Megaupload Shut Down by U.S. Prosecutors; Kim Dotcom, Three Others Arrested
As the controversy rages over SOPA and PIPA, federal prosecutors have taken down a huge piracy site. After all, folks, stealing music and movies, like stealing anything else, is illegal and should be prosecuted.
Billboard.biz reports that “MegaUpload, one of the worlds largest file-sharing sites, was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several company executives were charged with violating piracy laws, federal prosecutors said.An indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart online piracy. The Justice Department said in a statement said that Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and three others were arrested Thursday in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials. Two other defendants are at large.”
Of course these clods were reachable because their servers are in the U.S. But hundreds of creative content pirates are in other countries, and so the new bills in Congress are needed to get at them.
via Megaupload Shut Down by U.S. Prosecutors; Kim Dotcom, Three Others Arrested | Billboard.biz.
