Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws — a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue.
“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment.
The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited — of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.
Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
7 Responses
what kind of yeshiva news is this ??
And this is yeshiva news because?
I don’t understand what such an article is doing on yeshivaworld what does this have to do with yidden and espescially putting the names of such chazerim on the bottom that endorse such sites its bad enough that I have to see their names in every other news source but to see them here is truly an embarrassment I’m shocked!
Being a bit self righteous aren’t we? Who are you kidding? The news affects you and all the other frum users of that site!!
I can’t tell you how many m’sheluli have complained about this on public forums.
That’s why its here!
Its Yeshiua news because people who frequent this site use that site as well.
The owners (apparently a German, living in New Zealand where he was arrested) are career international criminals who were doing very well.
But if they were able to “bust” them under current law, then why do they need the new controversial laws? This supports that argument that the proposed new laws aren’t need to address commercial privacy, but will only interfere with free speech without providing additional protection to intellectual property owners.