Oh, I didn't realize Megaupload had a guarantee of service, or that the police are mandated by law to execute a shady business's warranty.
[News] Anon goes to war.
- Thread starter Dave
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All I am saying is you can't use that to argue this type of situation, much like you can't argue copyright violations as "theft". Nothing wrong with stopping shady businesses, as long as you protect the people who are affected by said business. I will never stand by the idea that should the government decide to shutter a business, that those utilizing it for legal reasons are "shit out of luck" when something they own is tied up in it. It is that passive, "this does not affect me, why should I care?" nature that bothers me the most.
Again, this is not the servers breaking down in a freak accident. This is the feds making a conscious choice to shutter service regardless of legal users, with servers and an infrastructure already there to provide said users to reclaim what they put up.
How do the police do that in this case?
Imagine a storage facility the size of texas, where millions of people go in and out of the gates daily, and it stores billions of their items.
Not only do the police find out that criminals are using the facility, but those who own and operate the facility work with the criminals - paying them off, giving them special treatment, and making money by charging each person who goes through the gates to visit the criminals.
The owners are running an enterprise that not only facilitates criminal activity, but they are profiting off it, and altering their services to make it easier for the criminals. They are acting as brokers between the criminals and their clients, and skimming a bit off each "sale".
The police recognize that there are millions of legitimate users. But there is simply no way to leave the facility open without also leaving most of the criminal activity intact. They can't staff enough guards to manage millions of people trafficking in items each day.
Further, the business is so highly technical and secure that they don't even have a chance of keeping it up and running without the help of the criminals who run it. At best some user might be able to get some data, but that's not even likely if the owners don't give them information on running the place.
We could extend the dry cleaner analogy similarly - the ticket system is contained on an encrypted computer, and there are billions of clothes hung up, each with a number. Without the owner's help, there's no way for the police to get into the computer and figure out who owns what, and that doesn't even account for the fact that well over half the clothes in the cleaners were obtained fraudulently, so they have to also figure out who is a real customer, and who is criminal as people come by to pick up their stuff.
The only solution is to not prosecute them, which is I guess what you're arguing for. Or to give them advance notice. "hey, we're taking you guy down next week, please notify your customers - but not the criminals - that they need to get their stuff off now."
I think you're expectations are off base and unrealistic.
They leave the website up for a certain amount of time after arresting the criminals, with notice saying to download any important data before a certain date, at which all items left on the servers will be purged. How is that hard? They don't even need to alter the website if it really bothered them, just have one of the honest webmasters (again, there were more then the ones arrested, and they are not going after all of them because they have no evidence they took part in the criminal side of the operation) keep it up for a bit longer.
The issue is you keep assuming they need to find the fraudulent files. They don't. 90% or more of the files that are likely fraudulent on Megaupload are going to be uploaded by the same people on different websites already, or through torrents. Keeping the website up for a period, with a notice (and possibly disabled sharing, which is possible) will giving people enough time to get items. Will some pirates get a few fraudulent materials in the time also? Yes, but the likelihood they have those fradulent materials in hundreds of other locations is higher then the chance one of them would need a small window to reclaim those files over a legit user.
This is the issue the government has with carrying out these types of raids. They have zero understanding of the people that take part in these things, and thus the assumption is "guilty" under all circumstances.
Not prosecute who? The criminals are already arrested. That has no baring on the website as a whole. The website had more webmasters then the people arrested. Do you mean persecuting the pirates who use the website? That was not going to happen anyways.
And I think you don't seem to understand all the angles of the process, we can all make assumptions.
S
SeraRelm
I don't doubt it, and I'm not saying you shouldn't feel upset, I just don't feel as riled up, which is all I was trying to say.
To be honest, I don't think it was that good. It was close, but leaves out some of the most important facts. For instance, let's say such a place did exist. Would anyone in the system legally allow said location to be razed to the ground after such protest by those that utilized the facility correctly? Would "destruction" of items be a valid outcome for such an action? Not just detention, but destruction.
Example. If the government learned that CitiBank was actually promoting the usage of criminal empires to embezzle money and assets for criminal gain. Obviously, CitiBank has a lot of accounts, both valid and illegal. Would the right action in this be to obliterate all money owned by CitiBank, freezing all assents and not being "responsible" for the return of people's money since it would take too long to figure out the valid accounts from the false ones?
It's a slippery argument.
GasBandit
Staff member
Torrents have never let me down. Seedboxing 4-eva.
I am surprised torrents are not used more often for sharing purposes outside of piracy. They can be rather efficient, and let people work for you through seeding, rather then relying on an outside server. I think the system itself just has a bad rap.
GasBandit
Staff member
It's been a while since I was a subscriber, but if memory serves WOW and some other MMOs actually use thinly disguised bittorrent clients to distribute patches. It definitely has legitimate uses.
Added at: 14:17
Only once have I looked for something old that I couldn't find on demonoid. It was some old movie I don't even recall the name of now, so I guess it wasn't all that important.
Yes that is true. Pretty sure the system they use now with the launcher still utilizes bittorrent. I found it a rather nice method to distribute the patches.
ElJuski
Staff member
~The Internet
How can one say no to MC Double Def DP?
Totally nostalgia'd...
GasBandit
Staff member
Heh, I ran an FTP site for a warez channel back in 98 on a T1 line.. remember when 1.5mbit was mindblowing?
Man, the 90's called.. they want their tech back. *laughs*
GasBandit
Staff member
"Dude. Dude. Dude.. listen... I can download that whole game. See, CLASS ripped out all the movie cutscenes and recompressed all the audio to 22khz, so now it's only like 132 megs instead of 450. On the T1, that's just... like... 20 minutes tops, assuming we find a good source. Now hang on while I overclock my Celeron 333a to 500 megahertz, and then find some new VESA drivers for my video card."
Man, those were the days.
Gonna have to see if I can sneak DOSbox on this computer...
ElJuski
Staff member
Is it?
Arresting a bunch of murderers isn't gonna stop murder forever. But it will keep those murderers from doing it. That's how it works.
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