If you do what the parent did and actually read and understand the indictment, you will learn that they are accused of far more serious crimes than just violating US copyright law. Some of the things they allegedly did would be crimes even without the copyright element.

People are lazy enough to use a service like MU and not be driven towards something that delivers true anonymity, freedom, resilience against controls, etc. People are also greedy enough to create a service like MU that is obviously driven by massive profit. Stuff like MU has an opportunity cost and does serious cultural damage because it serves to hide the need for anonymity, true encryption, disconnection from currency, etc. I'm a free speech and copyright reform activist, and even I support the indictment against MU (although the asset forfeiture and some of the damage claims are excessive, the racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering, and tax evasion charges are spot on.)

I don't get the impression that very many people are aware of all the charges against MU. A few of them relate to copyright infringement, but there are much more serious charges in the indictment. They are accused of doing things that would still be crimes even without the copyright aspect.

Funny you should mention that, because streaming to our LTO-4 is way faster than rsync to our SAN. We wouldn't be able to meet our 24hour backup SLA without tape.

If you had a binding contract with MU, then it may still be a positive value proposition now that they are in breach. But you don't have a contract with them, do you?

It deprives you of *rights*. Copyrights are rights. Copyright laws defend rights. There are major differences between rights and property, and of course rights and property intersect in some ways.

Money is property though, and most of the MegaUpload indictment is about money and illegal things that were done with money. There's more to the indictment than copyright infringement, and I wish more people would read it and understand this, and then form opinions.

If you outsourced your company's data storage to MegaUpload, I'm going to go ahead and say you were pretty much asking for it. If you honestly managed to avoid being aware that this was an incredibly risky proposition, I feel sorry for you. It also occurs to me that the copyright infringement elements of the case against MU are just one small part of a long list of crimes in the indictment, some of which would still be serious crimes even if they were selling milk or adopting out puppies. They are being accused of much more serious things than copyright infringement.

Seriously, who ever discovered MegaUpload and decided that it would be a great business decision to use it for corporate data storage? I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, being a copyright reform activist myself, but it is quite clear that the Mega folks made some monumentally bad choices.

I ask that everyone please read and understand the actual indictment before taking an activist position on any side of the MU matter. It's not anywhere near as simple as the press and the bloggers make it out to be.

In the indictment, if you bother to read it, you will find that this was directly tested, with respect to a specific server in Virginia, which contained certain specific files. The company agreed to remove them, and did not. That's one of the many charges in the indictment. I think a lot of people don't quite understand the nature of the charges against MU though. The racketeering charges are much more serious than the copyright infringement, and many of those would be valid regardless of the nature of the business.

What can be killed by boiling for 20 minutes that isn't dead in one minute?

I grew up on a farm with well water. We now sell our groundwater to the county. Because of the perpetual contract, drinking our free well water would be a crime. You make your choices.

I'd much rather have RO, pH buffered tap water than water trucked from springs. However, if I'm in the backcountry near the spring, I'd rather have the spring water (boiled for 10 minutes.) Context is key here.

The indictment itself does not equate copyright infringement to theft. I wish people would read the charges before taking an activist position with regard to the charges.

Have you read the indictment? The feds gave them ample opportunity to remove a few very specific items from a very specific server (which was in Virginia). They agreed to do so, and then failed to comply. And that material wasn't any sort of gray area -- it was full length feature films, 39 of them to be exact.

And that has little to do with the indictment. It's way more significant what they did with the money (how and for what reasons they paid people cash rewards, how and from whom they took payments, the steps they took to move cash into and out of US banks, etc.) The "piracy" aspect is not the most serious of the charges.

I used to be a cryptographer, then I took a crowbar to the knee.