US charges seven and shuts down file-sharing site

Jan 20, 2012 |

Washington

Tags:

US authorities shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites yesterday and charged seven people with copyright crimes, prompting hackers to disable the FBI and Justice Department's websites.

Megaupload.com went offline as justice officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation laid out the details of what they described as 'among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States'.

The founder of the Hong Kong-based Megaupload site was among four people arrested for online piracy and crimes that justice officials said had illegally netted them millions of dollars from subscriptions and advertising revenue.

The site is popular with Hollywood celebrities and has been endorsed by music stars such as Kanye West. It was also reported yesterday that Swizz Beatz, a music producer married to the singer Alicia Keys, was its chief executive. Beatz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, was not named in the indictment.

The announcement of the indictment came one day after Wikipedia, Google and other websites staged a protest against congressional legislation intended to crack down on online piracy. Attempts to access the FBI, Justice Department, Universal Music, and Recording Industry Association of America portals failed, following retaliatory action by the "Anonymous" hacktivist group. "Anonymous" announced that they had downed the sites.

"The Internet is here. Are you ready for The Year of Cyber War? We are. Rise up and join us to fight for your rights," YourAnonNews, an Anonymous-aligned group, said in a tweet. In a statement, the Justice Department and FBI said the seven people charged were "responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites."

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/120740" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-798b3036a2d418222be344bf55a78a66" value="form-798b3036a2d418222be344bf55a78a66" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85422440" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>