Megaupload was our collective library Of Alexandria
nerdr.com
nerdr.com
When mega upload shut down, it just meant you had to switch which service you used. I seriously doubt there was a single bit of knowledge or culture that was on megaupload that still doesn't exist today on some hard drive somewhere.
Yeah, shutting down mega upload raises some pretty serious questions. But the library of Alexandria it ain't.
Umm, no. I don't think MegaUpload was that big...
Consider if Youtube were to shut down overnight. Yes we'd lose a lot of generally available content (hop on Ebay for a copy of Ghostbusters), but we'd also lose a lot of amazing content that you can't buy on Ebay or get anywhere else. It's THAT stuff that's a sad loss.
Then the question is, if it's not commercially available, does it still have any value at all? I argue yes. I've learnt more from free files and videos some random user has uploaded than I have from commercial products. Once gone, I can never access those resources ever again. Ever. Because it's bits and bytes, once erased, it's gone forever.
Most people had never even heard of it, and if you want to store something valuable permanently then it should be obvious to put it in multiple locations.