Led by Wikipedia foundation, some of the social websites, including Megaupload protested the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill on January 18th, as they stop all of their operation for one day. The aim of the protestation was to point out this new bill that was about to pass by the U.S. senate, which would possibly allow the copyright holders and the government to have more power to fight against online piracy.

The very next day on January 19th 2012, U.S. Federal Officials shut down Megaupload, which was the largest online file sharing website, due to the violation of copyrights. Its founders were arrested and the user files stored in company’s servers were initiated to be deleted. Although the Unites Stated Government has based the arrest on the copyright crime, their timing suggests that they tend to make it an example in favor of the media giants and record artists organizations. However, the bill that criminalizes file sharing has not passed yet, since it was withdrawn after the massive reaction from the public worldwide. Given the fact that cleaning of the pirated files from the legal or personal ones is impossible, the deletion of the files means the loss of the personal data. Briefly, U.S. ventures to violate the basic freedom and destroys private property of its own citizens as well as the citizens of the rest of the world. In other words, they burn the entire forest in order to get rid of some infected trees. 

According to BBC news, “Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand” and charged with “conspiracies to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering”. These charges are way beyond of abusing copyrights infringement and also do not justify the damage that has been done so far, such as deletion and seizure of the private files, as well as disabling the entire service.

On the other hand, it is not the first time that a government punishes a specific organization in order to send a message to the ones who use illegitimate material. Napster stands as a good example, since it was the first big issue about the copyrighted material. Back in the end of the nineties, Metallica stood up against the software that allowed its users to share non-copyrighted material online. The long period of lawsuits ended up Napster being shut down just like Megaupload and Metallica ended up losing a serious amount of fans and fame. In the documentary Some Kind of Monster about the band’s rise and fall, Lars Ulrich the lead guitarist confesses that the Napster case was not a good idea and they could not prevent the transition of music listening experience as it shifted from buying CD’s to downloading MP3’s. Megaupload’s case seems to be concluded in the same way, as the sharing videos as both in download and streaming form have proved to become very popular after the emergence of the companies (and also media giants to be) like Netflix, Hulu and such.

The evolution cannot be stopped and obviously every illegal form grew to become something legitimate and very legal in time, just like in the example of MP3, which allowed the emergence of the iPod generation. It also allowed to music to be cheaper and more accessible. In the beginning it looked like a nightmare for artists since they seem to lose a lot of money from non-collected copyrights, but the accessibility of the online media brought them more funs, which meant more wallets to pay for their commercial stuff. Finally, the termination of Megaupload will be remembered one day as a move to please the media giants that resist admitting the change and keeping the old order. Mikael Hed, who is the CEO of Rovio, the team beyond the Internet phenomenon Angry Birds, approaches to the piracy as it “brings more fans to the company”. 

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16642369

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/990207.stm

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)