A day after multiple Internet companies came together in protest over two proposed anti-piracy bills, Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, and charged its founder and others employees with violating piracy laws, the Associated Press is reporting.
This week has been eventful for the Hong Kong-based file-sharing service. Page Six reported that the company's CEO, Swizz Beatz, was in the middle of a copyright infringement case involving a number of artists—Kanye West, Diddy, Chris Brown will.i.am, et. al—who came out in support of the website by participating in the "Megaupload Song" in 2011.
The indictment presented by the Virginia Federal prosecutors accuses the company of costing intellectual property and copyright holders over $500 million in lost revenue from pirated material hosted on the company's servers.
Megaupload was founded in 2005 by German entrepreneur Kim Schmitz who, prior to becoming an entrepreneur, was a computer hacker. He has been brought up on various charges including credit card fraud, embezzlement, and insider trading. In 2011, after Universal Music Group issued a takedown notice to the site for the "Megaupload Song", Schmitz and Megaupload filed a lawsuit against UMG for sending "illegitamate takedown notices."
[via The Washington Post]
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red rover January 19th, 2012 at 04:16 PM
The part that kils me is the presumed $500 million in lost revenue. The assumption is that music pirates would have bought the music otherwise. There's no way to quantify what the losses actually are. If we weren't in this digital music age, you'd still find a lot of these hard copies sitting on shelves even without piracy.
James M January 19th, 2012 at 05:24 PM
As soon as they put the $500 million down as either an insurance loss, or declare it as a loss in a tax document, I will accept the claim.
Austin Hoffman January 20th, 2012 at 05:21 AM
I can't believe they went and arrested him in ANOTHER country!!! p.s. LOL @list of the owner's seized cars: (i call dibz on the royce!) http://www.peeje.com/positivity/5666-megaupload-sued-defendants-property-lol