The popular uploadsite MegaUpload is offline at the expense of the FBI. Among the employees of the site who have been arrested for breach of copyright is a Dutchman. He was the programmer, and network administrator.
Also, the FBI has bank account details to be viewed and were server locations visited that were involved in MegaUpload. The FBI would also be on the servers of MegaUpload in the Netherlands. It seems that at least a part of the hosting via servers from Leaseweb went; a large part of the subdomains by MegaUpload were used, refer to ip-addresses of this hosting company. The Dutch police and FIOD have the FBI helped in the investigation, according to a statement from the U.s. department of justice.
The American authorities are still looking for a German, and a Est and a Slovak. There are twenty zoekbevelen in the U.S. and nine other countries, issued and there would be about 50 million in assets confiscated. In addition, there are 18 domain names that are affiliated with the FBI the ‘Mega conspiracy’, and seized. Also other sites under the same company as MegaUpload fell, such as MegaVideo and MegaPorn, are offline.
The suspects and two companies behind MegaUpload, Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited, appear on January 5, charged on the basis of a review by the grand jury of Virginia for conspiracy to participate in a criminal organization, conspiracy to auteursrechteninbreuk to commit and to launder money. This is respectively a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years, 5 years, and again 20 years.
In addition to piracy is in the indictment involved with an illegal organization called. In the indictment is the uploadsite blamed the entertainment industry $ 500 million in sales to cost. MegaUpload came a number of times in the news due to legal conflicts with record labels. In addition, the uploadsite out against the actions of copyrightvoorvechters MPAA and RIAA. Recently left Universal even a sales video of MegaUpload is offline, because the record company felt that there rights were being violated.
It is unclear where the site is guilty of would have made. Content providers may be located generally on the safe harbor principle under the Us digital millennium copyright act to the professions, so they will not be liable for copyright infringement that their users commit. It is necessary that they comply with notice and takedown requests from copyright holders. Did the site.
This week, there was much protest against proposed legislation that goes much further than the dmca: the sopa and pipa laws, which today by the U.s. house of representatives to be treated. These two bills, which are very similar to each other, make the tackling of foreign piraterijsites easier. According to the critics, is the law down on censorship.
Update, 21.35: Article slightly modified on the basis of additional information from the press release from the U.s. department of justice