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>You'd have to be delusional, or in torrentfreak's case pandering for ad impressions, to pretend anyone would bother putting their friends, family and colleagues through all those hoops when they have email, skype, msn, dropbox, yahoo, free hosting, $1 hosting, $2 hosting, $3 hosting, $4 hosting and so many other, easier options available for non-pirated content.

I suppose you'd have to be similarly delusional to use Windows Media Player or QuickTime when VLC is out there?

People use poor but popular products all the time. It doesn't make them liars or crooks.

Windows Media Player and Quicktime might be lame but they don't actively work against the user unless you pony up some cash to use the "can open a file in just 2 clicks" version.

Sending your friends/family/colleagues a link on MegaUpload (or similar) was essentially putting a paywall between them and the file you actually wanted to give them. For pirated content it makes sense, you have no concern for who comes along to download it and of course they gave you a cut of the money too: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/review/paid-to-upload-upload...

For <legitimate work> it's just nonsense when there's so many high profile, easier ways to get that file from a to b.

How do you explain people using the trial version of winzip then?

I have in fact received large client-owned files over megaupload and rapidshare (they emailed me the URL). I don't really know why they didn't stage them on their own server (that's how we do it) but when trying to work smoothly with non-nerd biz dev people I'm certainly not going to push back over doing something else for one minute every couple of weeks.

"Sending your friends/family/colleagues a link on MegaUpload (or similar) was essentially putting a paywall between them and the file you actually wanted to give them."

However, if you want to transfer a large file to someone, and are not technically savvy enough to have Dropbox, FTP, or some other hosting, you'd probably Google how to send a file, and services such as MegaUpload and Yousendit would be the top results.

The services are biassed to make things as easy as possible for the uploader (free, no sign up required, just enter recipient's email address, redirect to subscribe page after), who is unlikely to take into account the things done to make things a little harder for the downloader (delayed download, premium paywall, throttled free service). For clients who have neither the budget nor the wits to pay for the premium service or their own hosting, the free service worked fine for occasional use.

There's a different use case you're not considering: one-to-many distribution of legal-to-distribute works. I saw a lot of camera test videos from photo forums, Android ROMs from Android forums, and PDFs of obscure pamphlets hosted on MegaUpload, because for quite some time it had a less painful captcha/wait process than RapidShare (and MediaFire wasn't popular yet).

I wouldn't use MegaUpload to share with my family but I certainly would use it to distribute the 200MB video file I wanted to share with a forum. Most "file sync" and "personal sharing" services try to actively prevent users from burning their bandwidth on one-to-many hosting, both as an anti-piracy measure and as a conscious business model decision. The "share big files with lots of people" niche is useful for people other than pirates, and now that niche is nigh-on impossible to fill in the US.

Megaupload has been captcha-less for a while, and from time to time without a waiting period.

Some hosts are really bad. It can be hard to find the proper thing to click with 12 different 'Download button' ads and the real one is tiny and hidden in the bottom right.

Even though I have a dropbox account I still use a similar site to megaupload (mediafire) for most times I need to link someone a file. What I really miss is drop.io that Google poached and killed.

A company I worked at actually did use services like MegaUpload (not MU specifically, but something pretty similar) to exchange files with clients.

Email: Can't send 60 MB files

Skype: Neither my designer nor clients know how to use it

MSN: Ditto

Dropbox: Can be kinda slow and clients don't know how to use it

Yahoo: Not sure what you're talking about with this one

$X hosting: My designer and clients don't know what this even means — the only way to make it usable for them would be to write a MegaUpload clone

Normal people use what they know how to use. They don't know there's better stuff. Even if they did, you'd have a hard time explaining to them why they should change.

It's ethically not correct if you profit (freeride) from a service which is payed for by black/pirate money. If 'normal' people are thus ignorant to not notice this, I really don't care if they loose their files.

So, if I understand your logic, Fedex, which often ends up transporting illegal drugs in around the US, profits from illegal packages, they should have their entire company shutdown and all packages impounded? I'm sure there is plenty of other example which illustrates what I mean (banks).

You could say that Fedex is unethical for not checking every packages content etc... But should the peoples packages be forfeited to the government just like that?

The argument is that MU willfully knew that there were infringing files on their system yet they didn't take them down properly (simply removing links etc..) Other than that I've never seen anyone suggest that they promoted it actively as a way to share unlicensed copyrighted materials. It could be reasonably assume by a user that the site was a generic way to share any file.

It's about proportions. Fedex = mostly legit packages = less reasonable to shut it all down. Megaupload = mostly infringing content = more reasonable to shut it down, especially since the other counts against Kimmy are rather serious white-collar crime charges.

This whole argument is ridiculous, now that I'm typing anyway. The government doesn't have any obligations against the customers of a company that does illegal things. When the IRS impounds all the property of a cake bakery, they have no obligation whatsoever against the couple who have a wedding the next day and now all of a sudden don't have a cake. Megaupload users can ask Megaupload to give them their data back (which they obviously can't), or sue them for damages. 'Sueing the FBI' is tough talking from a bunch of armchair lawyers, but has no relation to the real world in any way.

Apply the legal principle of "guilty mind".

FedEx was created, and is run, with the intent of facilitating completely legal activity. They're not going to examine your packages for legality, but there is an intent and presumption of innocence & legality. That a few people abuse the system for illicit purposes in no way warrants shutting down 99.99% legal activity. It's not like the founders started with "hey, let's make a dope distribution network...wow, we can make some money moving legit content too!".

MegaUpload was created, and is run, with the intent of facilitating known illegal activity. Offshore servers just to avoid jurisdictional issues, public behavior (right down to their license plates) from top-level executives radiating illegal intent, and obvious public knowledge that the main use is outright IP piracy. That a few people use the system for legitimate purposes in no way justifies leaving the system up. It's not like the founders started with "hey, let's make an unlimited-file-size sharing service for businesses...wow, we can make some money moving illegal content too!"

Hezbollah doesn't get a pass just because they provide social services.

The difference is for most of those products you have to pay for the bandwidth

Megaupload each party paid for their upload or download and that was it, no server bandwidth costs

Obviously for things like linux distros we just use torrents, but for less tech savvy (idiot) users I could imagine megaupload being used for things like huge law libraries, collections of 3d models, collections of sound files, etc. Sure some of that might be copyrighted but there are huge chunks of materials of all those things out there that aren't. And likely more than before once you take hosting costs out of the equation. Who wants to pay $4 a month for hosting when it'll run out after 10 downloads anyway and you're guaranteed never make a cent out of it? But upload it to megaupload and put a link on a forum, not so painful

> people actually make videos on youtube demonstrating how to download files for free from sites like MegaUpload

While I have little faith in the intelligence of the average human, a dog that's been dead for six weeks could have figured out how to download files for free from MegaUpload.

> 1) enter captcha in top right

Can't say I recall that.

> You'd have to be delusional, or in torrentfreak's case pandering for ad impressions, to pretend anyone would bother putting their friends, family and colleagues through all those hoops

I've been called many things, but delusional is new. I've had to download more than a few unpirated files from MegaUpload over the years. Some of it even related to open source projects. People like the simplicity.

> email,

Size limits routinely bite people in the ass, and you can't exactly post a link to an email attachment.

> skype,

I'm not even aware Skype has file transfers, but then I don't use it much. In any case, same link problem as email.

> msn, [...] yahoo,

Has IM file transfer ever worked reliably? See also email, skype.

> dropbox,

Largely unknown until 1-2 years ago, wants users to install software, has storage and bandwidth limits, and in general too complicated for the more simple-minded among us.

> free hosting, $1 hosting, $2 hosting, $3 hosting, $4 hosting and so many other, easier options

Most people don't have the first clue how to get or use web hosting, or even why they would even want to.

Rapidshare learned it the hard way and now there is no waiting/captcha.

Mediafire is even better: Big download button, no waiting and multiple downloads.