Megaupload Takedown Killed 10M Innocent Files

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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A study sponsored by Northeastern University has found that the takedown of the file hosting/sharing service Megaupload.com not only destroyed copyright infringing files, but approximately 10 Million legitimate files were also deleted in the process.

Copyright-infringing files are duplicates by their very nature, but non-infringing files are far more like to have been unique, meaning their deletion was a real, actual loss.
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This is like complaining that your laptop you left at your drug dealers house got confiscated.

Storing crucial files in a place like Megaupload was Megaretarded.
 
If the government takes and destroys someone's property, they are entitled to just compensation. A simple $100,000 per unjustly destroyed file seems fair.
 
faulty statement... what person backs up a file on the "cloud" without retaining the original ...esp. if it is important?

none of those files were "unique" and legal. i am that confident :)
 
BladeVenom said:
If the government takes and destroys someone's property, they are entitled to just compensation. A simple $100,000 per unjustly destroyed file seems fair.
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Yep about right. The RIAA should pay the bill. With the insane amount of money they sue for, it would be justice to see them have to pay this same insane amount of money.
 
BladeVenom said:
If the government takes and destroys someone's property, they are entitled to just compensation. A simple $100,000 per unjustly destroyed file seems fair.
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Until you realise that the money would just come out of tax dollars and no government person would lose a cent of their wages in the process :p

But yeah, either way, if you stored important files on megaupload, that was a pretty stupid move. The only way I might feel sorry is if megaupload was your offsite backup of important but not private files and your house burnt down in the same week as megaupload went down.

So 31% clearly infringing, 4% clearly not infringing, I'm mildly interested in what the other 65% was.
 
Tudz said:
Until you realise that the money would just come out of tax dollars and no government person would lose a cent of their wages in the process :p

But yeah, either way, if you stored important files on megaupload, that was a pretty stupid move. The only way I might feel sorry is if megaupload was your offsite backup of important but not private files and your house burnt down in the same week as megaupload went down.

So 31% clearly infringing, 4% clearly not infringing, I'm mildly interested in what the other 65% was.
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Maybe encrypted files? Although that number seems kind of high.
 
NKDietrich said:
This is like complaining that your laptop you left at your drug dealers house got confiscated.

Storing crucial files in a place like Megaupload was Megaretarded.
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Maybe, but Megaupload was one of the best cloud storage sites at the time. Shortly before they got taken down, Megaupload released the Mega Song which featured endorsements from Will.i.am, P Diddy, Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Lil John, Jamie Foxx, Mary J Blige, Floyd Mayweather, The Game.
 
how quick people are to judge... people forget, or choose not to remember, that MegaUpload had the fastest DCMA system, and took down MANY more times the files that the other hosts did...
 
gossipninja1 said:
who needed his "cloud" backup when his local copies crashed.
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If the files were your livelihood, having them backed up only once is pretty silly. It's a shame he lost the files, but if you have money riding on certain files, you're crazy not to back it up more than once.
 
Tudz said:
If the files were your livelihood, having them backed up only once is pretty silly. It's a shame he lost the files, but if you have money riding on certain files, you're crazy not to back it up more than once.
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Yeah if your stuff is really important you'd back it up more than once.. You'd back up the backup of the backup of the backup and spread the copies around the world digitally and physically using a combination of several cloud storage services, alternate homes and safe deposit boxes! :D
 
Tudz said:
If the files were your livelihood, having them backed up only once is pretty silly. It's a shame he lost the files, but if you have money riding on certain files, you're crazy not to back it up more than once.
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You're speaking as someone who uses these forums.

What are normal people taught, the bullshit that spews at them from marketing and crappy sites?
"The cloud is the future!" "The cloud cant go down!" "The cloud will always be there!"

The few people who DO back up things to a cloud, don't know enough that they should have one other local backup. They don't know better, because unless you look very carefully for the right information, everything normal people see says that backing up to the cloud is ideal.

Think of how many absolute morons you know who talk about the cloud, and using it for things. They dont have a clue as to what it is and how it works, but they know they can put things on it and get them again later anywhere they are.
 
normal people are taught to back up... back up... back up.. they have heard this mantra long before "cloud" was coined. you would have to be like 5 or less to have this excuse now.

So I thing a more factual headline would have been ... some files may have been lost forever.
 
No, no, no, the tragedy isn't that some idiots lost the only copy of their own personal files. The real "victims" of the Megaupload takedown are (and will continue to be) the intended consumers of those non-infringing files. MU was being used as distribution method for everything from patches, scripts, and utilities to personal music, game mods, and libraries of public domain / royalty free content. If the original uploaders weren't anonymous to begin with, they just as often can't be contacted for whatever reason; whether they don't know or don't care, it's not their loss.
 
FighterAce124 said:
You're speaking as someone who uses these forums.

What are normal people taught, the bullshit that spews at them from marketing and crappy sites?
"The cloud is the future!" "The cloud cant go down!" "The cloud will always be there!"

The few people who DO back up things to a cloud, don't know enough that they should have one other local backup. They don't know better, because unless you look very carefully for the right information, everything normal people see says that backing up to the cloud is ideal.

Think of how many absolute morons you know who talk about the cloud, and using it for things. They dont have a clue as to what it is and how it works, but they know they can put things on it and get them again later anywhere they are.
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When you get to the point of needing the files for financial reasons, there's really little excuse for not backing them up multiple times. I can understand losing family photos or something like that if your PC unfortunately crashes at the same time your online backup goes down. But when it comes to files that are your livelihood, not having multiple backups is craziness and I find it hard to feel too sorry for them.

He said he had a local backup and a megaupload backup... but from the sounds of things the local backup wasn't actually a backup, it was the original, and then megaupload was the only actual backup.
 
RedStarSQD said:
normal people are taught to back up... back up... back up.. they have heard this mantra long before "cloud" was coined. you would have to be like 5 or less to have this excuse now.

So I thing a more factual headline would have been ... some files may have been lost forever.
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normal people are taught not to drink and drive...
normal people are taught to have safe sex.....
normal people are taught eat healthy....

See my point, just cause they are told does not mean they listen...
 
Whatever. The NSA had broken internet security almost entirely , if you store anything on the cloud assume it can be read by somebody.
 
Catalan said:
MU was being used as distribution method for everything from patches, scripts, and utilities to personal music, game mods, and libraries of public domain / royalty free content.
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It was, but I'm not convinced it should have been. The writing on the wall for Megaupload was there for a long time. Storage in an Amazon S3 bucket or similar is straightforward, inexpensive and affords you a much greater degree of control over the files you want to distribute. Archive.org also accepts some original licensed or public domain content, and they're pretty fanatical about persistence.
 
MrGuvernment said:
normal people are taught not to drink and drive...
normal people are taught to have safe sex.....
normal people are taught eat healthy....

See my point, just cause they are told does not mean they listen...
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Which is why I struggle to feel sorry when they crash in to a tree, get an STD, become obese or lose their data because of insufficient backups (though I do feel sorry if they hurt someone else when they crash, have a baby that they are incapable of raising well or put a drain on health care).
 
Well if 10 million "innocent" files were lost... this the digital equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a city to kill the criminal population. Since it's just data nobody seems to really care, but I believe there's something in the Constitution about depriving people of property without due process.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Well if 10 million "innocent" files were lost... this the digital equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a city to kill the criminal population. Since it's just data nobody seems to really care, but I believe there's something in the Constitution about depriving people of property without due process.
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You're not depriving them of it if they had it backed up somewhere else like any smart cookie would. I feel like there's a piracy analogy here with depriving people of property vs. depriving them of a copy.
 
Tudz said:
You're not depriving them of it if they had it backed up somewhere else like any smart cookie would. I feel like there's a piracy analogy here with depriving people of property vs. depriving them of a copy.
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The obligation is not on the part of the citizen, but on the part of the government to prove that a crime was committed. If property is to be seized the law should be followed. It doesn't matter if the person was a smart cookie or a complete moron - the law is there to protect everyone. It's irrelevant if they had a backup or not. The point is that the government should not have the ability to just do what they want and hurt those who have done nothing wrong in order to nail a few alleged pirates simply because the RIAA and MPAA claim they're losing money. If you don't understand at this point I can't help you, and if you agree with this sort of thing... well then, you're beyond help.
 
Phoenix333 said:
The obligation is not on the part of the citizen, but on the part of the government to prove that a crime was committed. If property is to be seized the law should be followed. It doesn't matter if the person was a smart cookie or a complete moron - the law is there to protect everyone. It's irrelevant if they had a backup or not. The point is that the government should not have the ability to just do what they want and hurt those who have done nothing wrong in order to nail a few alleged pirates simply because the RIAA and MPAA claim they're losing money. If you don't understand at this point I can't help you, and if you agree with this sort of thing... well then, you're beyond help.
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I never said I agree with it, I just think "depriving of property" is a bit seems an inappropriate way to describe files you didn't actually have stored on your own drives or in your own home, far more like "depriving of a copy". They deprived Kim of property, they were his server drives.

And don't give me this "you're beyond help" bullshit, you can shove that condescending crap where the sun down shine, mister.
 
people who have sex and get aids think 2x... those who drink and drive and crash think 2x and so on,

people have gone through losing data enough by now over the years to know... back up , back up, back up!! :) it's not just a mantra from the "special, not normal" people lol :) it's evolution!
 
So piracy is like stealing a car but erasing my photographs is justified because I should have backed up multiple times? Win win for the masses...
 
NKDietrich said:
This is like complaining that your laptop you left at your drug dealers house got confiscated.

Storing crucial files in a place like Megaupload was Megaretarded.
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Was it? Most of what has come out in the trial so far does more to prove illegality on the part of the relevant police agencies than it does to prove the guilt of the site or its proprietors.
 
Tudz said:
I never said I agree with it...
And don't give me this "you're beyond help" bullshit, you can shove that condescending crap where the sun down shine, mister.
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It was a conditional statement. Seems that went over your head.
 
NKDietrich said:
This is like complaining that your laptop you left at your drug dealers house got confiscated.

Storing crucial files in a place like Megaupload was Megaretarded.
Click to expand...

That's a ridiculous analogy. If 5 or 6 units in a storage center are housing stolen goods, you don't burn the whole place to the ground and then say "Oh well" to everyone else who wasn't storing stolen goods. It was an asinine response and I hope the courts back every single person who files grievance with what was done.
 
While I agree that copyright materials should be protected, who knows what was lost?

Source code for very old programs?

Manuals for old devices?

Important docs that were linked?
 
gordon151 said:
That's a ridiculous analogy. If 5 or 6 units in a storage center are housing stolen goods, you don't burn the whole place to the ground and then say "Oh well" to everyone else who wasn't storing stolen goods. It was an asinine response and I hope the courts back every single person who files grievance with what was done.
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Oh but the files stored weren't physical goods, just copies of the original so unless the owners of said material destroyed the original then all is good and nothing was lost.Isn't that what people say when it comes to pirating games and other media? Nothing lost as it's just copies and not the original. Right?
 
Yeah, it's a bit of a one way street atm. We know it'll never be any other way, but it's nice to poke fun at the situation :p
 
I really don't know what the whole situation was with MU and Kim Dotcom. I wouldn't be surprised for a second if MU/KDC were doing as accused and knowingly promoting accounts that were hosting illegal content and subsidizing the owners of the accounts because they were generating a lot of ad-sponsored traffic for MU (that was the issue IIRC, not that MU was being used to host illegal/pirated content--they had a track record of quickly removing infringing material when requested). Personally, I wouldn't be surprised that this is actually the case. If (IF), then you know what? Tough luck for those using it for legit purposes, it's the risk you take for supporting a site that no one in their right mind DIDN'T know that it was being used for obviously illegal means. If you really had legal, personal data that you couldn't afford to lose, then you probably should have pursued a more legit cloud storage service.

Nothing I've read about Kim Dotcom makes me like him or believe a word he says. Not that other people are innocent, but he has an established track record for shrewd tactics, knowingly taking advantage of less fortunate people, knowingly embezzling money, knowingly pumping-and-dumping companies. Sure, you may say that he's paid for his wrongs and even gone to jail for them--okay, but it doesn't mean that he's changed. I don't care if every interview post-MU-raid shows him as this caring, compassionate, and intelligent person. I still don't believe he's anything but the shrewd business person he's been shown to be.
 
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