Kim Dotcom Wins Case, Police Have to Return Seized Materials. New Zealand judge orders the police to return any irrelevant data to Kim Dotcom and destroy any cloned hard drives containing personal information.
Since January 2012, Kim Dotcom has been no stranger to courts. He has been embroiled in legal battles even before his notorious one-click hosting site, Megaupload, was forced to shut down. Since that time, Kim Dotcom has successfully started up another file-storage service Mega and won several lawsuits against him for copyright infringement. This latest victory is actually a follow up to the same judgement that High Court justice Helen Winkelmann passed last year that the FBI refused to follow .
Megaupload claims US asked him to keep files. MegaUpload (MegaVideo) Smoking Gun? Did the site illegally charge for Streaming Movies? These screen shots appear to show that Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload was selling streaming movies that it did not have the rights to sell.
Megaupload was allegedly paid uploaders per stream from files they uploaded to Megaupload. That is why there were so many links that Google autopopulated Megavideo after you entered Star Wars in the search field. Then Google estimated that there were 4.3 million web pages that had the words “star wars megavideo” on them. Legitimate file locker sites like Dropbox, don’t allow any public links to copyrighted content. In fact Dropbox just banned Boxopus, a torrent tool from using its API. Megavideo let you play the first 45 minutes of Star Wars and thousands of other movies for free (after they had served you and profited from dozens ads) . . . But then, to watch past 45 minutes, you had to enter your credit card and pay $9.99 a month to keep watching.
Like this: Like Loading... Megaupload. Kim Dotcom - Mr President. Kim Dotcom - Mr President.
Megaupload. Dotcom info not 'physical' so FBI denies breaking. Last updated 05:00 07/06/2012 FBI agents who copied data from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's computers and took it overseas were not acting illegally because information isn't "physical material", the Crown says.
The agents were accused of underhanded behaviour by Dotcom's lawyers in the High Court at Auckland yesterday, after revelations that the information was already in US hands. Megaupload's lawyer, Willie Akel, told Justice Helen Winkelmann how two FBI analysts flew to New Zealand on March 20 and reviewed seven hard-drives of information. The analysts cloned the computers in Manukau. When police returned to pick them up to take them to their hotel, the agents had already left to FedEx the copies back to the United States.
"The first [copies] were sent without the New Zealand Police having any say in it whatsoever," Mr Akel said. MegaFail: Prosecutors fall short on evidence against Kim Dotcom.
HightCourt said seizure null and void. Megaupload libere. Piege par un spy du FBI ? The brand 'MegaUpload' All data to be erased. FBI Looks to Seize Megaupload Files This Week. 30 January '12, 08:24am Follow The FBI gain access to all of Megaupload’s user data as soon as this coming Thursday, February 2, according to a report from the New Zealand Herald, which cites a letter from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The correspondence was sent to storage companies Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications, both of which host data for the file-sharing site, clarifying that US authorities now have the appropriate search warrants and are looking to gain rights to access the data. Authorities previously copied a portion of the data but are now looking to physically seize the files in question in their entirety. Copyrights: Feds push a few novel theories in MegaUpload case. The indictment the Justice Department obtained this month against MegaUpload, a popular online locker and file-sharing service, includes allegations that company executives personally uploaded and downloaded copyrighted content -- a familiar accusation in online piracy cases.
But it adds a couple of intriguing twists that blur the distinction between actions that promote piracy and those that discourage it. And it echoes the argument by major labels and movie studios that content-sharing platforms have a duty to monitor their users for infringements, an assertion that U.S. courts have largely rejected. The core allegations against Kim Dotcom and his colleagues at MegaUpload, if true, make the case that company officials knew about the infringing activity and, rather than honoring requests from copyright holders to stop it, encouraged it. So it may be that MegaUpload is, in fact, a big, lucrative conspiracy to profit off of Internet users' love of free (and illegal) downloads. Jonathan Coulton Destroys The Rationale Behind The Megaupload Seizure With A Single Tweet; Follows Up With Epic Blog Post. With Megaupload seized by the feds and everyone else even slightly involved seized by Anonymous, man-without-a-label Jonathan Coulton stepped into the breach and tweeted what we all only wish we were thinking: (If you can't read it, Coulton said: "Any other musicians notice that ever since they shut down MegaUpload, the money has just been POURING in?
") And that's the crux of it, isn't it? The DOJ claims that Megaupload's infringement has cost copyright holders a half-billion dollars over an unspecified timeframe. And now that it's been shuttered, the money should start pouring in. But, of course, it won't. Along with all the illegal stuff happening on MegaUpload was some amount of completely legal stuff. So, there's that. No one (not even Coulton) truly expects the seizure of a single storage locker, even a mammoth one like Megaupload, to make an appreciable difference in future sales of music and movies.
Voluntary shot downs of file sharing sites. Le point de vue de l'Elysee en analyze. How Megauploas was investigated. Megaupload taken down. Mega Indictment. Megaupload shut down by feds, seven charged, four arrested. The filesharing site Megaupload.com has been taken down by the FBI as the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging seven people associated with the site.
The 72-page indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury in Virginia on January 5, charges the seven people, including Megaupload's founders Kim Dotcom and Mathias Ortman, with conspiracy. Four of the people named—including Dotcom, Ortmann, Megaupload.com chief marketing officer Finn Batao, and developer Bram van der Kolk—are in custody, arrested in New Zealand today, according to the FBI.
The FBI worked with authorities from New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the UK and the Phillipines, and in concert with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the case. As of the afternoon of January 19, the site for Megaupload.com had not been redirected, and requests simply timed out. Ars will provide additional coverage as details develop. Megaupload file-sharing site shut down, founders charged.
Megaupload, one of the internet's largest file-sharing sites, has been shut down by officials in the US.
The site's founders have been charged with violating piracy laws. Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material. In response, the hackers group Anonymous has targeted the FBI and US Department of Justice websites. The news came a day after anti-piracy law protests, but investigators said they were ordered two weeks ago.
Judge gives Universal Music 24 hours to explain takedown spree. A federal judge has given Universal Music Group until the end of the day Thursday to respond to charges that it abused the DMCA takedown process to censor a promotional music video by the locker site Megaupload.
There's been no love lost between the American recording industry and the Hong Kong-based Megaupload. The RIAA has called Megaupload a "notorious service" that "thumbs their noses at international laws, all while pocketing significant advertising revenues from trafficking in free, unlicensed copyrighted materials. " So label executives must have been furious on Friday when the locker site unveiled a new promotional video featuring some of the music industry's biggest names singing the site's praises.
One of the labels, Universal Music Group, went a step further and started filing takedown notices. Megaupload shut down by US officials - Tech News. Les Etats-Unis font fermer Megaupload ! Megaupload, qui compte parmi les vingt sites les plus importants au monde, n'est plus accessible.
Le site et les différents services satellite qui l'entourent semblent avoir été mis hors ligne après une action de la justice américaine. Celle-ci confirme l'ouverture d'une procédure criminelle de grande envergure. Selon nos constatations, Megaupload n'est plus accessible en France, quelle que soit la ligne.
Simple problème technique ? Il semblerait que la réponse soit plus grave, au moins pour le fameux Kim Dotcom, ses associés et ses employés. . « Cette action est justifiée par le cas de crime contre le copyright le plus important jamais identifié par les Etats-Unis et vise directement le mésusage d'un site public de stockage et de distribution pour commettre et faciliter les crimes contre la propriété intellectuelle », annonce le DoJ.