MegaUpload is dead. One of the world’s most popular ( 50 million daily hits , world’s 13th most popular ) website for cyberlocker services has been hit hard by the United States Justice Department , calling it “international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy.” Its high profile founder , Kim Dotcom and three of his emplooyees were arrested in new Zealand on 19th January 2012.
Megaupload and its founder have been charged with $175 million worth of proceeds from criminal activities and around half a billion dollar of copyright infringement losses. The Department of Justice has charged Megaupload with promoting uploading of copyright content.Its reward programe for uploaders has been term as money laundering. More than $50 million worth of assets in Hong Kong , New Zealand and other countries have also been confiscated in the operation. 18 Domain names , including Megavideo , Megaclick , Megaporn , Megalive etc , owned by Megaupload have also been seized.
This operation has come after one day of the international protest day against SOPA and PIPA . However , the U.S Government has dispelled that impression that both the incidents are interlinked. The Megaupload case will set new frontiers on the horizon of online piracy battle . The effects of this are already visible with many cyberlocker services ( Filesonic , Fileserve etc ) either going offline or stopping their file sharing capabilities.
Apparently , the future homeland of cyberlocker sites will be in Russia or China.
