domenica 22 gennaio 2012

Megaupload shut down is not the end of the world

A lot of people reacted to the closure of Megaupload as if the Maya prediction of the end of the world was finally fulfilled. Here are my 2 cents on the topic - nothing more, really, Megaupload shout down is not worth that much.

We all know what Megaupload was all about - if you don't, take a look here. Basically, Megauplad was a company that made money from file sharing. These money came from the website Premium Account fees, which used to allow users a better file sharing experience in exchange for $10 a month. According to the US DoJ, Megaupload was shut down in January because of "engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement". Kim Dotcom and his affiliates were making huge profits out of copyright-protected work sharing, investing their returns in dodgy activities all around the world. The US government sentence is not against some poor Samaritans who helped others enjoy the latest Rihanna hits or the last Sherlock Holmes movie, it is against some criminals engaging in illegal activities using illegal profits. We could argue whether copyrights are useful and valuable to the whole society nowadays, whether they should be abolished or encouraged, but that's not the point of this post.

For those of you who still need the latest Rihanna album and can't be bothered to spend a penny (I can't blame you), take a look at Torrent Pond, one of the best torrent search engine I've ever come across.  

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