Megaupload

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Megaupload
Website logo
The easiest way to upload and share your files.
One-click hosting
languages 18 languages
operator Megaupload Limited
On-line March 21, 2005 (currently offline, deleted)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130220003959/http://www.megaupload.com/
Report by the FBI on megaupload.com since January 21, 2012 - the domain is no longer accessible these days

Megaupload was a sharehoster that was financed by paid premium access in addition to advertising . In addition to Rapidshare and MediaFire, Megaupload was one of the world's best-known file hosts. On January 19, 2012, the service was shut down as part of an FBI investigation . In January 2013, a year after the seizure of Megaupload, the successor Mega was launched . On July 9, 2016, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom announced on Twitter that he was working on a successor, which should start under the same name at the end of January 2017; that did not happen, however.

history

The company Megaupload was under the name Megaupload Ltd. registered in Hong Kong . According to data analysis company Alexa Internet, the website was now ranked 73rd among the most visited websites in the world. In 2007 the magazine Focus reported that behind Megaupload stood the new economy actor Kim Dotcom, who had a criminal record for investment fraud . The company denied this. However, on January 19, 2012, Dotcom was arrested along with three other people in New Zealand and charged with alleged copyright infringement related to Megaupload.

Megaupload made it possible to upload files of unlimited size; however, only those with a premium account could download files larger than 1 GB (1024 MB). The service could be used free of charge with various restrictions (waiting time until the start of the download, limitation of permitted traffic and bandwidth). As with Rapidshare , these restrictions could be omitted by purchasing premium access. Megaupload also included the Megavideo service , which was used by Kino.to , among others, for streaming . In addition, the services Megapix , Megalive , Megabox and Megaporn existed .

In 2011, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom were sued for alleged copyright infringement by the adult entertainment provider "Perfect 10" for USD 5 million in damages. The lawsuit ended with a settlement of an unknown amount.

In December 2011, Megaupload released the mega song . For the title, the comments of various celebrities ( Will.i.am , Sean Combs , Kanye West , Chris Brown , Jamie Foxx , Kim Kardashian , Lil Jon , The Game , Floyd Mayweather Jr. , Serena Williams and Ciara ) on the sharehoster were cut together. His appearance in the accompanying video confirmed the connection between Kim Dotcom and Megaupload.

Also in December 2011 it was announced that Megaupload was working on a project called MegaBox , which would allow artists to publish their music in an online store in the cloud, with 90 percent of the income paid to them and free downloads being paid for by Megaupload. A successful test phase for the project had already been completed.

accusation

On January 19, 2012, Megaupload was closed by the United States Department of Justice ; Charges were brought against seven main responsible persons, including the founder Kim Dotcom, for: conspiracy to form a criminal organization (max. 20 years imprisonment), conspiracy to commit copyright violations (max. 5 years imprisonment), conspiracy to launder money (max. 20 years imprisonment) J. imprisonment) and criminal copyright infringement in several cases (each max. 5 years imprisonment). The rights holders of the illegally distributed data are said to have suffered damage amounting to half a billion US dollars, while the turnover of the Megaupload network is estimated at 175 million US dollars over the same period.

The charges were:

  • Finn Batato (Marketing Director)
  • Julius Bencko (graphic designer)
  • Sven Echternach (Head of Business Development)
  • Mathias Ortmann (technical manager, co-founder and director)
  • Andrus Nomm (Head of Software Development)
  • Kim Dotcom (Founder)
  • Bram van der Kolk (supervision of programming and network structure of the "mega" sites)

Four Germans were among the defendants. Batato, Ortmann, Dotcom and van der Kolk were provisionally arrested by the New Zealand police in Auckland on January 19 . The arrests were made at Dotcom's birthday party in order to arrest accused guests at the same time. At the same time, a total of 20 house searches in nine different countries were carried out, items valued at USD 50 million (approx. EUR 39 million) and several servers in and near Washington, DC , Canada and the Netherlands were seized. The Alexandria District Court also blocked 18 Internet domains registered in the United States on Megaupload.

The prosecution names a number of pieces of evidence that are supposed to show criminal behavior, the business model according to the indictment being based on willful copyright infringement. Despite its name as a cyberlocker , Megaupload is not designed to save files for a long time. The permanent storage is dependent on regular downloads of the respective files. Files that are not downloaded would usually be removed relatively quickly. Since only a small part of the users pay for the service, the income is based on advertising, which means that the aim is to maximize the number of downloads ( General Allegation , points 7 and 8). The defendants are also said to have specifically interacted with users of “linking sites”, and some of the defendants are said to have explained to individual users how to find links to copyright-infringing content on the mega-sites (point 13). All content is said to have been available to the defendants on the internal databases (point 14). The indictment accuses Megaupload and Megavideo of manipulating the top 100 list, or the search function and the first page, in order to conceal copyright infringements (items 15 and 19). In order to quickly delete child pornography and terrorist propaganda videos, a method of recognizing such files using MD5 checksums has been developed. However, this system was not applied to copyright infringements (point 24). The indictment also states that accounts that violated copyrights were not deleted, although the terms of use clearly stated this ( Ways, Manner, and Means of the Conspiracy , point 55). Megaupload is also said to have offered financial incentives, with bonuses being paid for uploading “popular works” ( Overt Acts , point 69d). E-mails from co-defendant van der Kolk suggest that mechanisms existed for transferring videos from YouTube directly to this platform for the successful start of Megavideo (point 69h-l).

In response to the shutdown of the sharehoster, members of the “ Anonymous ” collective paralyzed the website of the US Department of Justice, various record labels, companies in the music and film industry and their organizations in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack . In the days after Megaupload closed, other sharehosters limited their services, deleted user accounts, ended affiliate programs or discontinued their services.

In April 2012, the American judge Liam O'Grady stated that Megaupload might not be brought to trial because they had failed to submit a formal criminal complaint to the company. This is a procedural error. Ira Rothken, Kim Dotcom's American attorney, believes that the authorities have been unable to prosecute a company outside the United States. Prosecutor Jay Prabhu again said at a hearing in Virginia that this was not a problem as Dotcom owns 68% of the company and private individuals outside the United States can be indicted.

The New Zealand authorities' preservation of evidence in the extradition proceedings was completed at the end of November 2015. On December 23, 2015, a verdict was published allowing the defendants to be extradited to the United States. The lawyers have announced an appeal against the court's decision. On July 4, 2018, the New Zealand Supreme Court dismissed the appeal.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Geoffrey A. Fowler, Devlin Barrett, Sam Schechner: US Shuts Offshore File-Share 'Locker'. In: The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company , January 20, 2012, accessed January 20, 2012 .
  2. ↑ Kim Dotcom on Twitter. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Alexa Internet : Alexa Web Search - Megaupload.com , accessed December 19, 2011
  4. ↑ Achim Sawall: Kim Schmitz is back. New residence in mansion in New Zealand? In: Golem.de. Klaß & Ihlenfeld Verlag, February 15, 2010, accessed on January 20, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Kimble aka Kim Schmitz: Back in business with Megaupload. In: gulli.com. Inqnet, September 20, 2007, accessed January 20, 2012 .
  6. ↑ jkj: Paramount: Google is the largest pirated search engine. In: Heise online. Verlag Heinz Heise, June 25, 2010, accessed on January 20, 2012 .
  7. ^ Justice Department Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement. In: US Department of Justice. United States Department of Justice , January 19, 2012; accessed January 20, 2012 .
  8. ↑ Torsten Kleinz, vbr: Lawsuit against Megaupload: “Kimble in front of the court”. In: Heise online. Verlag Heinz Heise, August 5, 2011, accessed on January 20, 2012 .
  9. ↑ Torsten Kleinz, vbr: Megaupload attaches copyright litigation with settlement. In: Heise online. Heinz Heise Verlag, November 4, 2011, accessed on January 20, 2012 .
  10. ↑ Kim Dotcom: Megaupload Mega Song. In: Youtube. Google Inc., December 7, 2011, accessed January 20, 2012 .
  11. ↑ Digital Music News: MegaUpload Is Now Launching a Music Service Called MegaBox ... ( Memento January 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) December 21, 2011. Retrieved January 26, 2012
  12. ^ A b Justice Department Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement . fbi.gov, January 19, 2012.
  13. ↑ vbr: Raid against Megaupload: FBI has Kim Schmitz arrested. heise online, January 19, 2012
  14. ^ Dotcom birthday party targeted , nzherald.co.nz, January 22, 2012
  15. ^ Department of Justice: Indictment , In: Wall Street Journal , accessed January 24, 2012.
  16. ↑ Anonymous starts campaign of revenge against US justice. In: Spiegel Online , accessed on January 21, 2012.
  17. ↑ ghi: After mega-upload raid: Sharehoster in panic . In: heise online , January 24, 2012.
  18. ↑ David Fisher: Dotcom trial may not occur - Judge , NZ Herald News, April 21, 2012, accessed May 5, 2012
  19. ↑ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11565399 ; accessed on December 23, 2015
  20. ↑ Kristina Beer: Court decides: Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the USA. heise online, November 23, 2015, accessed on December 24, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Appeal against the extradition judgment on tagesschau.de; accessed on December 23, 2015
  22. ↑ Rejection of the appeal against the extradition ruling on cbsnews.com; accessed on July 5, 2018