So in terms of precedent, if dropbox can be used to store copyright files, could they also be shut down on a whim like this?
Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users.
Oh, and affiliate programs are now money laundering:
The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites’ uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content.
As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.
Of course this is only a grand jury indictment and they have not been found guilty in a court. But the Feds don't bring a case if they aren't damn well sure they can win.
I might be reading too much into this, but to me this sounds like ten people uploaded the same movie (maybe with different filenames, maybe different encodings/file formats), the DMCA request only named one of these files, and MegaUpload removed only that one file.
(I know the quote says "link" not "copy" but it wouldn't be the first time people get confused over the distinction.)
If so, this sets a dangerous precedent for other (maybe more legitimate) file sharing sites: firstly, if you host millions of files, detecting which files are copies of another file, or deciding which filenames are similar to other filenames, is not a trivial task. Secondly, as far as I understand the DMCA, it doesn't even require you to go to these lengths.
Of course, I might be totally off base and they might really have kept the very same file in place and just removed a link to it on some pages while keeping the link on others.
Does anyone know more details about this?
If the provided link is private, not index by megaupload or search engines, then it can be thought of a private locker with the key being the link. In this case it should not be Megaupload's job to know who is supposed to have the key and who does not and it seems reasonable that they would only remove the link complained about and not the content. Those other links after all could be for personal backup/use which is allowed.
Can anyone verify/deny that the links Megaupload provided were private?
"The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites’ uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content."
I do wonder how this plays into the whole Swizz Beats is CEO news.
From a legal/rights-holder standpoint that's a double-edged sword - it could be argued that because Dropbox dedupe files, they have a head start on DMCA compliance, but it could also be argued that the technical infrastructure means they should be better at removing infringing content.
That's why I think the "Megaupload took down only one link rather than all the infringing content" aspect of this indictment is so scary, especially for a site that does perform introspection into its hosted files - it's easy for a judge to go from "you can send only unique differences" to "you can locate every instance of this copyrighted content and remove it or else."
That's related to their claim that the DMCA take down requests weren't honored: Allegedly, while appearing to comply with requests to remove infringing content, they would merely take down the reported links, yet would keep alternate links to the same md5-hash-matching content working.