Quote:
Originally Posted by azazel1024
Now for some of the gunstores and dealers...well a few of them SHOULD be in jail.
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not to mention any government officials who knowingly traffic thousands of firearms to violent drug cartels in another country. i dont say that to be political, only as a legal stand point
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
What's the difference between these people and any other site that allows public upload/storage?
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lets get this straight. Megaupload's criminal activities have nothing to do with people uploading their own personal stuff for sharing etc.
The difference here is that Mega was illegally gathering copyrighted video material ON PURPOSE and then distributing it ON PURPOSE and charging for it. the basic file storing/sharing service was basically a front for the illegitimate business and the accounts of that business were being used to launder the money from the criminal enterprise.
According to the indictment the were:
They were downloading YouTube and then uploading those videos to their site Megavideo. They were slow with the take down requests so they could grab the material them selves and push it to other sites ( Megavideo) and sell it.
edit: It also appears from further reading that takedowns werent actually done! they would simply remove the url to the material but would keep the material on the servers. that material might have other url's pointing to it that would still be in use.
They were paying people rewards for uploading certain episodes from shows, movies and software w/keys. Company employees uploaded movies they ripped from dvds themselves AT WORK.
Company executives used the internal search to find episodes of tv shows for themselves to keep.
I heard from one source( but havent seen it elsewhere yet) that they may have been offering dvd copying services for pirated first run movie sellers etc. someone would make the bootleg , upload it and then Mega would do the dvd creation and ship them to the sellers.
so yeah its not about the "front" of the house, its about the game in the back. if this is all true(heck if even part of it is true) no one should be upset with authorities for taking it down. they should be upset that the criminal activity ruined the rest of it.