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Your compliance claim, to me, is absolutely false. I've dealt with both Megaupload and Filesonic with DMCA requests. Megaupload not only disabled them promptly but went a step further and would remove links to identical files that I hadn't even found yet (and would tell you about it).

I just checked and I've sent 15 DMCA requests to Filesonic and had them all removed within 24 hours.

Yes they comply with DMCA complaints on the surface. No that's not enough to run this kind of business above the board. What you see in file sharing forums are the same people uploading large amounts of pirated media to these sites, DMCA complaints trickle in over the next few days/weeks, and then the very same people "re-up" the files to the same sites and post the new links in the same thread. Over and over.

To be protected by the safe harbor laws in most nations you need to not have actual knowledge of infringement. If files in someone's account are being flagged on a regular basis, you have a hard time arguing you don't know what they're doing anymore. The indictment against Megaupload says that there's physical evidence of exactly this occurring -- the site owners know that much of their traffic is from users uploading pirated content, even looking into their file lists, yet they reward these users instead of blocking them.

Is there a legal requirement to shutdown the account as well ? Or is it enough under the DMCA to just remove files/links? Common sense does not apply if you are not forced to do something by law. (loophole)

My argument was that if an account is repeatedly uploading files that are flagged as infringing, then it becomes hard to argue that the ongoing infringement is not apparent to the service provider. So it's not a direct requirement to close accounts, but an effect of the law nonetheless:

> Under the knowledge standard, a service provider is eligible for the limitation on liability only if it does not have actual knowledge of the infringement, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent, or upon gaining such knowledge or awareness, responds expeditiously to take the material down or block access to it.

http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

And as the Megaupload indictment showed, these sites are not taking efforts to stay unaware of what their users are doing -- they're looking into their accounts, seeing that the top shared files are DVD rips and commercial software, then rewarding these users instead of removing the content. That's illegal.

it would be very interesting to watch whether FBI/officials will go only after Megaupload (big fish) or they will make a case out of each and everyone who had their account and illegal uploads hosted there.

That'd be nearly impossible. To build a case against each user, they would have to:

1) Identify potentially infringing files of sufficient value to constitute criminal copyright infringement

2) Identify accounts that uploaded those files

3) Verify that the account holder is a US citizen (jurisdiction)

4) Track down where that user distributed the links in order to collect evidence proving:

a) The infringement was willful

b) The infringement was of commercial advantage or private financial gain

5) Obtain a court order for each account to subpoena the identity of the account associated with the ISP of the uploader's IP address

6) Track down the current copyright holder of each potentially infringing work, and verify that the person identified was not licensed to reproduce or distribute the work (i.e. don't sue the label marketing agent for uploading a demo copy of their artist's song)

Now, you can prepare and file one case.

1. if someone stored plenty of movies that were "shared" within Megaupload network, it would mean they got the copy online (ergo illegally). even if you rip a digital BluRay disc twice, its impossible to get the same filesize/hashtag if its encoded (not a bit by bit copy).

2. dont see a problem with this one.

3. lets skip this one; a UK student is almost on its way for breaking US law and be deported to US, so juristiction doesnt matter anymore -- especially if you can narrow your search down to people who hold hundreds of files.

4. I think once you prove the file was downloaded from a different IP than your (owner) then its enough of an evidence. you uploaded from California, bunch of guys downloaded in Europe. Unless you can prove you went to Europe and lived in all the cities download took place from, you are cooked. a/b) your infringement does not have to be willfull AND you dont need to make money off of it to be charged with owning illegally obtained files.

5. dont see problem here either. the justice system has all the time and money to persecute.

6. with a 5 or 6 biggest hollywood studios it shouldnt be a problem, should it?

> your infringement does not have to be willfull AND you dont need to make money off of it to be charged with owning illegally obtained files

At this point it's clear that you haven't actually read the copyright law of your country. Merely having illegally obtained files is never criminal in the US. Not under USC Title 17 (our copyright act) or the amendments (NET Act of 1997) that weakened the requirements of the financial gain clause. Without these elements, "owning illegally obtained files" is a civil matter only. A federal prosecutor has nothing to charge you with.

Why waste peoples' time debating law when you don't know what the law is?

Well said.

We can debate the merits of file sharing and, IMHO, there are real arguments on both sides, but I'll make the claim that there clearly ought to be a line drawn at people charging money/basing business models on the access to copyrighted files that they don't own the copyright to.

To argue against that, you have to go after the larger notions of copyright and IP laws as a whole, just as dangrossman said.

edit: I'm not sure why this is being voted down – but I'd ask for you to respond rather than just voting down comments you disagree with – discussion seems much more valuable than moderation.

Upvoted. I'm with you, and don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude. I am 100% against piracy in every form, but also 100% against aggressive government involvement in nearly everything. But if people are blatently stealing or providing a platform based around theft, they deserve to be punished. And governments are the only system of punishment that exist. SOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course but I don't understand this sad Hacker News trend where people downvote anything they disagree with. Downvoting is meant for trolls and irrelevant posts.

don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude

I'm thinking it's at least partially an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude. Megaupload was about to launch a music distribution service for indie musicians, MegaBox, that, due to Mega's popularity among non-technical users, would have been a significant threat to the major labels, iTunes, and Amazon MP3. They were also fighting Universal to defend their Mega Song. Copyright is out of control, the public domain is stagnant, so maybe some people think that anyone fighting the copyright establishment is worth supporting.

Another part may be that some people here survived their teenage years on downloaded music and developed their skills using pirated software, and would never have become programmers/designers/hackers without it. Maybe they feel like the excessive force shown to combat piracy is like an indirect way of the government and major copyright owners saying, "Your career is illegitimate." It's an attack on their identity.

"It's an attack on their identity."

Which is pathetic. They need a better identity, because they one they've got is hollow.

Fortunately for the world, individual identity is not dictated by random online commenters.

P.S. A number of your comments on this thread have been inflammatory. You've been here long enough to know there are better ways of getting your point across.

SOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course

Insane laws like SOPA and worse are the only possible answer if you want to enforce copyright. Nothing less than full blown constant network surveillance would work.

Supporting copyright as it's defined by law and not supporting laws like SOPA is an oxymoron.

removing only links instead of files

I mentioned in another thread that this is the most sensible way to handle this, because there's no way of knowing whether some of the links to identical/deduplicated files were legitimate. My previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489054

Right now the law says that a service provider must take down or block access to the material. Taking down only links (whether they're HTTP links, or pointers in a software app, etc) pointing to the material does not meet that requirement -- the material is still there, and it's still accessible through the other links.

So while it would be sensible to only remove the one link that you were notified of, if there are others, then by not taking them all down the service provider does not gain the safe harbor protection of the DMCA and remains liable for copyright infringement. Right now, as a non-lawyer reading the DMCA, it looks to me like any storage service that dedupes files is required to remove the file (from everyone's account) when any link to that file is reported, even if the other accounts have permission to store that file.

That would make sense, and I agree.

I feel like this should probably be a grey area to be sorted out in court, if not a reasonable codification into law.

But as I understand it the wording of the DMCA can be interpreted to mean that you must remove all links to the file, regardless of whether or not some of those users had the legal right to distribute while others didn't.

I think the quote while dramatic, is pertinent, in that it describes a slippery slope. Significant change might not be immediate, but this could be the beginning of a gradual erosion.

I agree. I think taking them to court is reasonable, whether they will be convicted of anything is up in the air. It sets precedent that SOPA is not needed, and is not a precedent that can be extended to p2p sharing or anonymous search linking (neither of those activities are provable as conspiracy or racketeering, which is what I think is going to stick in this case).

There are HUGE problems with copyright and IP law, and those also need to be fixed. The damage caused through the corrupting of those laws has been far worse than copyright infringement.