News - Megaupload shut down by federal prosecutors

[HEXUS]

The 180 million strong user-base has the carpet ripped from under their feet.

Read more.

[Hicks12]

so what about legitimate users who have paid for accounts with megaupload? Thankfully i havent but i hope they get a refund somehow? I got alot of custom roms off megaupload, damn americans acting rather harshly tbh...

[Noxvayl]

How long before they start blaming construction workers for road accidents?

Thank goodness SOPA and PIPA are not law yet, otherwise this wouldn't be newsworthy any more, just another day on the internet.

[Andeh13]

I think it is ridiculous, and a worrying step closer to a restricted and constantly monitored internet!

How the hell are the owners of these sites meant to keep track of the files being uploaded & downloaded...it isn't their responsibility. I used the site many a time for ROMS and such files, and have been considering such a site for use with a rough 'cloud' dumping ground. What about youtube, or facebook ...both contain copyrighted & illegal material...

[Percy1983]

I have used it to distribute legit work, what is the next best service now?

[Phage]

I have used it to distribute legit work, what is the next best service now?

Same here. If I find one, I'll let you know.

[Biscuit]

there is hundreds of them.
Rapidshare
Fileserve
Filesonic
File Jungle
Wupload
Media Fire
... the list goes on

[Millennium]

What the hell! This is just wrong. We need these kind of services for all kinds of legitimate reasons. I shudder to think how many tens of millions of links will be dead now.

[Fraz]

The Land of the Free Remarkably Authoritarian strikes again.

Edit: Reading the Ars-Technia article on it (linked via the thread in the post below) makes it a lot clearer from the perspective of the authorities. They obviously had a fair amount of intel on the owners/employes, and will only tolerate so much before they do something about it. So, Megaupload probably deserved what they got, as far as I can see.

[streetster]

There's a thread in GD too

[brasco]

The problem with these services, if you are legit, is that they get pretty quickly piggy backed by the darkside...
Yousendit is a good one for anyone looking for a more business oriented file share.

brasc

[crossy]

there is hundreds of them.
Rapidshare
Fileserve
Filesonic
File Jungle
Wupload
Media Fire
... the list goes on

How long before the hangman comes for them?

Don't have accounts on any of those, including Megaupload, but I've used that one plus at least two of the others named above for legitimate purposes. Last time was when I used 'em to download the files I needed for a 3rd party ROM on my Android phone.

There's also a couple of threads on xda-devs about this, since it's obviously going to effect some of the folks over there.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is funny is you get criticism of China for what it censors and controls "for the good for its citizens" ,and yet both the US and countries like Australia are trying themselves to increase control of the internet content which their own citizens can access too for "their good" too. SOPA is an example of this.

[keithwalton]

There first big mistake was to have their servers in the usa, so shutting them down was going to be easy.
Hopefully they now face extradition rather than abduction from NZ though I suspect it will only be a paperwork exercise.
The list of seized property so far is quite eye watering with the number of cars and tv's they had.

Next they'll go after the site which auto mirrors a file across the popular sites and provides a link to them all (like most here have used it for my android roms)

[Scribe]

They go out of their way to moan about how advertising on Megaupload is expensive and 1st party managed, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that was what triggered the whole thing.

Certainly there's been a fair bit of foul play on both sides with various overlapping interests, but agreeing with other users, there's a lot of legitimate use, in the past I've even used the service to host educational content for students. Given the underplaying of the number of legitimate and overall premium user accounts, I am upset primarily for this reason. For other reasons, I'm sure in many ways the firm did have it coming to them.

[Jonatron]

There first big mistake was to have their servers in the usa, so shutting them down was going to be easy.
Hopefully they now face extradition rather than abduction from NZ though I suspect it will only be a paperwork exercise.
The list of seized property so far is quite eye watering with the number of cars and tv's they had.

Next they'll go after the site which auto mirrors a file across the popular sites and provides a link to them all (like most here have used it for my android roms)

I'd guess most of the bandwidth megaupload used was in the USA, so it would have probably been expensive to have servers anywhere else.