Mega audacious

December 9, 2011 1:29 PM

MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. TorrentFreak caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid. “It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads coming from Megaclick, our ad network,” says Kim. “This way we will generate enough ad revenue to provide free premium services and licensed content so that our users can have it for free.”
posted by finite (73 comments total)

It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads

*facepalm*
posted by burnmp3s at 1:37 PM on December 9, 2011 [16 favorites]

Wow, was that song ever awful.
posted by utsutsu at 1:38 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Although I don't think that somebody named "burnmp3s" is necessarily the best public spokesman for that comment, I agree entirely with the sentiment.
posted by Stagger Lee at 1:38 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads coming from Megaclick, our ad network

I assume Kim was reached for comment at a secret headquarters on a remote volcanic island, 'cause that's one evil genius super-villain idea.
posted by Zed at 1:43 PM on December 9, 2011

Coming soon: John Legend, Wiz Khalifa, Ray J, Rashida Jones, Wladimir Klitschko, Carrot Top, and Trey Stone sing a song about RapidShare.
posted by Copronymus at 1:44 PM on December 9, 2011 [6 favorites]

Muahahahaha, she added.
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:44 PM on December 9, 2011

This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that.
posted by p3on at 1:48 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wait, people use that website for something other than hosting sketchy porn? I had literally no idea.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:49 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Cute. I've never used megaupload, but I've used ifile.it for sending stuff to parents, or other people who don't understand instant messaging. Email attachments cannot exceed 10megs, sadly.

There are two recent more unambiguously pro-file-sharing posts on torrentfreak, Swiss government decides downloading movies and music will stay legal, and Canadian songwriters want to legalize file-sharing, along with the usual corruption and scandals by the anti-piracy crowd.

Also, MafiAA Fire released a FireFox plugin called The Pirate Bay Dancing which circumvents national DNS and IP Blockades.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:49 PM on December 9, 2011 [5 favorites]

As I've said previously:

Discerning music pirates choose MegaUpload. Generous file sizes, no captchas, no waiting period between downloads.

Make Mine MegaUpload™
posted by Trurl at 1:51 PM on December 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

I use Megaupload frequently for non-pirate related reasons. Largely, those described here.

Doing this kind of seemingly basic thing is surprisingly difficult with "non-internet" people, but mega+its clones makes it simple within a certain filesize.
posted by Winnemac at 1:58 PM on December 9, 2011

Just fyi, all these bitlocker sites actually block content by hash if the copyright owner asks them nicely to do so, meaning that pirates must either encrypt or alter the file next time they upload it.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:00 PM on December 9, 2011

Wow, they blocked that video really quick. A pity - I kind of wanted to see it.
posted by koeselitz at 2:18 PM on December 9, 2011

Here is another copy of the song on YouTube. I didn't realize the version I put in the fpp wasn't the official copy; that can be seen under the "Mega song" button on megaupload.com.
posted by finite at 2:21 PM on December 9, 2011

Alternate Youtube links, for however long they last: 1, 2

this song really is awful
posted by koeselitz at 2:23 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

oh, I get it. thanks, finite.
posted by koeselitz at 2:24 PM on December 9, 2011

Hmm, that second one koeselitz found was uploaded by YouTube user MrKimDotcom (account created in September). Maybe it's actually his? Asking mods to put that link in the fpp.
posted by finite at 2:28 PM on December 9, 2011

[Updated link. ]
posted by restless_nomad at 2:31 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hmmm, I beginning to find myself glad I didn't buy a MU premium account recently.
posted by wierdo at 2:40 PM on December 9, 2011

Wow, with 3 or 4 very notable exceptions, the people in the tag list on this post is like my own personal pop culture version of Nixon's Enemies List.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:45 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites

I jack all kinds of shit off MegaUpload for free, isn't this pretty much true? I mean they paid these celebrities to be in their commercial, I wouldn't think any of these guys actually endorse the kind of rampant piracy MegaUpload is used for.
posted by Hoopo at 2:47 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow, each copy of that video being put on Youtube is being blocked by UMG or IFPI. Do they actually have any copyright claim to the video? I doubt it.
posted by zsazsa at 2:50 PM on December 9, 2011

Remember, kids, copyright infringement is a terrible, terrible crime. As @sschillace on Twitter points out:

Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the doctor who killed him.

posted by Malor at 2:58 PM on December 9, 2011 [21 favorites]

Wow, with 3 or 4 very notable exceptions, the people in the tag list on this post is like my own personal pop culture version of Nixon's Enemies List.

Me too since Brett Ratner is on there twice.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 3:04 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have the opposite reaction to seeing Mary J. Blige. (Though Mary J. Blidge I have had just about enough of.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:18 PM on December 9, 2011

What happened to you, RapidShare?

You used to be about the music.
posted by Trurl at 3:38 PM on December 9, 2011

Seems like al the YouTube versions of the song have been taken down.
posted by birdherder at 3:41 PM on December 9, 2011

Al and the Youtube Versions sounds like an awesome band name.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 3:46 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

zsazsa: Wow, each copy of that video being put on Youtube is being blocked by UMG or IFPI. Do they actually have any copyright claim to the video? I doubt it.

No, they don't.

So did Universal have any right at all to issue YouTube with a takedown notice? Uncleared samples, anything?

“Mega owns everything in this video. And we have signed agreements with every featured artist for this campaign,” Kim told TorrentFreak.

“UMG did something illegal and unfair by reporting Mega’s content to be infringing. They had no right to do that. We reserve our rights to take legal action. But we’d like to give them the opportunity to apologize.”

“UMG is such a rogue label,” Kim added, wholly appreciating the irony.

posted by gilrain at 4:17 PM on December 9, 2011 [8 favorites]

Hmm, if that links is really being deleted over b.s. copyright complaints that's actually somewhat disturbing. It shows what a post SOPA internet would be like, where corporations can easily censor speech by making spurious copyright claims. SOPA and the other bills would make the entire DNS system work like youtube: One complaint and an entire site could be censored (plus, censorship at the ISP level for foreign sites)

If UMG is willing to take down some bullshit song about MegaUpload, I'm sure a company would have no problems making a claim against, for example, Wikileaks or other sites exposing wrongdoing by making these claims as well knocking them off the internet or censoring them from American internet users.
posted by delmoi at 4:38 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

delmoi: Hmm, if that links is really being deleted over b.s. copyright complaints that's actually somewhat disturbing. It shows what a post SOPA internet would be like, where corporations can easily censor speech by making spurious copyright claims.

Oh, indeed! It already happens fairly frequently, even if just by accident, and it would only get worse.
posted by gilrain at 4:42 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow that song is really terrible.
posted by delmoi at 4:42 PM on December 9, 2011

And that's the way things work now. Anything with any content one of a few big corporations do not like will be falsely declared a "copyright infringement" and wiped off the face of the Internet. Of course, UMG may actually have a valid position. Any of the artists who are signed with one of its labels may have a poison pill in their contract granting UMG First Refusal Rights to anything that comes out of their mouths.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:43 PM on December 9, 2011

There are penalties for filing false DMCA notices, but they're damned hard to get. Diebold did get hit for doing that, but that took years.

Mega upload does have legitimate purposes; I regularly download my custom android roms from there, along with similar sites. When you're distributing files that you want to do new versions of - and they're 250 MB a pop - the cyber locker sites are an excellent free solution for all involved, especially as the best roms can see 10s of thousands of downloads in a short space of time.

Sure, there's paid hosting, but for a site like xda-developers, hosting development for dozens of active devices, with multiple rom cookers on the go per sevice, the costs would be rediculous.

The same goes for many mods for pc games; why pay for hosting, when your users can pay for it via ads on a cyberlocker.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:45 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

delmoi: Wow that song is really terrible.

I've refrained from listening, under that assumption. It's a damn smart move by MegaUpload, though. It was already trending, and now that UMG is heavy-handedly trying to censor it with little or no right to do so, it'll only stir up more goodwill and support for Mega. They must be throwing a party.
posted by gilrain at 4:46 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

ArkhanJG: There are penalties for filing false DMCA notices, but they're damned hard to get. Diebold did get hit for doing that, but that took years.

Trouble is, you need corporate amounts of money to make any headway on that. Mega can probably front that kind of money, but individuals or small groups? Ha.

Mega upload does have legitimate purposes; I regularly download my custom android roms from there, along with similar sites.

I get a lot of legitimate game mods and whatnot, from there. In fact, I never use those sites for non-legitimate reasons. I'm sure many, many do, but... there are better ways to pirate your stuff, if you're so inclined.
posted by gilrain at 4:48 PM on December 9, 2011

MegaVideo's tendency to interrupt TNG right in the middle of the episode with its "that's enough streaming for today, pal" notices put the site permanently on my bad list. Fortunately Netflix picked up the slack as a perfect replacement. Also, from this day forward, you are all to refer to me as The Winsome Parker Dotcodotyookay. That's all.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 4:48 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow, that was a major brainfart. MegaVideo's completely unaffiliated with MegaUpload. I'm out.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 4:50 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

The Winsome Parker Lewis: Wow, that was a major brainfart. MegaVideo's completely unaffiliated with MegaUpload. I'm out.

Wait, don't go! Have you heard Google's getting into the porn game? It's called YouPorn! True fact!
posted by gilrain at 4:51 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

ArkhanJG: Paid hosting can be really cheap though. If I have to send a large file now I'd probably use S3. If you have a large file to send you can actually have S3 act as a bittorent seed. To reduce your costs even farther. If you have a huge number of people you want to distribute too, I guess it could be kind of expensive.
posted by delmoi at 4:56 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Megaupload and Megavideo are indeed affiliated.
posted by maqsarian at 4:59 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh. Thanks, maqsarian, for making me feel less stupid. I still think I'd better stick to threads I know a thing or two about. ;-)
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 5:02 PM on December 9, 2011

maqsarian: Megaupload and Megavideo are indeed affiliated.

Well, now I look a bit silly. Sorry, Winsome!

But feel free to research my helpful tip at your leisure anyway, if you like.
posted by gilrain at 5:03 PM on December 9, 2011

I still think I'd better stick to threads I know a thing or two about.

Why should you be the first?
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:09 PM on December 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Is this video hosted anyplace else? Megaupload perhaps? ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 6:23 PM on December 9, 2011

That was not a song, that was a painfully long advertising jingle.
posted by speicus at 6:30 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

I jack all kinds of shit off MegaUpload for free, isn't this pretty much true?

"Rogue site" is a problematic term, conflating in a single phrase people like The Pirate Bay with people like Al-Qaeda. I'm sure there are people who'd lump in Occupy Wall Street's site too if they thought they could get away with it. Look, they're supporting law-breaking!

Isn't MegaUpload one of those sites that throws up all kinds of stupid gimmick restrictions in an attempt to annoy you into getting a premium account? "Slow download speed as depicted by our speedometer gif! Wait 45 seconds before the download link appears! Click through three pages to get to the actual download page! Dodge huge ad banners with big green button marked DOWNLOAD while searching for the tiny text link! Dance, monkey, dance!"
posted by JHarris at 7:15 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is this video hosted anyplace else? Megaupload perhaps? ;)

Naturally, it's on Megavideo, yeah. Here you go.
posted by maqsarian at 7:42 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

how does Megaupload (and all those other DL sites like Filesonic and Filejungle and Filepost and Sendspace and Mediafire and Wupload and a hundred others I'm forgetting) make money? Doesn't all the bandwidth they use cost money? Is whatever their ad revenue is more than the cost of letting all those people download stuff constantly?
posted by monkeymike at 7:54 PM on December 9, 2011

Aside from using it to watch the occasional TV show (the mirror I tend to use now is called VideoWeed, its logo is a pot leaf and I find this hilarious), the main reason I'm thankful MegaVideo exists is because I had been searching for a video of Cavil's speech about not wanting to be human from BSG, mostly on YouTube, with no luck. But via Google I ended up finding a blog post with a transcript of it, and in the comments of that post was a link! I had seriously been looking for it for like a month, and I guess over a year ago someone uploaded it to MegaVideo. The YouTube alternative is some guy without a shirt reciting it very poorly. That is if you don't want the Italian version.

Thanks MegaVideo and whoever uploaded it!
posted by palidor at 8:52 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

JHarris: Isn't MegaUpload one of those sites that throws up all kinds of stupid gimmick restrictions in an attempt to annoy you into getting a premium account? "Slow download speed as depicted by our speedometer gif! Wait 45 seconds before the download link appears! Click through three pages to get to the actual download page! Dodge huge ad banners with big green button marked DOWNLOAD while searching for the tiny text link! Dance, monkey, dance!"

monkeymike: how does Megaupload (and all those other DL sites like Filesonic and Filejungle and Filepost and Sendspace and Mediafire and Wupload and a hundred others I'm forgetting) make money? Doesn't all the bandwidth they use cost money? Is whatever their ad revenue is more than the cost of letting all those people download stuff constantly?

You two guys should talk.
posted by Arandia at 9:33 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

delmoi wrote: Wow that song is really terrible

It would make a fine jingle for a 30 to 60 second ad. As an over four minute piece of music, not so much. It would help if there were more than two lines of lyrics repeated over and over again in different ways.
posted by wierdo at 9:56 PM on December 9, 2011

I should note that MU is by far the best of them as far as being not-terribly-annoying. The wait is predictable and there's an XBMC plugin that means I see nothing but a countdown timer if I'm watching a video hosted there. The download limit is generous enough to get at least 8 hours of SD video a day even on a free account, and I've never had it crap out in the middle.

I think I can only watch 3-4 hours of HD video before they cut me off, though. I haven't found the exact limits. I don't care nearly enough.

And yes, I download all kinds of legitimate files from there, not just TV shows I can't get in the US at any price.
posted by wierdo at 10:01 PM on December 9, 2011

Boingboing has shared some interesting comments re Clinton's new 'hands off the Internet' speech, Dajaz1.com and SOPA.

One purpose of SOPA, of course, is to help the music industry hold onto as much power as possible for *their* artists. SOPA's problem is: will the rest of the world play along. Now: what do the artists in the video know?
posted by Twang at 10:44 PM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Huh. I had no idea that Kimble aka Kim Dotcom aka Kim Schmitz was behind the mega* sites.

Whadda maroon.
posted by syzygy at 11:57 PM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

how does Megaupload (and all those other DL sites like Filesonic and Filejungle and Filepost and Sendspace and Mediafire and Wupload and a hundred others I'm forgetting) make money?

They offer an all-you-can-eat movie/TV buffet for 60 €/year, in all languages, without delays, "region" silliness or DRM. This is something people are willing to pay for. When the French government went after bittorent users with the HADOPI law, users moved in droves to DDL/streaming: French users of Megaupload went from 350000 in 2008 to 7.4 million late 2010. This caused a national traffic surge, and when Orange (the main French ISP) was suspected of throttling MU traffic, Orange users complained loudly and Megaupload put up a banner urging them to switch to other ISPs: a few weeks later, MU traffic was no longer throttled (go figure). Kim Schmitz and co will probably send Sarkozy a nice Thank You card this Christmas, made of pure gold and wrapped in 500 € bills. DDL is big money, enough to hire lawyers... and even to start paying artists. There's a complete disconnect between content producers (and the governments who support them) and what's actually going on right now.
posted by elgilito at 3:55 AM on December 10, 2011 [7 favorites]

There is another distribution model raring to go even if big content lobby restricts the bitlocker sites. As a rule, all modern cloud storage services exploit data deduplication that lets you acquire data merely by knowing its hash signature. Forget downloading, simply build your "To Watch/Listen" list using commands like "dropship http://.../metallica_discography.json" that makes data appear inside your filesystem instantaneously, ready for streaming, but never downloaded until actually played.

In theory, content providers might identify hash keys for pirated content to issue takedown requests. Yet removal goes beyond slowing distribution, instead actually erasing content from listeners "To Consume" list, effectively undoing whatever publicity placed it there.

"Are you interested in the Metallica concert?"   "I donno maybe, maybe not, sounds overpriced. I stopped listening to them a few years ago, not sure why, never acquired a taste for their new stuff."

There isn't any meaningful encryption in DropBox, SkyDrive iCloud, etc. of course, but some providers like SpiderOak or Wuala offer sensible deduplicated encryption, complicating identifying content further.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:06 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Discerning music pirates choose MegaUpload. Generous file sizes, no captchas, no waiting period between downloads.

Yeah, and no parallel downloads for regular users. I'll stick with Mediafire, thanks.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:52 AM on December 10, 2011

Not to mention sometimes they accuse me of having parallel downloads when I don't, like on a public wifi.
posted by azarbayejani at 12:19 PM on December 10, 2011

Boingboing has shared some interesting comments re Clinton's new 'hands off the Internet' speech, Dajaz1.com and SOPA.

Glenn Greenwald: Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom
posted by homunculus at 1:01 PM on December 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'll double post this here since the SOPA thread has grown long in the tooth :

Two Congressional Staffers Who Helped Write SOPA/PIPA Become Entertainment Industry Lobbyists (via politico)

- Allison Halataei, the former deputy chief of staff and parliamentarian to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), went to the NMPA where she'll be "chief liaison to Capitol Hill".

- Lauren Pastarnack, a Republican senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee, went to the MPAA where she'll be "director of government relations".
posted by jeffburdges at 10:29 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

The real villains of YouTube are the multinational companies cashing in on public domain footage they claim is their own.

All the big content providers really are just censors collecting rent for doing nothing like Rick Falkvinge explains here around 12m in.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:32 PM on December 12, 2011

Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA
posted by jeffburdges at 4:47 PM on December 12, 2011

Domain seizure oversight lax and broken, targets out of luck
posted by homunculus at 9:24 AM on December 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

UMG issued a takedown on the YouTube version of Tech News Today episode 391 where they talked about the video and talked over it while a portion played. They counter noticed and weren't re-noticed and they talk about it in episode 392

It would be nice if someone with deep pockets would sue the issuer of a bot-generated takedown notice for fraud or perjury or whatever. Giving keyword-triggered bots this much power is stupid.
posted by morganw at 12:50 PM on December 15, 2011

Will.i.am: I Did Not Authorize Megaupload Video Takedown
posted by jeffburdges at 1:32 PM on December 15, 2011

Judge gives Universal Music 24 hours to explain takedown spree

A federal judge has given Universal Music Group until the end of the day Thursday to respond to charges that it abused the DMCA takedown process to censor a promotional music video by the locker site Megaupload.
posted by XMLicious at 10:57 PM on December 15, 2011

Universal Music Group has responded to Megaupload's request for a temporary restraining order barring the music giant from further interference with the distribution of its "Mega Song." UMG insists that it had a right to take down the video—not under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as Megaupload had assumed, but under a private contractual arrangement between UMG and YouTube.
posted by homunculus at 12:04 PM on December 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

To be clear, YouTube's position is that that is false.

YouTube denies UMG's claims

Can't go into more details myself, but their characterization of the situation is wrong.
posted by wildcrdj at 3:47 PM on December 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh, and note the video is back up.
posted by wildcrdj at 5:09 PM on December 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

From Rogue To Vogue: Megaupload and Kim Dotcom
posted by jeffburdges at 9:18 PM on December 19, 2011

File-Sharing Darling Dan Bull Publishes Anti-SOPA Rap
(much better song, although the refrain feels weak)
posted by jeffburdges at 6:21 AM on December 22, 2011

Warner Bros Sued For Pirating Louis Vuitton Trademark
posted by jeffburdges at 5:53 AM on December 27, 2011