Re:Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year
by tptacek on Monday February 16, 2015 @01:55PM
(#9058487)
Megaupload also ran a monetary incentive scheme that ranked rewards for users based on the value of the content; discovery during the prosecution turned up emails from Megaupload employees overtly acknowledging copyrighted content and rewarding it with enhanced payouts.
Re:Megaupload programmer goes to prison for one year
by riskable on Tuesday February 17, 2015 @09:20AM
(#9062298)
To be fair, Megaupload used deduplication pretty extensively. So to remove the file would be to remove it from every single user whether they shared the URL or not. Any number of those users could have the right to a copy of the file in question or live in a country where copyright law just plain doesn't apply to sharing files (e.g. somewhere it's OK as long as it's down without commercial gain).
Removing just the link to the file seems reasonable to me. How do you choose which country to break the law? Removing just the link seems like the safest bet.
Even making the specific URLs stop working was a sore spot with Dotcom. He sent emails to employees telling them to not even do that when they got a mass report of infringement from an "insignificant source". An "insignificant source" meant anyone other than a major organization in the US (e.g., major Hollywood studios).
As far as explicitly condoning copyright infringement goes, sometimes users would see movie trailers, and ask Mega where they can see the full movie online, and Mega employees would answer by pointing them to third party sites that linked to the full movies on Mega. One Mega email to such a user included the explanation that you cannot find the links by directly searching Mega because "that would cause us a lot of trouble".