10 ms·

10 years ago the Feds shut down Megaupload

150 points by raninepaths 5y ago

raninepaths 5y ago
I don't remember any direct pirate activity from megaupload.
- hwers 5y ago
  Huh? You were using megaupload for legitimate reasons? I would counter that I don't recall any instance of using it for non illegal downloads.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    The article said there are millions of personal files in there. Whether you use it legally does not matter.
    - saurik 5y ago
      I think the point was just to fight an absolutist anecdote with another absolutist anecdote, to demonstrate how awkward they can be?
  - raninepaths 5y ago
    True
  - kosasbest 5y ago
    There was reports after the raids of people losing backup data. Yes, people used a cyberlocker service for backup.
azalemeth 5y ago
The successor, mega.nz, is genuinely a great service. I know doctors who use it for (legally) sending patient scans, with the key sent OOB, for example. It has a nice linux CLI, mega-cmd, and is intelligently made, cheap, and widely available.
- raninepaths 5y ago
  i use it as a backup tool. thier gui mega is also good.
- senectus1 5y ago
  yeah i love it as well. plus i can buy the premium service in BTC...
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    But why would anyone buy anything with BTC?
    - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
      But why would anyone buy anything with USD cash?
      - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        because my 1 USA dollar is unlikely to be worth 10,000 USA dollars within a year or two. In fact, it will most likely still be worth 1 USA dollar
        StanislavPetrov 5y ago
        My 1 bitcoin will still be worth 1 bitcoin within a year or two also.
        VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        but will the purchase power still be the same? or wildly different. you see the point
        red369 5y ago
        Perhaps ignoring for the sake of my question, whether the demand for Bitcoin will increase enough for the price to increase 10,000 times (or perhaps people misplacing their bitcoins, anything else?)... I'm curious about your thoughts on something. If someone thought the price would go up by that much, wouldn't it make sense to put all available money into Bitcoin, except enough to make payments where only USD (or not Bitcoin) is accepted - plus some emergency fund, etc. Because they would be keeping all possible money in Bitcoin, I think it would make more sense for someone who thought it was likely Bitcoin was going to increase 10,000 times in the next year to make every possible purchase in Bitcoin. Am I missing something? Transaction fees have been 'sorted' now with other layers, right? Disclaimer: I have always been fairly skeptical of increases in cryptocurrency prices (which means I've been wrong so far), and don't see the use cases which will lead to it holding value long term. I also have some tiny amount (fraction) of Bitcoin as change from some experimentation earlier, so I suppose I would benefit greatly from a 10,000 increase. It has already increased to more than I put in to begin with I suppose, so even that small amount might earn more next year than I would from doing a day job. Editing to note: the last sentence does look a bit sarcastic, but it is meant it in friendly jest. I think long term holders of cryptocurrencies have done very well so far, so hopefully they won't grudge me thinking the huge increases sound to good to be true. Also, I see someone has noted the high fees in another comment, so perhaps this issue is not solved.
skilled 5y ago
The peak for warez communities was right around 2006. I distinctly remember how popular those forums and other sites were. There were ridiculous amounts of pirated software and media being shared, and most of that content was in fact hosted on Megaupload or RapidShare. If you knew people (from IRC) you could get invited to scene torrent sites which was a much more efficient way of getting what you want. I mean, everything posted on warez forums was coming from scene FTPs anyway, it was just a matter of who had access to them. EDIT: Hmm, this actually got me thinking. Did OVH ever get in trouble for how much illegal traffic they processed back in those days? If my memory serves, OVH was a very popular choice because of their reliable connectivity and really good upload/download speeds.
- gordaco 5y ago
  What I miss the most about this "peak warez" period (and most of the mid to late 00s, basically) is the huge amount of blogs uploading rare old music. During this sweet period I was able to get a lot of very rare music from all over the world (as a bouns, you could in practice guarantee that it was virus-free since unlike actual warez these files weren't executable. Yes, I know that dedicated attackers can still find a way, but for your average script kiddie it was much harder to include a trojan in an MP3). There are things that to this day I haven't been able to find on Bandcamp or on streaming services, including youtube, but which I was able to download during this small gilded age. Then again I weaned myself from streaming services (and from anything "as a service") years ago, so maybe things have changed. I also remember finding a lot of rarities in Soulseek when I had lucky days, but now there is far fewer people using it. In general direct download was so much better for this kind of content, because you only needed one contributor uploading it, and it was available for everyone. In P2P sharing you need much more luck to find someone seeding what you want. I wish finding rare music was so easy in legal ways. I just want to download DRM-free albums and I will gladly pay (nowadays I buy a lot of music from Bandcamp), but in many cases that's not a possibility any more. I have also found myself in a case where music is available but not in my country. I remember a time when the only place where I found certain albums was in the german Amazon Music, but since I'm in Spain, I wasn't allowed to buy them. Gabe Newell is 100% right when he notes that piracy is a matter of convenience and not price. Some parts of the internet have certainly got worse with time and this is one of them. Bah, get off my lawn.
streamlining 5y ago
And mediafire.com was wiped of nearly everything on the same day, which was also devastating for a lot of niche music scenes that had uploaded an unprecedented amount of material there.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Game mods too.
mkl95 5y ago
I loved Megaupload and especially Mediafire. Way more straightforward than your average torrent site.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  I think those two are the only file sharing sites left from back in the day. Technically Mega.nz is new, MediaFire has kept going, a lot of forum links are still active from nearly two decades ago.
ykevinator2 5y ago
I don't understand why we taxpayers decide to pool our money to pay for a staff of employees to ensure that we can't have free music and movies. I would prefer free music and movies over more federal payroll. It's like we all pitched in to ensure Kim Kardashian can have more money.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Would you be okay if large for profit companies didn’t have to abide by open source licenses? What’s the incentive to make movies or music just to be given away for free? Would you work for free?
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I think we both agree both situation are wrong. If a company doesn't abide the OSS license of my software I need to sue. I want companies to sue me for eg. redistributing their content without permission. Not being fined by the government with my own money.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      So if a large corporation with an army of lawyers uses your open source code, how successful do you think you will be at winning the lawsuit?
  - bacchusracine 5y ago
    >Would you be okay if large for profit companies didn’t have to abide by open source licenses? Are we pretending that they all do?
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Who will pay them if no one pays for their content?
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    I would work for free if I didn't need money to get any and all things, from basic necesities to frivolous luxuries
mattmaroon 5y ago
And nobody ever pirated anything again.
kosasbest 5y ago
I refuse to invest any time, energy, or money in MEGA. The reason? The brand has reputation issues. They could've dropped `Mega` from the service's name, but determined researchers would find out it's by the MegaUpload crowd and blow the whistle on that, so there's no recourse from the raids, just tarnished reputation, encrypted files or not.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  It doesn't really unless you welcome police overreach and MPAA/RIAA bullies. Fight the power and shit.
bsedlm 5y ago
and the internet died a little bit that day, we saw a glimpse of what it could be and it was glorious... however the socio-economic and political realities disallow such a grand, free, widespread accessibility of all kinds of media.
ctippett 5y ago
My parents live relatively close to Kim’s mansion in Auckland and every now and then I’d see his car driving around (instantly recognisable with his “KIM.COM” personalised number plate). New Zealand, at least back then, wasn’t known for fast (residential) internet. I thought it amusing such a global file-sharing juggernaut was headquartered so close to home.
- rOOb85 5y ago
  If I'm remembering right, Kim spent a SHITLOAD for a fiber connection to his home. He was a huge gamer and wanted super low latency. I also remember Kim finding out he was being watched because he noticed his ping went up and traceroute showed an additional hop.
  - jamjamjamjamjam 5y ago
    That’s some poor surveillance if it’s noticeable by ping increase

150 points by raninepaths 5y ago

raninepaths 5y ago

I don't remember any direct pirate activity from megaupload.

hwers 5y ago
Huh? You were using megaupload for legitimate reasons? I would counter that I don't recall any instance of using it for non illegal downloads.
- temp8964 5y ago
  The article said there are millions of personal files in there. Whether you use it legally does not matter.
  - saurik 5y ago
    I think the point was just to fight an absolutist anecdote with another absolutist anecdote, to demonstrate how awkward they can be?
- raninepaths 5y ago
  True
- kosasbest 5y ago
  There was reports after the raids of people losing backup data. Yes, people used a cyberlocker service for backup.

azalemeth 5y ago

The successor, mega.nz, is genuinely a great service. I know doctors who use it for (legally) sending patient scans, with the key sent OOB, for example. It has a nice linux CLI, mega-cmd, and is intelligently made, cheap, and widely available.

raninepaths 5y ago
i use it as a backup tool. thier gui mega is also good.
senectus1 5y ago
yeah i love it as well. plus i can buy the premium service in BTC...
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  But why would anyone buy anything with BTC?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    But why would anyone buy anything with USD cash?
    - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
      because my 1 USA dollar is unlikely to be worth 10,000 USA dollars within a year or two. In fact, it will most likely still be worth 1 USA dollar
      - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
        My 1 bitcoin will still be worth 1 bitcoin within a year or two also.
        VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        but will the purchase power still be the same? or wildly different. you see the point
      - red369 5y ago
        Perhaps ignoring for the sake of my question, whether the demand for Bitcoin will increase enough for the price to increase 10,000 times (or perhaps people misplacing their bitcoins, anything else?)... I'm curious about your thoughts on something. If someone thought the price would go up by that much, wouldn't it make sense to put all available money into Bitcoin, except enough to make payments where only USD (or not Bitcoin) is accepted - plus some emergency fund, etc. Because they would be keeping all possible money in Bitcoin, I think it would make more sense for someone who thought it was likely Bitcoin was going to increase 10,000 times in the next year to make every possible purchase in Bitcoin. Am I missing something? Transaction fees have been 'sorted' now with other layers, right? Disclaimer: I have always been fairly skeptical of increases in cryptocurrency prices (which means I've been wrong so far), and don't see the use cases which will lead to it holding value long term. I also have some tiny amount (fraction) of Bitcoin as change from some experimentation earlier, so I suppose I would benefit greatly from a 10,000 increase. It has already increased to more than I put in to begin with I suppose, so even that small amount might earn more next year than I would from doing a day job. Editing to note: the last sentence does look a bit sarcastic, but it is meant it in friendly jest. I think long term holders of cryptocurrencies have done very well so far, so hopefully they won't grudge me thinking the huge increases sound to good to be true. Also, I see someone has noted the high fees in another comment, so perhaps this issue is not solved.

skilled 5y ago

The peak for warez communities was right around 2006. I distinctly remember how popular those forums and other sites were. There were ridiculous amounts of pirated software and media being shared, and most of that content was in fact hosted on Megaupload or RapidShare. If you knew people (from IRC) you could get invited to scene torrent sites which was a much more efficient way of getting what you want. I mean, everything posted on warez forums was coming from scene FTPs anyway, it was just a matter of who had access to them. EDIT: Hmm, this actually got me thinking. Did OVH ever get in trouble for how much illegal traffic they processed back in those days? If my memory serves, OVH was a very popular choice because of their reliable connectivity and really good upload/download speeds.

gordaco 5y ago
What I miss the most about this "peak warez" period (and most of the mid to late 00s, basically) is the huge amount of blogs uploading rare old music. During this sweet period I was able to get a lot of very rare music from all over the world (as a bouns, you could in practice guarantee that it was virus-free since unlike actual warez these files weren't executable. Yes, I know that dedicated attackers can still find a way, but for your average script kiddie it was much harder to include a trojan in an MP3). There are things that to this day I haven't been able to find on Bandcamp or on streaming services, including youtube, but which I was able to download during this small gilded age. Then again I weaned myself from streaming services (and from anything "as a service") years ago, so maybe things have changed. I also remember finding a lot of rarities in Soulseek when I had lucky days, but now there is far fewer people using it. In general direct download was so much better for this kind of content, because you only needed one contributor uploading it, and it was available for everyone. In P2P sharing you need much more luck to find someone seeding what you want. I wish finding rare music was so easy in legal ways. I just want to download DRM-free albums and I will gladly pay (nowadays I buy a lot of music from Bandcamp), but in many cases that's not a possibility any more. I have also found myself in a case where music is available but not in my country. I remember a time when the only place where I found certain albums was in the german Amazon Music, but since I'm in Spain, I wasn't allowed to buy them. Gabe Newell is 100% right when he notes that piracy is a matter of convenience and not price. Some parts of the internet have certainly got worse with time and this is one of them. Bah, get off my lawn.

streamlining 5y ago

And mediafire.com was wiped of nearly everything on the same day, which was also devastating for a lot of niche music scenes that had uploaded an unprecedented amount of material there.

_dain_ 5y ago
Game mods too.

mkl95 5y ago

I loved Megaupload and especially Mediafire. Way more straightforward than your average torrent site.

hunterb123 5y ago
I think those two are the only file sharing sites left from back in the day. Technically Mega.nz is new, MediaFire has kept going, a lot of forum links are still active from nearly two decades ago.

ykevinator2 5y ago

I don't understand why we taxpayers decide to pool our money to pay for a staff of employees to ensure that we can't have free music and movies. I would prefer free music and movies over more federal payroll. It's like we all pitched in to ensure Kim Kardashian can have more money.

scarface74 5y ago
Would you be okay if large for profit companies didn’t have to abide by open source licenses? What’s the incentive to make movies or music just to be given away for free? Would you work for free?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I think we both agree both situation are wrong. If a company doesn't abide the OSS license of my software I need to sue. I want companies to sue me for eg. redistributing their content without permission. Not being fined by the government with my own money.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    So if a large corporation with an army of lawyers uses your open source code, how successful do you think you will be at winning the lawsuit?
- bacchusracine 5y ago
  >Would you be okay if large for profit companies didn’t have to abide by open source licenses? Are we pretending that they all do?
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Who will pay them if no one pays for their content?
- bsedlm 5y ago
  I would work for free if I didn't need money to get any and all things, from basic necesities to frivolous luxuries

mattmaroon 5y ago

And nobody ever pirated anything again.

kosasbest 5y ago

I refuse to invest any time, energy, or money in MEGA. The reason? The brand has reputation issues. They could've dropped `Mega` from the service's name, but determined researchers would find out it's by the MegaUpload crowd and blow the whistle on that, so there's no recourse from the raids, just tarnished reputation, encrypted files or not.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
It doesn't really unless you welcome police overreach and MPAA/RIAA bullies. Fight the power and shit.

bsedlm 5y ago

and the internet died a little bit that day, we saw a glimpse of what it could be and it was glorious... however the socio-economic and political realities disallow such a grand, free, widespread accessibility of all kinds of media.

ctippett 5y ago

My parents live relatively close to Kim’s mansion in Auckland and every now and then I’d see his car driving around (instantly recognisable with his “KIM.COM” personalised number plate). New Zealand, at least back then, wasn’t known for fast (residential) internet. I thought it amusing such a global file-sharing juggernaut was headquartered so close to home.

rOOb85 5y ago
If I'm remembering right, Kim spent a SHITLOAD for a fiber connection to his home. He was a huge gamer and wanted super low latency. I also remember Kim finding out he was being watched because he noticed his ping went up and traceroute showed an additional hop.
- jamjamjamjamjam 5y ago
  That’s some poor surveillance if it’s noticeable by ping increase