So, the thing about shutting down mega-upload . . .

[ritaxis]

My friends who are Sims fans already know this. But these file sharing sites are the medium by which people give large gifts to each other. Shutting them down is like shutting down the post office on the grounds that it could be used for mail fraud.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'd never even heard of the site until this morning.

There's clearly legit use for ways to exchange large files. I don't know what the business model of MegaUpload was, or how much copyright violation stuff was there, or how central that was to the site. Some of those are subjective impressions, but still important I think.

I'm also not very sympathetic to using copyright to prevent something being available; which includes the traditional selling of regional rights. But that's basic to how publishing and distribution work. I think, though, that now the community is so global that it just doesn't work any more.

Maybe we need an all-new copyright scheme, but it has to be worldwide.

One thing this does seem to establish very firmly is that they don't need new tools; even this shutdown may be somewhat questionable. Shouldn't they have left it up, just seized data and arrested people they wanted to charge? Leave shutting it down for after things are established in court?