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Maybe this is a trick to exploit the Streisand effect? It's in such close proximity to the SOPA hearings that I'm sure it will make waves regardless. If you c

Maybe this is a trick to exploit the Streisand effect? It's in such close proximity to the SOPA hearings that I'm sure it will make waves regardless. If you can find an image of what the page looked like when initially blocked, it said "removed by UMG", using the group's initials. In the past, videos have been blocked under the name "Universal Music Group". Why the alternate name? Maybe someone other than UMG intentionally triggered this. Either to bring attention to SOPA or MegaUpload itself.

nextparadigms 15y ago
If they can already do stuff like this, the damage done under SOPA in the next few years could be unimaginable. Now I really don't want SOPA to pass, even if it has 30 "improvements"/amendments. The content owners have clearly demonstrated us that they are not responsible enough to use such power over the Internet. It confirms what I've been thinking that even though they talk high and mighty that they do care about having an equal partnership with Silicon Valley and they want to help innovation, and freedom of speech - those are just words. They really don't give a f*ck about anything else. They just want supreme power to take down anything they don't like at will. Any new music oriented site or video site that don't pay them as much as they are getting now from their most lucrative businesses per unit of content, would be shut down at launch. Why bother with new business models that could be great for the consumer, but give you less revenue, when you can just maintain the status quo? And no wonder the TV cable companies want SOPA, too. If they had it in the past Youtube wouldn't exist now, and they wouldn't have had to create Hulu, which has been mainly a painful experience for them, because they really just want people to keep watching TV. Hulu was just a reaction to Youtube.
- Silhouette 15y ago
  > The content owners have clearly demonstrated us that they are not responsible enough to use such power over the Internet. Just to play devil's advocate for a moment... OK, let's agree that some of the actions taken by the legal departments at Big Media companies have been unjustified and that at least in the US the legal system does let them get away with too much. On the other hand, what proportion of the people they go after following a hit by their automated scanning tools do you think actually were ripping them off in flagrant breach of copyright? 50%? 80%? 95%? And what proportion of content that they take down via automated notices really was infringing? Something even greater? Sure, you can say "We don't know, statistics are made up on the spot", just as you can say "You can't prove that this person was actually controlling the computer that was confirmed to be distributing infringing copies of 300 different works over the course of an entire month at this IP address that is uniquely assigned to and paid for by them where the only wireless router on the network is secured like Fort Knox and the only computer physically present on the network is their personal machine". And sometimes, maybe there will even be some justification in the argument that creates doubt. But this is mostly just lawyering of the worst kind. We all know that most of these people really are ripping off the illegal content just as they are accused of doing, and trying to weasel out of the consequences when they get caught. No-one really believes that these people are honestly sampling the material for free with the intention of immediately buying a legal copy of everything they like. No-one really believes that not a single illegal download represents a lost sale that would otherwise have been made. Now, this is not to say that, from a practical point of view, it is in the interests of Big Media to stop this copying. The economics of copyright and media distribution is a fascinating subject, and one where we don't have all the answers and understand all the interacting effects yet. And a lot of the general public simply don't understand copyright anyway, nor realise that they are doing anything illegal, so there is an education vs. legislation question here too. It is also not to say that (proposed) laws like SOPA are proportionate and fair. But the law does grant exclusive rights to media content, which a significant proportion of the general public apparently feel free to trample on at will, certainly with a possibility that they are costing those media rightsholders a substantial amount of money. If we don't like this situation, we should restructure or remove the underlying copyright in law, not lead an uphill charge against heavy-handed enforcement of rights that have not been well protected by the more gentle approach taken so far.
  - pyre 15y ago
    > But the law does grant exclusive rights to media > content I'm thinking that people here are of the mind that the law needs to change. "The Law" isn't an absolute moral high ground.
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      Oh, I totally agree that the law needs to change. Copyright has been distorted from its original purpose, and until it's restored to a more reasonable balance it will never command popular respect. However, I can't help wondering where all these well-funded anti-SOPA lobbyists are when it comes to proposing changing the underlying system, rather than the half-baked non-solution of campaigning to prevent current legal rights from being effectively enforced. Something is backwards in this whole debate.
      - pyre 15y ago
        SOPA is so far out there that companies that wouldn't normally be worrying about lobbying/campaigning are forced to, because to just wait for SOPA to pass would be suicide.
  - danmaz74 15y ago
    The whole argument here is that UMG in this case DID NOT hold any rights to the content they took down. They just didn't like it.
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      I understand that, but there seems to be some doubt about whether they legally compelled YouTube to take it down or simply asked nicely via some pre-arranged deal with Google. If it's the latter, then perhaps any secondary criticism should be directed at Google for entering into such an agreement rather than at a legal system that wasn't used here anyway. I think my general point is that while SOPA is obviously a crazy idea and Big Media obviously do go too far at times, we should be careful to choose the focus of our criticism correctly.

nextparadigms 15y ago

If they can already do stuff like this, the damage done under SOPA in the next few years could be unimaginable. Now I really don't want SOPA to pass, even if it has 30 "improvements"/amendments. The content owners have clearly demonstrated us that they are not responsible enough to use such power over the Internet. It confirms what I've been thinking that even though they talk high and mighty that they do care about having an equal partnership with Silicon Valley and they want to help innovation, and freedom of speech - those are just words. They really don't give a f*ck about anything else. They just want supreme power to take down anything they don't like at will. Any new music oriented site or video site that don't pay them as much as they are getting now from their most lucrative businesses per unit of content, would be shut down at launch. Why bother with new business models that could be great for the consumer, but give you less revenue, when you can just maintain the status quo? And no wonder the TV cable companies want SOPA, too. If they had it in the past Youtube wouldn't exist now, and they wouldn't have had to create Hulu, which has been mainly a painful experience for them, because they really just want people to keep watching TV. Hulu was just a reaction to Youtube.

Silhouette 15y ago
> The content owners have clearly demonstrated us that they are not responsible enough to use such power over the Internet. Just to play devil's advocate for a moment... OK, let's agree that some of the actions taken by the legal departments at Big Media companies have been unjustified and that at least in the US the legal system does let them get away with too much. On the other hand, what proportion of the people they go after following a hit by their automated scanning tools do you think actually were ripping them off in flagrant breach of copyright? 50%? 80%? 95%? And what proportion of content that they take down via automated notices really was infringing? Something even greater? Sure, you can say "We don't know, statistics are made up on the spot", just as you can say "You can't prove that this person was actually controlling the computer that was confirmed to be distributing infringing copies of 300 different works over the course of an entire month at this IP address that is uniquely assigned to and paid for by them where the only wireless router on the network is secured like Fort Knox and the only computer physically present on the network is their personal machine". And sometimes, maybe there will even be some justification in the argument that creates doubt. But this is mostly just lawyering of the worst kind. We all know that most of these people really are ripping off the illegal content just as they are accused of doing, and trying to weasel out of the consequences when they get caught. No-one really believes that these people are honestly sampling the material for free with the intention of immediately buying a legal copy of everything they like. No-one really believes that not a single illegal download represents a lost sale that would otherwise have been made. Now, this is not to say that, from a practical point of view, it is in the interests of Big Media to stop this copying. The economics of copyright and media distribution is a fascinating subject, and one where we don't have all the answers and understand all the interacting effects yet. And a lot of the general public simply don't understand copyright anyway, nor realise that they are doing anything illegal, so there is an education vs. legislation question here too. It is also not to say that (proposed) laws like SOPA are proportionate and fair. But the law does grant exclusive rights to media content, which a significant proportion of the general public apparently feel free to trample on at will, certainly with a possibility that they are costing those media rightsholders a substantial amount of money. If we don't like this situation, we should restructure or remove the underlying copyright in law, not lead an uphill charge against heavy-handed enforcement of rights that have not been well protected by the more gentle approach taken so far.
- pyre 15y ago
  > But the law does grant exclusive rights to media > content I'm thinking that people here are of the mind that the law needs to change. "The Law" isn't an absolute moral high ground.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    Oh, I totally agree that the law needs to change. Copyright has been distorted from its original purpose, and until it's restored to a more reasonable balance it will never command popular respect. However, I can't help wondering where all these well-funded anti-SOPA lobbyists are when it comes to proposing changing the underlying system, rather than the half-baked non-solution of campaigning to prevent current legal rights from being effectively enforced. Something is backwards in this whole debate.
    - pyre 15y ago
      SOPA is so far out there that companies that wouldn't normally be worrying about lobbying/campaigning are forced to, because to just wait for SOPA to pass would be suicide.
- danmaz74 15y ago
  The whole argument here is that UMG in this case DID NOT hold any rights to the content they took down. They just didn't like it.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    I understand that, but there seems to be some doubt about whether they legally compelled YouTube to take it down or simply asked nicely via some pre-arranged deal with Google. If it's the latter, then perhaps any secondary criticism should be directed at Google for entering into such an agreement rather than at a legal system that wasn't used here anyway. I think my general point is that while SOPA is obviously a crazy idea and Big Media obviously do go too far at times, we should be careful to choose the focus of our criticism correctly.