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"and then the government got involved..."

The Federal Government Takes Down MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom Arrested In New Zealand [UPDATED]

by Eric Limer | 3:27 pm, January 19th, 2012

MegaUpload.com is down, and reports from the Associated Press say that is because the federal government took it down. The federal government has taken down MegaUpload. Yeah. Of course, this takedown comes hand-in-hand with an indictment and charges of piracy. Charges of piracy on the order of $500 million in cost to copyright holders. Intentional or not, the proximity to the SOPA blackouts is probably worth noting.

MegaUpload, formerly the 13th most popular website in the world, claims that it has kept on top of responding to complaints by copyright holders, but either it wasn’t or it was, that doesn’t matter to the feds. MegaUpload recently stirred up some trouble with its self-endorsing MegaUpload song, but that beef was largely with Universal. Now, just a day after thousands assumed that Wikipedia was actually taken down by the government, MegaUpload has been. The Justice Department has said in a statement that Kim Dotcom and three others have been arrested in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials, while two other defendants are still at large. If you had any questions as to what a post-SOPA, post-PIPA world might look like, here’s the teaser.

UPDATE: Anonymous seems to have taken down the Department of Justice’s website and Universal’s website in retaliation.

(Associated Press via Gizmodo)

  • Mike

    This is not good at all!

  • Lyude

    What the hell. They’d been doing a fine job at removing copyrighted content from what I saw…

  • http://twitter.com/TwitchingCheese Kevin K

    They do realize people – a lot – used Megaupload for legal purposes right? That’s like taking down Youtube.

  • DaftWarhol

    Is the federal government really allowed to go and arrest someone in New Zealand?? Talk about overstepping your jurisdiction, although U.S. history seems to be oversaturated with that recently….

  • kimdotcom

    Freetards, 

    Shouldn’t you read the indictment to see what KIMDOTCOM was up to before you start defending himhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/mega-indictment

  • Thomas

    Acutally i dont understand this, Megaupload is known for actively working with ‘Industry’ and removing/banning people that upload piracy files (thats why most uploaders moved to other servers)…

  • Ason
  • MDS0DLI3R

    I completely agree with the actions being taken against Megaupload, the intentions behind there business was not to serve as a file host but use it as a guise for the distribution of copyrighted material.

  • Iliks

    there are tons of other free online storages like fileserve, uploadstation so forth…
    what is the point ?…

  • Freedom

    We might need to start a new uprising of America …

  • HollowForum

    then i will suggest youtube should be taken down because of copyright act…they are also involves in this matter

  • Georgelivesey

    Who cares what KIMDOTCOM did, his site is an entirely different matter. Imagine if Bill Gates was arrested on suspicion of Rape, would that mean that Microsoft would be shut down? HELL NO! why? BECAUSE SOME THINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROVING A POINT!

  • Guest

    Who cares what KIMDOTCOM did, his site is an entirely different matter. Imagine if Bill Gates was arrested on suspicion of Rape, would that mean that Microsoft would be shut down? HELL NO! why? BECAUSE SOME THINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROVING A POINT!


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