A reminder about filesharing sites

[Matt_H]

As the arrest of a former Amigan and closure of Megaupload remind us, these filesharing sites are incredibly volatile and unsafe for permanent archiving. If you need to distribute (legit) Amiga stuff, put it on Aminet for posterity.

[XDelusion]

One of the megaupload guys used Amiga?

FBI in Hong Kong, NWO, what?

[Karlos]

One of the megaupload guys used Amiga?

Mathias Ortmann was, I believe, the original developer of WinUAE.

[XDelusion]

What a bunch of crap! It was just a file server, they didn't upload "illegal content" them selves, and besides the server sat in a country that A. Is not the united states. B. As far as I know, still has no copy right or piracy laws.

Boooooooo

[paul1981]

What a bunch of crap! It was just a file server, they didn't upload "illegal content" them selves, and besides the server sat in a country that A. Is not the united states. B. As far as I know, still has no copy right or piracy laws.

Boooooooo

I suppose it's much to do with the (U.S.A.) music and film industry, Uncle Sam is loosing revenue due to piracy.

[commodorejohn]

I suppose it's much to do with the (U.S.A.) music and film industry, Uncle Sam is loosing revenue due to piracy.

Yeah, this was "coincidentally" done shortly after the SOPA/PIPA protests that ultimately resulted in setbacks for both bills. (And, coincidentally, the same day that Chris "Head of the MPAA" Dodd went on the news and threatened to pull funding for legislators that didn't swing his way.) Retaliation much?

[XDelusion]

I suppose it's much to do with the (U.S.A.) music and film industry, Uncle Sam is loosing revenue due to piracy.

Piracy is just an excuse to further erode the constitution and bill of rights.

As is plain to see, but the entertainment business owned news media fails to point out to those to lazy to seek out knowledge on their own, is that countries that refuse to place piracy laws or in some cases copy right laws are getting along just fine. Piracy literally hurts nothing because regardless of it, people still trained to shop and hord for happiness. Besides piracy is no more a threat than VHS recorders of yester year, or buying things second hand. Besides, Hollywood and the musick industry suck. There is little talent coming from them and 99% of it just seemed geared towards the purpose of desensitization, opinion making, and social engineering.

The attack on Megaupload RIGHT after SOPA got shot down is just another case of The Beast telling us that it is going to do what it wants, where it wants, how it wants, regardless of what the people want, because...

The beast knows what is best for us more than we know ourselves...

According to it. Indeed this is the new world democracy the protesters and riots are begging for, unbeknownced to them selves.

[dougal]

I hate the US government for what they are doing. May they burn in hell.

[Darrin]

We can all point our fingers at government agencies and blame them, but everyone who downloads movies and music that they haven't paid for and then decide they're not going to pay for it even if they like it are the ones to blame.

I'll admit to using file sharing services and they have a legitimate use.  I've downloaded CD albums to replace my scratched disks and I download TV shows after they air in the UK (I only got into BSG because I downloaded the pilot after hearing someone say how good it was and then I went on to but the complete series on DVD and then replaced that with a BluRay boxed set), however I always preorder the DVDs/BluRays from Amazon.

"Abandonware" is a different kettle of fish.

[dougal]

One of the megaupload guys used Amiga?

FBI in Hong Kong, NWO, what?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Kim_Schmitz.jpg

Pic of Kim Dotcom (of MegaUpload). Look at the computer on the right

[B00tDisk]

It was not done "coincidentally" "just after" SOPA/PIPA : this was part of a two year ongoing investigation.

This cat basically said "I make millions stealing IP, period."  Mysteriously, MU could filter  child porn out but they repeatedly told software companies, musicians, movie studios, etc. that it was "impossible" to check every file to make sure it wasn't copyrighted.

MU paid people to pirate.  They had a habit of checking incoming files for quality and would actually ask uploaders to send improved copies out.

They were asked time and time and time and time again, "please take our IP down" and the requests were ignored regardless of how they were delivered.

I'm no fan of the MPAA and RIAA and how they manipulate the legal system into being their own private security force but this is the wrong person to champion.  Shawn Fanning and Napster had "Well you know the law on this is kinda grey..." to hide behind in the late 90s and early 2000s, but this jackass knew precisely what he was doing and danced around showing his ass daring the law to do something to him.  This whole "WELL HURF HE'S NOT A US CITIZEN" BS?  Yeah, neither was Carlos the Jackal, members of the Medellin cartel (another Carlos, specifically) and OBL - doesn't make 'em right or heroes or not deserving of what they got.

Please, please, please champion a cause for electronic freedom.  Yes, do protest Amazon shutting off Wikileaks' cloud access, do call for less draconian IP laws, do stop the MPAA and RIAA from holding back technology but for chrissake don't hold this guy's actions up like he's some kind of innocent martyr.  If you want to argue that IP piracy isn't a violent crime and it hurts no-one, fine, but in this one case I think we can point to someone who actively sought to hurt people.  He was a ****ing inside trader anyway - not some 99%er hero to anyone.  The first thing he did when he moved into his "neighborhood" (his exclusive fortress built along a secluded beach that included a double panic room where apparently he was about to have a shootout with the cops when he got busted) was send out a smug little letter to nearby homeowners saying what a badass hacker he was.

**** this guy.

[Matt_H]

Personally, I see software piracy as a marketing/sales problem: instead of asking "How can we get them to stop stealing our stuff?" they should be asking "How can we get them to buy our stuff?"

Point being, this kind of thing is going to happen - these sites are going to come down, be it for legal, business, or hackery reasons. They are not safe for long-term use. Read up about The Archive Team to learn about the importance of institutionalized backups and archiving, and the danger of "the Cloud".

I've seen users here at Amiga.org post files to Megaupload and similar sites: programs they've written, scripts they've created, images they've made, formerly commercial software reclassified as freeware, document scans. All that stuff is lost now. Aminet is our best repository for preserving Amiga goodies.

[ChaosLord]

Aminet Forever!!!

But God help u if u try to upload a 1GB game

[commodorejohn]

We can all point our fingers at government agencies and blame them, but everyone who downloads movies and music that they haven't paid for and then decide they're not going to pay for it even if they like it are the ones to blame.

Look, I'm not going to defend acts of piracy, but there are already perfectly valid legal channels for going after pirates. Many non-cooperative sites have been shut down through perfectly legitimate legal means. The reason SOPA and PIPA are being put forward isn't because it's the only way to stop piracy, it's because the legitimate ways to stop it involve a certain amount of time and money, and rather than choose their battles and accept that a certain amount of small-scale infringement is going to happen, the content industry wants to be given the keys to the kingdom so that they can shut down infringers at whim (without burden of proof, due process, or chance of appeal.) It's a power grab, not just a collection of poor oppressed little businesses trying to look out for the defenseless artists they shelter from the bad, cruel pirates.

And while Megaupload may have been under investigation, I refuse to believe that the timing and scale of this ("this" being "a total shutdown of the site and the arrest of half a dozen foreign nationals in foreign countries for a foreign-based business") is not intended to send a message. (As indeed it has, with several significant file-upload sites knuckling under in the days since...)

[ChaosLord]

They were asked time and time and time and time again, "please take our IP down" and the requests were ignored regardless of how they were delivered.

**** this guy.

How do u know this to be true?

Are you now, or have you ever been an employee of Megaupload.com?