Pirate Bay. The American Assembly. As last week’s arrest of Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom emphasized, the main character in the SOPA/PIPA debate is the foreign thief.
He’s everywhere—robbing Americans of their creativity, jobs, and money. Worse, he’s enjoying himself. As the Chamber of Commerce put it: “The criminals behind these sites are laughing all the way to the bank, stealing the best of American creativity and innovation at the expense of our jobs and consumers.” [Strictly speaking, the top five pirated films of the year were Fast Five, The Hangover II, Thor, Source Code, and I am Number Four. It’s not a ‘best of’ list, exactly, but that’s a different story.] Even most opponents of SOPA/PIPA maintain a common front on this issue: the foreign thief must be stopped. For the past few years, Kim Dotcom (nee Schmitz) been the MPAA’s go-to example of the foreign thief. The Megaupload case has important legal implications. As usual when talking about piracy, there are lots of claims but very few hard numbers.
Takedown Piracy Removes Five Millionth Copyright Infringement. Posted Nov 21st, 2011 12:15 PM CHATSWORTH, Calif.
—Takedown Piracy has reached an impressive milestone with the announced removal of its five millionth copyright infringement of digital content. Infringements include an assortment of movies, photos, artwork and text from clients ranging from mainstream movie producers and athletes to video games and adult entertainment producers. Takedown Piracy is pleased to offer protection from piracy to global producers of digital content. To view a statistical breakdown of infringements removed by Takedown Piracy, visit here.
To report a copyright violation using Takedown Piracy’s tip page, visit here. Removal number five million comes one year after Takedown Piracy owner Nate Glass turned the company into a full-time venture. “We take a lot of pride in each copyright infringement we remove, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the 5 millionth doesn’t feel a bit more special,” said Glass. Authorities Shut Down Ukraine’s Largest File-Sharing Site Ex.ua. Following a six month investigation initiated by international tech companies including Microsoft, Graphisoft and Adobe, Ukrainian authorities have shut down the popular file-hosting site Ex.ua.
The police confiscated 200 servers on which more than 6,000 terabytes of data was stored. The Ex.ua raids follow less than two weeks after US authorities ordered the shutdown of another file-hosting service, MegaUpload. With millions of users, Ex.ua was one of the most visited sites in the Ukraine. Founded in 2009, the file-hosting site allowed users to share files up to 50 gigabytes. Unlike similar services, Ex.ua was completely free to use. Because the site was widely used to share copyrighted files, several international companies including Microsoft, Graphisoft and Adobe filed complaints against the service.
A spokesperson for the authorities confirmed that the service was targeted and said that 200 servers were taken, holding a massive 6,000 terabytes of data. Breaking story. Ex.ua office.
Megaupload closed down. RnBXclusive. IP alliance wants file-sharing sites shut down worldwide.