#SOUNDCLOUD DROPVOX PLUS#

It’s sites like SoundCloud and GrooveShark that worry me the most. But the prime goal of all these sites is open file sharing - just like MegaUpload. Still yet, there are sites like Zoho where users can easily share content, content that could be copy-written. They also make sharing easy, but in a way that’s a lot more private than MegaUpload. Other services like DropBox, iCloud, and Amazon S3 are open to hosting any file type a user uploads. But these sites have undergone a face lift recently and at least appear to be much less nefarious than they once were. RapidShare and MediaFire are two of the larger services. Several digital locker services operate like MegaUpload. But what’s next? Who’s next? What happens with someone drops an Uncle Kracker album into their SugarSync folder? Even TVShack encouraged the downloading of illegal content but just by linking and not hosting. Sure, it’s likely that a good deal of its 150 million registered users uploaded personal, and therefore legal, content, but the site was also the notorious home of illegal content. MegaUpload was clearly operating a shady business. The US Government is on a slippery slope. His crime was linking to copyrighted material, a crime which could land him in a US jail for five to ten years under pre-SOPA and PIPA laws. O’Dwyer was not charged with racketeering, money laundering, or anything of the sort. In fact, as the story goes, O’Dwyer shut down the website himself the day after a visit from police and US officials in November 2010. His mother says he has no connection to the US, a fact confirmed by his lawyer who stated the site’s servers were not even hosted in the US.

No, instead, the young British student is now facing extradition to the US for simply linking to sites hosting illegal content. The 23-year owner didn’t have life-size giraffe statues on his rolling New Zealand estate. The case of TVShack and Richard O’Dwyer is slightly different. The defendants will face serious jail time if convicted of even a few of the charges. The charges are serious even without the copyright nonsense thrown in. All they needed was drug trafficking and human slavery to make them the villans of the “You wouldn’t steal a car” anti-piracy commercials. They were charged with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement. The Justice Department asserts that the seven individuals and two corporations, Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited, were involved in other criminal activities. This isn’t completely about piracy, though. Or, in other words, MegaUpload was actively hiding the fact its users shared illegal content - at least that’s what the Feds say. The Feds also stated that MegaUpload utilized third-party sites to publicize the “infringing content” and “manipulated the perception of content” by omitting infringing content from the top content lists. But it’s all gone now.Īs pointed out in a Justice Department press release, MegaUpload’s downfall was that they seemingly promoted the sharing of copy-written material.

#SOUNDCLOUD DROPVOX PLUS#

Plus there was plenty of legitimate data there. Unless there’s explicit illegal intent expressed by the customer to the holder, it’s hard to figure out who is at fault. Was much of that content pirated? Sure, but MegaUpload held the files the way a pawn shop holds a car stereo. The site boasted 50 million daily users and 180 million registered users. It was so large that the site accounted for 4% of the Internet’s total traffic. MegaUpload was a massive digital locker service. Just say no to perfectly legal data sinks, everyone.

(Computer Abuse Reinforcement Education) presentation at your kids’ grade school. The plan is to have taxpayers foot the bill and then attack websites rather than regulating or encouraging innovation. It’s clear that the US Federal Government is ramping up its fight against illegal file sharing and hosting. The bigger question, then, is who’s next? Forget SOPA and PIPA, apparently the US Federal Government doesn’t need new legislation in place to shut down major file storage sites and lock millions of users out of their file lockers. A single 50 Cent song can cause the Feds to swarm the founder’s house and seize their Predator statues. Sites better check their zettabytes of data. The Feds have their banhammer out and aren’t afraid to use it. Every digital locker service and file linking website is on notice now that MegaUpload and TVShack are down.

Soundcloud dropvox