Anonymous - Operation Blackout, warning video

[Lishy]

Hey. I hope this is the right board.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smb-cFSDXrw

Figured I'd post this in response to the recent Megaupload news.

[MsDoodahs]

Question from a non techy person - what is megaupload?

[Lishy]

Megaupload was a simple, yet amazing file-sharing site. If I have a file, I could upload it for friends to download using its services.

Megaupload was famous for its incredible upload/download times, and it has been the main means of file hosting from everything ranging from my own Doujin Circle's works, to things like Katawa Shoujo.

That said, some have used Megaupload for the use of piracy, and the U.S. government is blaming Megaupload for profiting off of their hosting because of piracy, and they have held them responsible for "damages". In other words, this is essentially SOPA before it has even launched. However, what the American government is doing is ILLEGAL because Megaupload had co-operated with existing copyright laws, and has removed copyrighted material systematically when contacted by copyright holders to do so.

This is censorship at its worst. As someone who uses megaupload for legitimate purposes (I'm not a big pirate), I am furious at the American government for not only trampling on our online file archives, but also what internet users like myself call our "home" for file sharing!

[MsDoodahs]

Oh, okay, I get it.

Mega. Upload.

[DamianTV]

Question from a non techy person - what is megaupload?

I'll see if I can add to Lishy's excellent explanation.

MegaUpload is a File Hosting site, not just a sharing site. Files uploaded live on their servers. Unlike other "File Sharing" sites, this site hosts the files on their computers, where as a site that normally has the label of "File Sharing" operates using torrents or other methods where the files shared live on users computers.

I'll see if I can explain in a non technical sense. You play a game. Lets call it Grand Theft Kitten War. The makers of that game sometimes release updates to fix mistakes in their code. Gamers refer to these as "Patches". They Patch the problem, and that file is freely available for you to download. The reason the Patch for that Game is free is because you already paid for the content, but there was a problem in the way that it works. These are the types of files that people want access to, and companies need to distribute. Not every game company can afford to have super duper file serving computers, so they use File Hosting services like MegaUpload to "Mirror" their patches.

On the Game analogy, lets say your steering wheel was broken. What a Patch does is to replace your busted out of the box steering wheel with one that works. When games are usually released, their first initial release can be called version 1.0. That means it is the first version of the game. Version 1.01 is released, and it isnt the whole game that is broken, but a smaller part of it. A game might weigh in at 5 gigs or something, but to update to version 1.01 doesnt require you to download the whole game all over again. So your "Patch" (think of patch like patching a hole in a pair of jeans) is only like 25 megs. There are 1000 megs in 1 gig, and the game is 5 gigs. So it isnt that big, but even for a smaller company, having 10,000 people all trying to download a 25 meg file can be overwhelming for systems if they were to host those files.

The other types of "File Sharing" is done using "torrents" or other similar technologies. Lets make up a fictional (hopefully not real) Pirate website. We call it "PirateTorrents.com" The website "PirateTorrents.com" doesnt actually have any files on their computer. What their site does is distribute a "Torrent" link. The torrent link gives an impossible for a human to remember File ID, and the File Sharing Network starts downloading files matching that "File ID" from other users that have a copy of that file. The thing that works well about Torrents is that you can get half a file from one person, a third of it from another person, then the last little bit from some other person. All the people share their bandwidth, so one person is not totally overloaded, the same way one computer network can easily get overloaded.

But the problem on Torrents is that there are valid torrents out there (torrents are just links to files) and those torrents (files) can be pirated copies or games, or they can be legitimate files as well, like patches for games.

MegaUpload ran into its problems because they allow people like you and me to upload files to their servers at no charge, and we get the same quality of service that somebody like Microsoft would get if they used MegaUpload. Some people uploaded legit files, like patches, and others abused the service to distribute pirated software. MegaUpload was pretty good about not distributing viruses.

The FBI's decision punishes the company for the wrongdoing of some of its users. It would be like saying that somebody went to WalMart, bought a cullinary set of knives, then used one of those knives to commit some crimes. Then the FBI came after WalMart and shut them down for selling a knife to someone committed a crime. WalMarts services were abused which ended up having a bad consequence. We could just as easily say that the person that paid for WalMarts products abused their service, and the FBI had to shut WalMart down because of what one of their customers did. That isnt the best analogy because the WalMart scenario is very after the fact, and MegaUpload was actually distributing the Pirated software by using their service.

[AngryCanadian]

Question from a non techy person - what is megaupload?
Was also a video viewing site was one of my favorites the fastest.

[cindy25]

even a bar that sells booze to a drunk driver who kills someone gets a hearing