[LINK] Feds shut down file upload site

TKoltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Fri Jan 20 16:32:42 AEDT 2012



> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Jan Whitaker
> Sent: Friday, 20 January 2012 9:38 AM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: [LINK] Feds shut down file upload site
> 
> 
> [multi-national men arrested in NEW ZEALAND at 
> request of US. Note: one of the servers was in 
> Virginia. Looks like the US server industry just 
> went down the tubes. No more hosting there. Lots 
> of excess capacity should come on the market, though.]
> 
> 
> http://www.9news.com/money/243535/344/Feds-shut-down-file-shar
> ing-website
> 
> McLEAN, Virginia (AP) – One of the world's 
> largest file-sharing sites was shut down 
> Thursday, and its founder and several company 
> executives were charged with violating piracy laws, federal 
> prosecutors said.
> 

Whilst I agree that sites like Megaupload need to be investigated and
the appropriate legal action taken, taking down the entire site
overnight and preventing it's legitimate use was probably not the
smartest way to do it.

I applaud the result, just not the methodology of achieving it.

The reasons were probably to deliver support for international strongarm
action in response to the one day blackout opposition protest to
SOPA/PIPA.

We will over the next few weeks start to see the stories from the
legitimate users of the services. The musicians that used the service as
a genuine methodology of distributing their creations.

What the content industry have failed to realise is that file sharing is
a meme. Legislation is eventually based on the moral majority. (e.g.:
Draft/Vietnam/War).

The economic backlash on the cloud industry will be huge and could delay
cloud storage and Software as a service adoption by several months if
not years.

Jackboots, posturing and Riding Crops, whilst amusing to observe from
the sidelines always appears to have a pushback from the rank and file.
For example, the Anonymous takedown of the FBI site in supposed
retaliation. (Naïve untrained kids armed with WMD scripts...)

The industry conveniently forgets that each one of their campaigns
against file sharing has resulted in an even bigger and more efficient
response.
Interdiction by various corporations resulted in the begats. Napster
begat Grokster and Donkey and Limewire and Bittorrent AND Rapidshare,
Megaupload etc.

However Politicians and the industry also forget that P2P is now a
legitimate communications protocol utilised by Global corporations like
Telstra (Cache-Logic acquisition for the delivery of T-Box VOD via P2P),
and NTT for developing IBM like Grid Computing at the edge of the
network. With 800MHz plus processors in edge devices, if we multiply
that by say 4 billion devices than the edge has 2 Ehz of computing power
which (if all activated simultaneously) conservatively is 40-50 times
larger than all the Telecom backhaul channels in the world.
We have no choice. The edge is going P2P. Essentially, that was made
possible by Shawn Fanning. (Not the technology, just the commoditisation
of the technology.)

So while a little industry called entertainment (less than five percent
of any countries GDP) now bows and gives way to the IT industry,
(powering over 80% of all GDP) the 200 employees of the RIAA, the RIAJ,
IPFI, et al who would find themselves unemployed unless they can
continually instigate henny penny scenarios leading to actions like the
Megaupload public takedown, are patting themselves on the back. 

History is full of people that oppressed the populace for their own
selfish reasons. Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin. With thousands
of deaths attributed to either a solitary one man or the regime presided
over by one man.

Frank O'Conner made an interesting observation yesterday in reference to
the US going to war over file sharing echoing sentiments that I
expressed sometime ago. Wouldn’t it be a shame if World War III erupted
over a couple of songs.


Refs:
The report on Arstechnica
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-meg
aupload.ars






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