[Image Source: GQ Magazine]
Posted on 01/20/2012 12:01:35 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The stink of differential justice is yet again smelled surrounding a massive "anti-piracy" effort
There are a number of things curious about the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations and U.S. Department of Justice's haphazard takedown of the popular content storage site Megaupload among them:
+ If the site was truly involved in $500M USD in copyright threat, what took the FBI so long to act? The site has been live for seven years now and used by millions of Americans.
+ How is Megaupload fundamentally any different than Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube? Like YouTube users upload content which the site cannot control. Megauploads admins have suspended accounts in the past for users who were caught uploading copyrighted work.
+ If Megaupload was so evil why did many major artists support it? (Last we checked big pop artists are no fans of sites who deliberately promote infringement.) And why did these big music labels try to stop those artists from showing their support?
+ But most of all:
Why is Megaupload's CEO, famous American DJ, rapper, and producer Swiss Beatz (best known as the husband of Alicia Keyes, perhaps) not named in the lawsuit?
Virtually every other employee -- including the company's CMO and CTO -- at Megaupload is facing criminal piracy charges, but for some reason this key American music insider was not even mentioned in the Grand Jury's complaint [PDF].
Some have pointed out that Swiss Beatz owns no stake in Megaupload, merely served as its leader. But that hardly makes a difference, given that he was leading a company that the feds claims was profiting off infringement.
To Swiss Beatz credit, he surely never wanted Megaupload to be whacked down like this -- he was its biggest fan, and convinced many artists of its merits. And it's hard to fault him for keeping quiet -- after all who would rather be in jail than free?
SOPA House author Rep. Lamar Smith (R- Tex.) or his staff stole copyrighted images from a small artist and used them without payment or citation on the campaign site that helped elect him, yet now he wants to imprison Americans for intellectual property theft?
And what about the rest of Congress, who were initially so supportive of SOPA/PIPA, while their offices were caught illegally torrenting pornography and other copyrighted work?
And how can Rupert Murdoch support SOPA when his own employees were caught stealing text messages and voice mails from the families of murdered children and dead soldiers, in a sickening profit scheme?
Clearly the American justice system consists of two groups -- "the proles", which contains everyone from your college educated professionals to your McDonald's Corp. (MCD) fast food workers, and then "the inner party", a fortunate lot that includes millionaire musicians, big media executives, and their hired help (politicians).
Source: New York Post
No more Megavideo.
Nice formatting and least buffering but will not miss the “You have watched 75 minutes of video today, upgrade now to continue watching or wait 45 minutes to begin watching again” BS.
Was already liking videoweed a lot better-and novamov isn’t too bad (of the many many other sites out there.
BTW-Too bad “ten star movies” chickened out.
“How is Megaupload fundamentally any different than Google Inc.’s (GOOG) YouTube? “
BINGO!!!!
YouTube is a virtual Jukebox, now apparently they waived the old 10-minute video limit, and there are complete albums on it.
BINGO!!!!
On MU you could download full length rips of blu rays before they were even released here, I've heard. The problem isn't the musicians, it's the studios.
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