Universal Music Group thinks this song should be banned!

[evilstebunny]

A week ago today, Megaupload’s now-famous Mega Song was on its way to becoming a viral hit, only to be cut down from YouTube by a Universal Music takedown demand. Following the filing of a Megaupload lawsuit the song is back online, but Universal are standing firm. You can’t touch us on DMCA grounds, the label says in a new filing, adding it can take down any material, even if it doesn’t infringe their rights.

But while one might naturally expect that UMG made a legitimate DMCA takedown complaint (and one that has legal implications should it be wrongfully made) Universal insists that was never necessary.

What that means, in case the preceding paragraph wasn’t clear enough, is that UMG has a private outside-the-DMCA agreement with YouTube that it can take down other people’s content from YouTube even when it doesn’t infringe their copyrights.

Apparently fighting for their rights while trampling on those of others. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we should all flip the media companies the bird.

[Garyvdh]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/97558/a...eropaid.com%29

While over one hundred thousand websites and millions of people were taking a stand against a potential American censorship by copyright regime thanks to SOPA and PIPA, ZeroPaid’s very own Drew Wilson, for the first time, has officially become a victim of censorship by copyright.

The BBC is reporting that one-click hoster MegaUpload was shut down over piracy accusations. From the report:

Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material.

Investigators denied a link to recent protests against proposed piracy laws, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The US Justice Department said that Megaupload’s two co-founders Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand along with two other employees of the business at the request of US officials. It added that three other defendants were still at large.

“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime,” said a statement posted on its website.

Back in 2010, when authorities and the content industries were trying to cut off payment processes to MegaUpload, MegaUpload spoke to ZeroPaid, saying in response to being called a rogue website, “Megaupload is a legitimate business operating within the boundaries of the law. In five years of operation we have not been sued by a single content owner. If the RIAA or MPAA would have legal grounds they would have taken us to court by now. We suggest that they attack us within the legal system and stop labeling us until they have something to show.”

That apparently doesn’t seem to matter much at this point with the owners of the site being arrested and the website forced offline. The question is, where does that leave MegaUpload’s users?

I, for one, have used MegaUpload to spread my music around. Under my DJ name, DJ Frozen IceCube, I’ve used the site on numerous occasions to allow access to my own personal music I’ve made. Examples of this include my tracks Kinda Distracted, Phantoms of London and Constructing Light. All of these tracks and more were posted to MegaUpload – a site now shut down by American prosecutors.

For years, I have been following cases of censorship by copyright. I’ve advocated that copyright abuses are a major problem that shouldn’t be ignored. Now, as of today, I am officially a victim of censorship by copyright. While I can easily find other one-click hosters to host my music, that does not fix the underlying issue I now have with American authorities. American authorities, plain and simple, are censoring artists who have legally produced and uploaded their music for free for others to listen to. This action is blatantly anti-competitive in that if I independently upload my music, I am under the threat of having my music censored under the guise of copyright infringement.

Make no mistake, I am far from the first victim and I certainly will not be the last. The content industry will not stop censoring legitimate free speech until the competition is strangled and destroyed and only they have the exclusive power to decide who can reach an audience and who can not. To add insult to injury, they will use government resources, and therefore, taxpayers money, to push their anti-competitive agenda.

I am Drew Wilson, I am a reporter and music producer, and I am now officially a victim of America’s censorship by copyright tactics.

[The_Omlette]

Its on like a scone..!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80I24220120120

[porchrat]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/97558/a...eropaid.com%29

The guy demonstrates his point well here. I am not for a moment going to pretend that these file sharing sites aren't used to distribute copyrighted material. However what about the rights of those that use these sites for legitimate sharing of files that don't violate copyrights?

Is it right to punish everyone for the crimes of others? It may certainly be practical but if practicality were what we were after we would solve the problem of our growing population with mandatory sterilisation after the first kid.

Surely the fault lies with the individuals distributing these things and not the sites that cannot possibly hope to effectively police the unfathomable amounts of information for which they facilitate sharing.

[Garyvdh]

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/the_..._press_release

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for
the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person
to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures
in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call
Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.
There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like
Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they
circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works,
without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the
studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being
able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.
If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing
other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the
rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow
people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take
over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It's all based on the fact that we're competition.
We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the
USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:
The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.
They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with
trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that
you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the
hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to
mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're
creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls
become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching
movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones
is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had
no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy
in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more
honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information
when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

[cpu.]

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information
when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

I use noscript to block Javascript and didn't even know Wikipedia was down until reading it here (mybb).

[Garyvdh]

http://activepolitic.com:82/News/201...l_Lawsuit.html

While Being Held without Bail, Megaupload drops Universal Lawsuit!

Not so long ago, a legal video was taken down by repetitive DMCA requests to youtube, which most people believe was a fraudulent DMCA order. In response, megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal Music. This past week, megaupload was raided by US authorities and forced offline, which is costing megaupload millions of dollars in damage. They are being held without bail, even members of the site that had no leadership position... like the graphic designer.

What's even stranger is that the US doj lists a bunch of charges which appear to paint a conspiracy to the mainstream US media, but involve many accusations of things that aren't actually illegal. Many of the accusations have already been found legal in US courts and are standard and common practices across the internet. Being as how strange this case is already, today (possibly under duress) megaupload has mysteriously dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music. It leaves me to wonder what this trial is really all about.

[Garyvdh]