Slashdot reports:
“Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service’s founder with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com’s owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue.”* “Shortly after a federal raid today brought down the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers aligned with the online collective Anonymous have shut down sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group and the RIAA. ‘It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,’ Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.”*
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Twitter – @AnonymousWiki
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January 19th, 2012
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Popular file-sharing website megaupload.com gets shutdown by U.S Justice – FBI and charged its founder with violating piracy laws. Four Megaupload members were also arrested. The FBI released a press release on its website which you can view here:
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http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/justice-department-charges-leaders-of-megaupload-with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement
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We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.
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#OpMegaupload
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The following sites were taken down in response to the FBI shutting down megaupload.com
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:) TANGO DOWN
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justice.gov
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universalmusic.com
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riaa.org
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mpaa.org
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copyright.gov
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hadopi.fr
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wmg.com
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usdoj.gov
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bmi.com
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fbi.gov
Megaupload Song (Temporarily) Banned on YouTube:
The Metallica discog, every episode of House M.D. and the latest worthless, wouldn’t pay 25 cents to watch it hollywood p-o-s movie were available for free download Friday morning and are still there today and will still be there tomorrow. Too bad so sad for those people who had business files and their own music media files on megaup. Amerika owns the internet, and we don’t care about your excuses that megaup would allow up to an 800mb file for a free user to download when all other file hosters only allow 100mb files, large movie or album files have to split into 100mb parts.
Here is why MegaUpload was really shut down. They were about to disintermediate all the Hollywood middle men who carve out a living by getting between the artists and their audience:
Why was Megaupload really shut down?
MegaBox was going to be an alternative music store that was entirely cloud-based and offered artists a better money-making opportunity than they would get with any record label.
“UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings,” MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz told Torrentfreak
Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.
“We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free,” Dotcom outlined. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works.”