Megaupload Drops Lawsuit Against Universal Music 439
bs0d3 writes "Not so long ago, a legal video was taken down by repetitive DMCA requests to YouTube. In response, Megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal Music. This past week, Megaupload was raided by U.S. authorities and forced offline, which is costing Megaupload millions of dollars in damage. Today; while employees are in U.S. custody, Megaupload has mysteriously dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music."
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A link in the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Since in America we have trial by jury, if it goes to court it seems unlikely there will be able to find a jury willing to convict.
Ahhahahahhaaha... when you've got juries willing to convict people to $1.5-2 million in damages [wikipedia.org] for sharing 24 files as a plain normal P2P user, then the Megaupload guys will be lucky to not see the death penalty.
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only did MegaUpload not delete the actual files when sent DMCA notices (but did when sent abuse letters about illegal content like child porn)
This is not necessary. If you read the DMCA it is enough to simply remove *access* to the content.
This was almost all the times used for spreading copyright infringing material and MegaUpload was notoriously known for being good site for such use.
The Internet is notoriously known for being a good method of transporting such material. What is your point? I've used megaupload many times over the years but never to download movies or cracked software.
As the internal emails show they were also fully aware of this fact.
This is problematic...
not only did MegaUpload staff know about this activity and try to get around DMCA notices and laws, they did copyright infringement themselves
Very problematic...
Let the vilification begin.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Te MegaUpload take down, not quite carefully timed to give Congress some balls regarding SOPA, is likely to become a circus act of the most grandiose proportions.
Not only did the Feds seize a foreign company, but they did so in the face of several SCOTUS decisions that held harmless the operators of sites that might contain user uploaded content which might violate copyright, in addition to billions of files that did no such thing.
With the government forced withdrawal of Megaupload's attorney Robert Bennett [nationalpost.com], citing rather insincere claims of conflict of interest, and the Justice department seizing a Foreign company [npr.org] this is far from the normal pattern for these cases. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Chinese government step into the fray any day now.
When the dust clears on this battle there will be some major revelations about how much pressure the DOJ used all over the world to affect this arrest and take down. Eight countries, big and small like New Zealand were leaned on to act, for largely theatrical effect as SOPA goes down to public pressure. The timing couldn't be accidental. But the DOJ miss timed it by three days, and their case is far from certain.
I predict this will drag out for a long time.
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:4, Interesting)
The only flaw with the DMCA is the ability for the content owners to use infringement notices with impunity. There needs to be a provision to allow content sites such as YouTube to start ignoring abusive notices.
The simple fact that a DMCA notice is submitted automatically causes content to be removed immediately and subject to lengthy proceedings regarding the rights of that content.
Various members of the RIAA have been notorious in submitting DMCA takedown letters for content that is very clearly covered by things such as fair use and sometimes even for content they don't even remotely have the rights to. But the creative individuals creating these parodies, or even original material, have limited recourse and the recourse they do have is time-consuming, difficult and sometimes expensive, not to mention it destroys their business (if the content is related to a business).
There is little argument for a business conglomerate having the power to shut down smaller competitors for a short period by simply writing a letter.... and for there to be no recourse for these smaller competitors from it happening repeatedly other than lengthy legal arguments and possibly litigation. That's absurd and anti-competitive.
But the remainder of the DMCA... yes, not bad, not great, but not bad.
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:4, Interesting)
Raid is because of the lawsuit (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only person who thinks that mega got raided because of the lawsuit they have against universal? While we will never know, it did seem like they had a good case against them.
but it doesn't matter now, because they (Mega) will probably never recover even if they were to win this case.
What about innocent users? (Score:5, Interesting)
As PJ, at Groklaw asked: what about innocent folks who have placed their files on the service? Who restores their property to them when the entire site goes down? They have property rights too, which are not currently being addressed, that I've seen.
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:5, Interesting)
Most mature western countries have very similiar copyright laws designed with the same notion: protect the property rights of a creator of an artistic or intellectual work. Check NZ and Swedish law before you blame the US
I'm very familiar with Swedish copyright law. It explicitly allows people to make a limited number of copies for individual use if they have a licensed original, and share them with close friends and family. Something which is usually illegal in the USA. That means a Swede and an American can upload the exact same file to MegaUpload, and only the American's copy is illegal. If a Swede loses his/her files on MegaUpload, it's definitely because of American corporations.
I admit I don't know what New Zeeland law has to say on the matter, but in any case, it was American corporations who initiated the shutdown and arrest.
(unless you've bought that big-Satan thing from Iran, or that big running dog thing from N Korea, or that...).
I'm perfectly capable of judging US international policy on it's own merits, thank you very much. The so-called Cablegate papers, released by Wikileaks, showed in painful detail how the United States systematically lobbies other countries to adopt their copyright policy. The Swedish government was described in the documents as "very cooperative". Give it a decade, and chances are we'll have lost the fair use rights we still have left.
Re:Not Surprise for MegaUpload (Score:5, Interesting)