A different dotcom bust: copyright infringement

Following the arrests of Megaupload.com’s CEO, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), and several top-level employees, the Internet can bid goodbye to the popular file-sharing website and its affiliates, including MegaVideo.com.

The laundry list of charges against Dotcom and his associates, who were arrested through a joint effort of New Zealand authorities and the FBI, is posted for all to see on the former file-sharing site’s page: conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering and criminal copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement is a serious issue. Hopefully, now that the government is taking action against sites that enable it, other file-sharing sites will be stricter about monitoring their content.

As an online file storage provider, Megaupload allowed users to host their files online and share them with others (or not, if they so chose). Countless other sites operate on this model including Dropbox, RapidShare and MediaFire.

Chances are, if you’re a frequent Internet user, you’ve probably used one of these services before. Last month alone, these four websites got about 100 million combined hits from visitors.

File-hosting services are not inherently bad. When used legitimately, they are quite useful. For instance, I have used Dropbox to share files between my computer and my smartphone. It is indeed regrettable that Megaupload users who were not using the website to share copyrighted materials were caught in the crossfire between Dotcom and the law.

But in this case, the government made the right call.

Unlike RapidShare, MediaFire and Dropbox, Megaupload refused to remove copyrighted content when asked; it only removed some links to the material, while still keeping the file available for download. It is this refusal to cooperate, not the service it provided, which led to its demise.

Employees themselves also uploaded and downloaded copyrighted TV shows and music. In fact, Dotcom and his fellow defendants even explicitly discussed evasion and infringement issues when they ambitiously tried to copy and upload the entire content of YouTube.

Given its timing, it is tempting to associate the takedown with the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the recently tabled copyright protection bills. However, SOPA and PIPA would have given the U.S. Department of Justice permission to put any website suspected of copyright infringement on a blacklist, as well as the power to prosecute websites which even dared to link to the blacklisted sites. Megaupload was not merely suspected of copyright infringement; it was actively supporting it.

The shutdown may seem like an overreaction, but this is exactly the type of dramatic move we need to get file-sharing and hosting websites to spring into action.

Thanks to this event, it is now possible to envision a world where the creators get due credit and compensation for their work, thereby increasing their incentive to do what they do best: create.

Email Mirea at

nmirea@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu or tweet at us @DBopinion.

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