http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/megaupload-shut-down-by-feds-why-do-we-need-sopa/

I noticed this bit of information in the article, however...

Quote :

"MegaUpload is officially a Hong Kong-based company, though according to the Justice Department, it also has servers in Ashburn, VA, Washington DC, the Netherlands and Canada."

maBIE if we figure out what the old IP addresses for HK, NL, and CA were, we might still be able to download those old files...

1/19/2012 6:01:03 PM

http://www.neowin.net/news/anonymous-takes-down-doj-website-in-response-to-megaupload-news

Quote :

"Update: The Universal Music group, as well as the RIAA websites are currently offline too (or, very intermittently available), the group is yet to publicly comment but this appears to also be the work of Anonymous. See below update. Update 2: The MPAA website is also offline. Tweets are claiming Whitehouse.gov is the next target. Update 3: Anonymous just confirmed their involvement in the attack on RIAA/MPAA/Universal. Update 4: We've heard that the FBI website may have been hacked. More soon... Update 5: Copyright.gov is offline now, too. Update 6: FBI.gov is the next target, according to this tweet. Update 7: This is getting personal. MPAA chief Chris Dodd's personal website is now under attack. Update 8: Anonymous just dumped the database of the Utah Chiefs of Police association website with personal details and logins. We won't link this for obvious reasons. USDOJ.gov is down, too. Update 9: Twitter has manually removed the #opmegaupload and #oppayback hashtags from trends and appears to be actively ripping out anything related."

1/19/2012 6:26:03 PM

1/19/2012 6:29:49 PM

I just used FoolDNS (located in Italy) to look up the MegaUpload-related sites and got the same IP addresses in Ashburn, VA, so I'm guessing that those international servers were for hosting the individual files, while the Web interfaces were all in America, and anyone who has relied on the MegaUpload network is now screwed: http://www.fooldns.com/fooldns-community/english-version/

1/19/2012 6:41:12 PM

1/19/2012 6:41:17 PM

https://twitter.com/#!/AnonDaily

shit just got real

[Edited on January 19, 2012 at 6:48 PM. Reason : ]

1/19/2012 6:46:37 PM

Quote :

"SHIT GOT REAL"

1/19/2012 6:48:33 PM

30 mins ago...megaupload back up
20 mins ago...FBI.gov down

1/19/2012 8:14:04 PM

megacraploads sucked anyway

1/19/2012 8:58:19 PM

^no it didn't

1/19/2012 9:06:01 PM

YO DICK, TELL 'EM WHAT WE DO AT THE RANCH

1/19/2012 10:46:53 PM

lot of people bout to go to jail

1/19/2012 11:19:12 PM

I thought there were only 3 people named in that indictment who aren't already in jail.

1/19/2012 11:21:17 PM

daaaaaaang this got hot quick

1/19/2012 11:35:56 PM

i love anonymous.

1/20/2012 12:35:31 AM

Damn - this is the primary method of procurement for my Springsteen show bootlegs.

Guess we'll start torrenting heavier.

1/20/2012 9:42:33 AM

1/20/2012 11:40:22 AM

How did they accomplish this exactly? Did they coordinate with the NZ government?

I never used or saw megaupload, but I know of half a dozen other more covert sites that do the same thing.

1/20/2012 12:45:46 PM

from gizmodo - i find this part especially relevant

Quote :

"The feds—those tasked as intellectual property sentinels in particular—want more power to kill sites like Megaupload. It looks like they're not going to get their way through legislation, so setting a prominent target ablaze in a very public and dramatic manner is a great screw you to SOPA's foes. If that's the case, the Department of Justice should be gagging on irony: their swift destruction of Megaupload sans SOPA proves how gratuitous the bill was in the first place. This week has been the week of copyright warfare, but the decision to nuke the king copyright violator so spectacularly only goes to show how little the feds need bigger bombs"

1/20/2012 12:56:56 PM

its good to know that the gov't thinks the best response to "please don't" is "how do you like them apples!"

1/20/2012 1:18:14 PM

Quote :

"NZ police raid file-sharing site founder's mansion [e-mail] Get News Alerts to your Email & Cell Phone Headlines 0 1 e-mail print friendly Internet Piracy Indictment.JPEG left arrow1 / 2right arrow By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press; NICK PERRY, Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand police raided several homes and businesses linked to the founder of Megaupload.com, a giant Internet file-sharing site shut down by U.S. authorities, on Friday and seized guns, millions of dollars, and nearly $5 million in luxury cars, officials said. Police arrested founder Kim Dotcom and three Megaupload employees on U.S. accusations that they facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. Extradition proceedings against them could last a year or more. With 150 million registered users, about 50 million hits daily and endorsements from music superstars, Megaupload.com was among the world's biggest file-sharing sites. According to a U.S. indictment, the site, which was shut down Thursday, earned Dotcom $42 million in 2010 alone. Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act. New Zealand police served 10 search warrants at several businesses and homes around the city of Auckland. Police spokesman Grant Ogilvie said the seized cars include a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe worth more than $400,000 as well as several Mercedes. Two short-barreled shotguns and a number of valuable artworks were also confiscated, he added. He said police seized more than $8 million, money that was invested in various New Zealand financial institutions and which has now been placed in a trust pending the outcome of the cases. New Zealand's Fairfax Media reported that the four defendants stood together in an Auckland courtroom in the first step of the extradition proceedings. Dotcom's lawyer raised objections to a media request to take photographs and video, but then Dotcom spoke out from the dock, saying he didn't mind photos or video "because we have nothing to hide." The judge granted the media access, and ruled that the four would remain in custody until a second hearing Monday. Dotcom, Megaupload's former CEO and current chief innovation officer, is a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany who had his name legally changed. The 37-year-old was previously known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor. Two other German citizens and one Dutch citizen also were arrested and three other defendants — another German, a Slovakian and an Estonian — remain at large. Megaupload has retained Washington power attorney Bob Bennett to defend it, according to a person inside the company. Bennett is best known for representing former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The person within Megaupload spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the company's plans. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set "a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?" The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to make it easier for authorities to go after sites with pirated material, especially those with overseas headquarters and servers. Before Megaupload was taken down, the company posted a statement saying allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were "grotesquely overblown." "The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch," the statement said. Several sister sites were also shut down, including one dedicated to sharing pornography files. News of the shutdown seemed to bring retaliation from hackers who claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department's website. Federal officials confirmed it was down for hours Thursday evening and that the disruption was being "treated as a malicious act." A loose affiliation of hackers known as "Anonymous" claimed credit for the attack. Also hacked was the site for the Motion Picture Association of America, which has campaigned for a crackdown on piracy. According to the indictment, Megaupload was estimated at one point to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the Internet. Current estimates by companies that monitor Web traffic place it in the top 100. Megaupload is considered a "cyberlocker," in which users can upload and transfer files that are too large to send by email. Such sites can have perfectly legitimate uses. But the Motion Picture Association of America estimated that the vast majority of content being shared on Megaupload was in violation of copyright laws. The website allowed users to download some content for free, but made money by charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds or extra content. The website also sold advertising. Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others. The company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO. He was not named in the indictment and declined to comment through a representative. The five-count indictment, which alleges copyright infringement as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering and racketeering, described a site designed specifically to reward users who uploaded pirated content for sharing, and turned a blind eye to requests from copyright holders to remove copyright-protected files. For instance, users received cash bonuses if they uploaded content popular enough to generate massive numbers of downloads, according to the indictment. Such content was almost always copyright protected, the indictment said. The Justice Department said it was illegal for anyone to download pirated content, but their investigation focused on the leaders of the company, not end users who may have downloaded a few movies for personal viewing. A lawyer who represented the company in a lawsuit last year declined to comment Thursday. Efforts to reach an attorney representing Dotcom were unsuccessful. Although Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, the size of its operation in the southern Chinese city was unclear. The administrative contact listed in its domain registration, Bonnie Lam, did not respond immediately for a request for comment sent to a fax number and email address listed. The indictment was returned in the Eastern District of Virginia, which claimed jurisdiction in part because some of the alleged pirated materials were hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Virginia. Prosecutors there have pursued multiple piracy investigations. The Justice Department also was investigating the "significant increase in activity" that disrupted its website. It said in a statement that it was working to "investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause." The site appeared to be working again late Thursday. A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America said in an emailed statement that the group's site also had been hacked, but it too appeared to be working later in the evening. "The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech," the spokesman said. "We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals.""

1/20/2012 1:26:56 PM

snap into a Tim Jim!

1/20/2012 1:28:33 PM

uploaded.to shut us out in response: http://torrentfreak.com/uploaded-to-blocks-us-visitors-120121/

1/21/2012 6:08:02 PM

http://gizmodo.com/5878287/filesonic-just-killed-itself-by-disabling-file-sharing

[Edited on January 23, 2012 at 12:48 AM. Reason : link]

1/23/2012 12:47:43 AM

The sky is falling on the proto-cloud: http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-honolulu/file-sharing-sites-without-the-sharing-megaupload-alternatives-might-not-be

However, legit users just might get their files back later: http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-honolulu/if-megaupload-is-not-working-what-happens-to-the-files

[Edited on January 23, 2012 at 6:16 AM. Reason : Examiners are obvs. reliable sources

1/23/2012 6:13:46 AM

Quote :

""The feds—those tasked as intellectual property sentinels in particular—want more power to kill sites like Megaupload. It looks like they're not going to get their way through legislation, so setting a prominent target ablaze in a very public and dramatic manner is a great screw you to SOPA's foes. If that's the case, the Department of Justice should be gagging on irony: their swift destruction of Megaupload sans SOPA proves how gratuitous the bill was in the first place. This week has been the week of copyright warfare, but the decision to nuke the king copyright violator so spectacularly only goes to show how little the feds need bigger bombs""

DOJ doesn't need new legislation to come up with ways to shut down the Internet. They'll just make up their own rules and programs and run amock, skirting the requirement for legislation; breaking laws as the go, etc. etc. I mean, who can really fight against the Deparment of Laywers when they're the ones breaking the law?

1/23/2012 9:11:00 AM

what laws do you think they broke here?

1/23/2012 9:24:34 AM

^Indeed, the Feds were exceedingly meticulous in taking down MU; IMO they have an air-tight case here based on the DMCA alone.

With that said, I can personally confirm that FileServe has gone the way of FileSonic: It won't allow you to download any files unless you're the one who uploaded them.

1/23/2012 10:00:02 AM

megaupload was essentially the same as pirate bay but dumb enough to host the files themselves.

1/24/2012 1:53:50 PM

http://109.236.83.66/

They say they're operating as an IP address now. I find it odd that the DNS can be redirected but they can use an IP address.

I feel like we might be embarking on a new IP based web eventually. That could be kind of cool. Only problem is that to tell people where to find stuff would also be illegal. But that idea is just ridiculous. I don't think it'll stick. Information finds a way.

1/24/2012 3:42:09 PM

beware to the pishing sites!

1/24/2012 4:04:16 PM

^^another n00b to the slaughter

the goddam servers got trashed, 4 of the top guys are in the slammer 3 more are on the run, and hundreds of millions of dolla buckz got seized

sry guyz, MegaUpload is down for the count; if any of the servers were left, the good folks at MAFIAAFire or block.aid would have told us about it (and tbqh I tried myself to find some from old WHOIS records but no dice): http://www.blockaid.me/2012/01/megaupload-seizure/


Also we've had an IP-based Internet since the Internet even existed; it's just that the DNS has proven to be an exceedingly useful overlaying namespace on top of the IP (Internet Protocol) address space (some Web services nowadays actually use different hostnames at the same IP address and send different content based on the hostname; this is why you may need to edit your HOSTS file, which was actually the precursor to today's DNS, rather than just type the bare IP address to get to some sites whose domains, but not servers, were seized).

[Edited on January 24, 2012 at 9:23 PM. Reason : n00b

1/24/2012 9:20:00 PM

Today we are all kim dotcom

1/25/2012 8:37:34 PM

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/mega-man-the-bizarre-rise-and-sudden-downfall-of-kim-dotcom.ars

1/25/2012 8:41:05 PM

I need to send a large file to someone, can someone make a recommendation that has not been shut down, doesn't infect the computer, can be directed to with a single link, and has a minimum of advertising? Thanks!

3/8/2012 7:41:00 PM

uploading.com

3/8/2012 8:06:04 PM

hotfile.com

3/8/2012 8:25:02 PM

The file-size limit for unregistered users is 2 and a half times bigger on uploading.com

and also they don't remove files nearly as quickly

3/8/2012 8:42:20 PM

^ Thanks! I went with uploading.com

3/8/2012 9:41:22 PM

http://www.internet.web

3/8/2012 9:57:57 PM

use dropbox?

3/9/2012 5:55:50 AM

I wasn't aware you could send a single link and the recipient didn't even need to register; I thought the recipient needed a Dropbox account and that the size limits were rather small unless both sender and recipient used the client software rather than the Web interface.

3/9/2012 6:41:37 AM

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-seizure-order-null-and-void-says-high-court-120318/

title of link says it

3/18/2012 11:41:06 PM

My money says once he gets his hands on his stuff again, it's going to be put somewhere where the government can never find it.

3/19/2012 12:44:27 AM