A day after many websites and individuals on the Internet went dark in protest of SOPA / PIPA, federal prosecutors in the United States shut down the file sharing site Megaupload. Among the charges the site’s owners were cited with included copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit racketeering and money laundering.
In a statement issued by the US Justice department, prosecutors claims, “This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States.”
Seven people and two companies (Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited ) were listed on the indictment. On Thursday, New Zealand police arrested four people at the request of U.S. officials. A federal court in Virginia seized 18 domain names associated with the website, in addition to roughly $50m in assets.
Megaupload boasted endorsements from celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Alicia Keys, who is married to Megaupload’s CEO, Swizz Beatz.
You can view the indictment in full at Scribd.com: http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment
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and so, Anonymous decided to declare war
I was wondering how long it would be before MegaUpload was taken down. I was expecting this about a year ago.
So for the past two years they've done nothing, but when it needs to be done they strike?
and if sopa passes then they can do that to any site at a whim with no legitimate reason
So if SOPA and PIPA passes, what would happen if people started posting links to federal government websites? Would that mean the government websites would have to be shut down due to the people posting the unauthorized links like any other websites.
welcome into a fascist world
This was done because citizens couldn't be beaten in the streets. We protested and they couldn't do anything about it, so this was retaliation.