MegaUpload File Sharing Site Shut Down Over Piracy

A day after the internet blackout by almost all the major internet players namely Wikipedia, Tumblr and so on. The US department of justice (DOJ) arrested the founder of one of the leading online file upload site Megaupload, Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz) who holds residency in New Zealand and Hong Kong, from New Zealand, along with six others members employees Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk. Officials said they have not yet captured Bencko, Echternach and Nomm.

They all were held under the acquisition of “the Mega Conspiracy, a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale.”

In reply to this act by US Department of Justice an anonymous online hacker group twitted from their Sweden account that they retaliated against the DOJ. And soon after this Justice.gov site was in accessible and was down for sometime but it is recovered now and The websites of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Universal Music Group were also experiencing either intense slowdowns or complete failure. The other twitter accounts if the same group took credit for this through their twits. They took charge of almost ten government sites and leaked the personal information.

Now could it be seen as the first step of implementing SOPA and PIPA..?

Most of the experts believe that the situation would be worse if this Bill becomes law. Freedom of speech in the online world would come to an end is only a small but unavoidable part of it but the effects could be more worse. It would directly lead to the censorship on internet. Though officially there is no link between the bill in the US senate house and the arrest of the four people, but effects could be similar to what we have seen. And over that the arrests were done just a day after major websites blacked out, so the people can easily relate the both.

So, as of now the site megaupload.com is taken offline by FBI and arrested four people relates to it and is accused of making $175 million while simultaneously causing approximately half a billion dollars in copyright infringement. The online hacker group has actively replied to it but the sites that were effected are now recovered and now online.

On the one hand, supporters could say that cases like this are exactly the reason why we need laws like SOPA and PIPA, but opponents could counter with the fact that the DOJ appears to be working fine without them.