FBI anti Piracy

Megaupload Data Could Be Erased This Week

All the data on Megaupload – legal or illegal – could be erased as soon as Thursday, Feb. 2, the Associated Press reports.

The file storage website hires outside companies – Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc – to store its users’ data.

Since Megaupload’s assets have been frozen, the service cannot pay the hosting companies to keep hosting the data. According to a letter by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, filed in the case Friday, Jan 27, they could begin deleting data Thursday.

continue reading

Internet strikes back: Anonymous' Operation Megaupload explained

Federal agents executed a crackdown on the files sharing website Megaupload on Thursday. The response, you could say, was not minor.
Authorities attest that Megaupload, at one point the fifteenth most popular site on the Web, was guilty of costing copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues because users of the service can easily and freely upload and distribute pirated material. Four people were arrested in New Zealand Thursday as part of the sting, which also yielded the site going offline.
Given that Megaupload boasts an audience of 500 million users daily, a reaction was expected. Only minutes after the Web began digesting the news, that response came by way of thousands of upset users, many aligned to the online collective Anonymous.

continue reading