Megaupload shut down. Where will the files go?!

Actually I don't care where the files will go. There are a lot of options for people looking for a Megaupload replacement. I care about the site being shut-down though. Yesterday the FBI, the freaking FBI, and the Justice Department yanked Megaupload off the air and arrested four employees (including the CEO) on the basis of copyright infringement.

Damn.

I completely see how sites like Megaupload create an environment that would be conducive to transporting illegally downloaded files, but a lot of people use it for completely legitimate reasons; myself included! Can the company help it if their customers use the service improperly? What would that kind of control even look like? Can you imagine a website that forced users to provide proof of ownership over any and all files that they wished to transfer to other people?

The lines from government responsibility to corporate responsibility to morals and ethics and what is OK to share and when one shouldn't share and 'if I bought it it's mine to share' and pro-SOPA and anti-SOPA and 'The Giver style control to make sure citizens make the "right decisions" ' (because really, the government can't control everything that every person does, and if they try to then we're headed toward some '1984' nightmare) cross and dance and blur in front of me and it makes my head spin.

I'm sorry for that run-on sentence, but that's just how jumbled it is up in my brain.

A bragging statement from Anonymous on their progress. 

(grabbed from here)

My biggest reaction to this whole thing is definitely because of Anonymous. They retaliated rapidly and forcefully, effectively shutting down ten (at the time of this writing) government and copyright restricting websites: RIAA, MPAA, US Copyright Office, FBI, and the French Copyright Authority are among them.

I don't know how many people are part of Anonymous, but their actions impress and scare me. They seem to stand for the protection of the internet, and they also have the power to literally bring it to its knees.

This is the future. It's every bit as crazy as the movies promised it would be, with way too much government interception.

I'm not comfortable with this.

-MJ

Posted in: anonymous website takedowns,fbi megaupload,government interference,megaupload CEO arrested,megaupload gone,megaupload killed,pages that anonymous has hit,what happened to megaupload