It feels like a decade ago, but I remember the issue being with how they dealt with abuse reports. To save storage space, they matched similar files. So if two

It feels like a decade ago, but I remember the issue being with how they dealt with abuse reports. To save storage space, they matched similar files. So if two people ripped a DVD and compressed it, they would just keep one source file, and generate 2 different metadata files, to avoid wasting space. So they'd have different filenames and creation dates, but only take up half the space. Then, when one got an abuse report, they would delete that metadata, but as long as one still existed, the source data never got deleted. Law enforcement called it a conspiracy to commit crime, megaupload called it smart database deduping. It was usually much more than 2 copies, so content owners were playing endless whack—a-mole while megaupload was barely shuffling a few kilobytes around.