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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

The striking thing to me about the MU shutdown was the timing right after the defeat of SOPA. It was like the government wanted to teach "the people" a lesson for getting too uppity. Like "Oh, you think we can't shut down your websites just because we don't have this little law that you rose up against? Well watch this."

With all the political uproar that was going on that week it would be surprising if the FBI had not gone to the White House before pulling the trigger on the raid.

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An operation like the MU investigation and raid takes many months, if not years, to plan and execute, especially when it involves cooperation with officials in several countries.

It is almost impossible that the timing had anything to do with SOPA, considering that the SOPA defeat was rather unexpected.

You're using logic and an unbiased point-of-view.

Which is starkly different from the other side, which tends to revert to conspiracy theories every time.

It did not seem like they were prepared very well, since they couldn't even get the paperwork right for the arrest. That does not look like something well planned at all.

The timing of the shutdown likely had more to do with:

(1) Megaupload suing Universal, in a lawsuit they were likely to win, and were then forced to drop the lawsuit after the raid.

(2) The raid happened just prior to Megaupload releasing a new service called MegaBox, which would allow artists to legally sell music directly to fans, allowing artists to keep 90% of the profits, as well as introducing a feature that allowed artists to make money off music that listeners were streaming for free.

It turns out the FBI had been spying MegaUpload for the past 5+ years

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57368523-261/feds-we-obtai...

With the fact that they don't have any evidence to present a case that there was actual illegal activity going on that required the raid, I would say it's more likely that the pressure for the raid to come when it did came directly from the entertainment industry / UMG.

It's more likely that the shutdown was planned to coincide with the SOPA bill. Even though SOPA was unexpectedly derailed, the raid had too much momentum and continued on regardless.

That's very paranoid. Occam's razor, my friend. They were probably going to do this anyway with timing being a coincidence. People give the US government too much credit for planning devious things. Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors. Nothing more. I sincerely doubt the Feds did this as so to give the finger to protesters. They've been doing this long before SOPA was introduced and will continue too. SOPA just codifies the status quo so that the chances of anyone getting in trouble for shutting sites down becomes nil.

> Most of it is a lot of fuck-ups and political favors.

There is a contradiction there perhaps. Political favors includes buckling due to lobbying. Then US govt. is just a proxy for large banking interests, the military industrial complex, pharmaceuticals, large agribusiness etc. So no the govt. might not have really cared about MU but maybe MPAA cared and when they care they line pockets and make promises about future rewards

So, the only way out for anyone who wants to survive is to lobby? Seems like the only solution out to me.

I've always had this problem with lobbying. If everyone has to lobby and I guess it mostly requires money these days then how is it not "legal bribing"?

Lobbying has always been legalized corruption, however it is better than actual corruption because it allows people to monitor the "bribes" (i.e. they're not hidden from everyone's eyes).

But then you can't end people's careers when you catch them taking "bribes". Honestly, I can't see how it's any better. Now we just get to watch it happening but we still can't do anything about it.

The key is to make the bribes matter less, by limiting the size and scope of government's power.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it seems we've reached the point that not only can we not shrink the size and scope of government power, we can't even stop it from growing.

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