Based on the Articles: MegaVideo Shutdown: Beginning the End of Piracy?
Only just after the controversy surrounding the failed bill Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which put the internet community into a frenzy before crashing, copyright holders scored a win in the fight against online piracy. MEGAVIDEO, a file-sharing website that has been one of the largest of it's kind, and therefore also one of the worst, was taken down by the FBI when copyright holders claimed to have lost over $500 million in revenue for pirated material.
MegaUpload, with it's many sub-sites, MegaVideo, MegaFile, etc. was infamous and widely used for it's easy-access materials; Tv Shows, Music, you name it was available for streaming on just about anywhere that linked to it.
The loss of MegaVideo seems to have been in retaliation to the mass protests of the two bills SOPA and PIPA which crashed and burned due to the amount of users on the Internet petitioning and protesting against the two bills; many of the protestors, including such mega-sites as Google and Wikipedia felt that the bills would have cost us our privacy when the Internet should be uncensored.
The take-down of MegaVideo shows how serious the government is about combating piracy, and was met also with retaliation of it's own. Anonymous, a group of hactivists who using DDoS, and other methods go after organizations that they feel threaten the freedom of the Internet through censorship. They were one of the big groups that led the protests against SOPA and PIPA. When MEGAVideo was taken down, Anonymous went after some of the big organizations, Motion Picture Association of America, a website belonging to the US Department of Justice, and the Recording Industry Association of America.
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As an artist who has dealt with my work being stolen before, I get the place that copy-right holders are coming, from but I do not agree with the current actions being taken to rid the Internet of piracy, only because the availability of information is what makes the Internet. People use the Internet every day to find information and mat4erials that are unavailable anywhere else: it's why we have a Google; and it's why the Internet was first created: to open up the availability of Information. The Motion Picture Industry I think it being unreasonable and ignorant for trying to stop individuals from being able to get to content that they have no other means of getting. For example, tv shows from other countries. I would be unable to find new anime or tv shows if it weren't for online streaming sites.
It's being exposed to the content that in turn makes me interested which in turn makes me want to spend my money on it; so in that way the Motion Picture Industry is actually stopping me from wanting to spend money on their materials too. They also don't have certain things available after a certain amount of time: like old movies I saw in my childhood that I would be Interested in buying, but the industry gas long-since forgotten about.
MEGA Video's take down effected me directly because it was one of teh only ways I got some of the anime shows to watch.
I also love Anonymous for their work in showing big businesses and our government what the public can do. Although I don't condone their immoral activity, I love how they are able to show that we as a public are not to just be stepped all over just so big businesses can earn more money.
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