary.  What is more scary is that they can seize servers from around the world.  Now, if the domain was leased through a USA company, it is clear they have the legal right to make the seizure.

Then there is the group Anonymous, the hacktivism group, not people remaining anonymous.  In response they took to the internet to retaliate against the people they deemed responsible for the arrest and resulting shutdown of Megaupload.com.  Many sites were hit, most of which included the Department of Justice and it's related sites as well as the websites for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).  I have never liked most hacktivism cases.  I can't usually bring myself to condone hacking, particularly when it involves taking information of the companies customers who are relatively innocent in the manner, but there are exceptions, such as the recovering of private company emails that are incriminating and in some cases, Denial of Service attacks and Distributed Denial of Service Attacks.  In this specific case, I don't like that the DOJ was attacked.  The organization is about so much more than a single indictment and this is just uncalled for, however, I can honestly say I won't shed a tear for the DOS/DDOS attacks on the RIAA and MPAA sites.  The two organizations are renowned for their underhanded tricks, misrepresentation of facts and generally throwing their significant weight around Washington at the expense of music and movie fans. I have no sympathy for blatant liars.