The Fall Of Megaupload (Part One)

The internet was designed under the intent that users would BOTH send and receive bits of information, especially in the early days where computers were multi-million dollar machines.  There was no hierarchy, and no one was in control.  Much to the dismay of the World Trade Organization (WTO) such is still the case as net neutrality has remained relatively intact despite the efforts of governments such as the United States to influence the global network otherwise.  Historically, sites including The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, Megaupload and Limewire have taken this maxim of the world wide web and extrapolated it into both cloud-based sharing and peer to peer file sharing services.

Ever since the seizure of Napster in 2001, there has been a never-ending quest to protect copyright holders' rights to distribute and monetize their own content.  More recently, Megaupload, the brainchild of Kim Dotcom, was seized in 2012.  The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) along with the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) worked in cohorts to take down the site; alleging that Megaupload was costing copyright holders an estimated $500 million in revenue.  Shocking, that a large industry headed by media moguls, who are in bed with both sides of the political isle, would be able to effectively enact a swift strike to the free information enterprise.

(MPAA Logo)

My concern is largely out of the premise in which Megaupload was able to be shutdown.  The indictment of the site as a criminal enterprise seems a bit discontinuous to me, as the site itself was structured in a rather logical frame for any public file-sharing site to be constructed.  Was Kim Dotcom punished for his genius?  What right did the United States have in policing a company based in Hong Kong?  And what does all of this mean for the larger context of cloud-based and peer to peer file sharing giants in regard to indictment?  Stay tuned for part two for my musings on the issue.  Fair warning: it's going to get philosophical pretty quickly, so tighten your seat belts.