Uploaded.to blocked U.S. visitors as a response to the MegaUpload takedown
uploaded.to
uploaded.to
Might the US wake up one day to find itself secluded on the internets? Just like the average Nigerian, who has exactly 0% chance of successfully ordering a product on eBay.
What happens when the world becomes fed up with the horrendous US legal system? I can easily see a file-sharing site (e.g. megaupload) blocking all US IP addresses from accessing its service. Essentially annulling any trace of liability against a corrupt and rotten legal and political system.
Granted, we're still pretty high up on the slippery slope. But, it still would be very interesting the moment the US becomes the country with 'unfavorable political climate'.
Speaking of waking up, having three emergency vehicles truck by your window at 2 am with sirens blazing is a really unpleasant way to wake up. At least I got to see this interesting topic :)
The US has a problem with politics and when that problem endangers the internet, to me at least, the simplest solution is to block US users.
It has got to be tempting now for site owners, especially considering how US courts do not seem to have much trouble seizing websites. If the site isn't US facing surely that would put a big dent in any legal action made stateside.
But that's also changing - North America had the least growth in internet usage from 2000-2011: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
If the current political trends continue to the point it jeopardizes my business, and creates unnecessary risk, I would have no problem blocking ±10% of my users, right then and there.
(Edit: I'm from South Africa, not the US.)
Why should the operators of a site risk getting extradited to the US, when what they are doing is perfectly legal in their home countries and lots of other countries?
If you are a user and want to access this site just buy VPN access in the free world and enjoy uncensored browsing.
Now having the vps inside the US has become useless to me, and I'm seriously considering moving it back to Europe, just in case..
You get the point. So with all of that work involved they look at the revenue potential of smaller countries and, frankly, it's just not worth it in many cases. They don't know what the demand is there. They don't have a marketing plan, and they have bigger opportunities available to them by working on yet another show's licensing for the US or other large country, so they just don't go to all of that trouble to make things available in smaller markets.
But my point was that it's not illegal. It's a decision, not law.
I think the people behind SOPA are happy that uploaded.to decides to block US citizens. Cause that's exactly what they wanted in the first place.
What i would rather see is that companies move off US soil as a response to US Law. And stay off TLD's controlled by the US.
Also proxying should be promoted to circumvent the censorship that the government puts down over it's own citizens.
The movie industry has to adapt to a new market. The government should not adapt to an industry that has lost it's ability to innovate.
The cowboys from the US and the bootlickers in the affected countries have shown again and again that they do not care about jurisdiction or common sense.
The reason why I believe uploaded.to did this is not to support/protest SOPA, but to protect themselves from liability.
Umm no, they were arrested in New Zealand by New Zealand authorities.
Dotcom, as well as Bram van der Kolk, Finn Batato and Mathias Ortman were arrested by Organised & Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (OFCANZ) as well as New Zealand police earlier today. from http://gizmodo.com/5877779/
At the behest of the US entertainment industry.
If you set up a service like Mega Upload that doesn't have any dealings with US citizens or institutions then an US court has no jurisdiction and a grand jury motion will likely not succeed, and in most countries, other than the sycophantic ones that allow extradition on merely accusation, you can just ignore it.
> just arrested in New Zealand for running a company from there
> were arrested by US authorities with no extradition
> ...
> no "prosecution in the target jurisdiction"
They will apparently[1] have a hearing in NZ to determine extradition.
The investigation was apparently[1] coordinated between multiple governments' agencies, and apparently[1] took 2 years.
[1]: This information is based on what I have read so far.
Is the submission title correct?
Good for them - this is a rational response and I hope it gets a lot of press.
http://torrentfreak.com/uploaded-to-blocks-us-visitors-12012...
Continental separations just don't make any sense on the internet. I'm perfectly happy not being a U.S. user - we speak english and have ruby, php and startups too, why can't I be interested in what we (the internet) are talking about today?
Are there any other examples of this post Megaupload?
Just in the comment thread for this post I've seen assertions that the U.S. avoided extradition treaties (untrue) and that MegaUpload was shut down just because of what their users were doing (also untrue).
Just as an example of things from the indictment (which you should really at least read a summary of):
* MegaConspiracy employees were discussing a way to avoid reposts of child porn by killing any video with a matching md5sum of movies which were deemed by MegaConspiracy to be child porn, but did not employ that same tactic for files uploaded that infringed copyright. Now you and I know that it's trivial to make the md5sum change without making the video look any different, but why does MegaConspiracy 'try harder' for some categories of illegal material and not others that just conveniently happen to make them more money?
* MegaConspiracy seeded their own website with videos copied straight from YouTube (thing wget --mirror) without so much as bothering to verify the license of those videos. This wouldn't be acceptable with open source software, why should this be acceptable for Mega Upload?
* MegaConspiracy distributed known infringing videos internally to staff (so it's not "just the users" doing it)
* MegaConspiracy rewarded uploaders monetarily for uploading popular videos despite the lack of authorization on the part of those users to redistribute the video (so it's not "just the users" asking for it)
So while I certainly appreciate that the movie/music industry are hopelessly out-of-tune with digital distribution, that doesn't make MegaConspiracy a bunch of good guys, and it doesn't make their behavior defensible.
For the third point who are you kidding. Technically this is problematic. In the real world even representatives and people in grand jury exchange ripped films, most probably most judges do it too. So this is both technically a reason but an highly hypocritical one.
That's not at all the point though. It would be one thing if MegaConspiracy had a policy to only "full ban" videos that were targets of DMCA-complaints if it was clear to them that the content was actually infringing. Then they'd have a plethora of excuses (e.g. no time to sort through all the DMCA requests, "investigations" revealed it was unclear material was infringing, etc.)
Instead what the judge and jury will see is that MegaConspiracy had a "permaban video" tool which they didn't even attempt to use.
> For the third point [MegaConspiracy distributing infringing material internally] who are you kidding. Technically this is problematic.
Well, this is the best kind of "technically", given that it's exactly what they're being accused of! If the grand jury was as sympathetic to that as you think then why did they hand down the indictment?
Either way it's not very hypocritical given that some naïve users might be able to claim ignorance of the progeny of videos from the Internet, but MegaConspiracy went out of their way to establish DMCA protocol so they have no excuse for ignorance of the "safe harbor" provisions at all.