Megaupload Gone
Megaupload, the Hong Kong based file sharing service, has had their Ashburn, Virginia servers shut down by Federal authorities in the United States. And four employees of this company have been arrested in New Zealand.
An indictment filed Thursday accuses the company of having cost copyright holders $500 Million in lost revenue for having facilitated the illegal distribution of music, film and other copyrighted content. But the company claimed these allegations were “grotesquely overblown” prior to the shut down, according to USA Today.
Unfortunately Megaupload also had legitimate users, whose files are inaccessible now. The site had 150 million registered users and had 50 million hits per day.
I had used the service years back to send my own videos to fellow Youtubers, which was more convenient than sending it by email. I have since found other services but it’s still a shame to loose such a resource.
A Protect IP Video
Americans can click here to write a letter to Congress about PIPA and SOPA. Canadians can also direct their American friends and relatives to the site at http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa.
WHY SOPA/PIPA CONCERNS ME
Though American both the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act allow American special interest groups to impose their interpretations of United States copyright law on foreign nationals and foreign businesses located outside of the United States.
As Canadians we should be concerned because we have different laws in regards to Copyright and we’re in the middle of reforming our copyright act.
Works are made available to Canadians in the public domain two decades before these same works are made available to Americans and Europeans so if I were to publish Ernest Hemingway‘s works on this site, for example, I could be subjected to litigation by his American publishers.
Though legal to publish in Canada, his works could have my site removed from the American search engines and cause my site to loose affiliations and funding from American companies and individual American donators. And it doesn’t appear to matter that my site is hosted in Canada because the American copyright lobby have laid claim to the .com domain in the TVShack case.
When British citizens are subjected to extradition over linking to copyrighted material, a legal act within the United Kingdom, it is obvious that restraint would not happen after the passing of this legislation. And I have in the past inadvertently linked copyrighted material.
I have had requests for links that sounded legitimate but were not. And nothing stops an illegitimate profiteer from buying a legitimate site or domain that I’ve linked in the past, without my knowledge.
I do my best to clean up my listings. But people could also spam this site, an illegal act in Canada, yet I could still be subjected to the SOPA condoned retribution. The legislation is that dangerously vague.
Yes, there are sites in Russia and China that blatantly violate copyright but SOPA is a slippery slope.
Wikipedia Joins Tomorrow’s SOPA Blackout
MSNBC blogger Bob Sullivan reports that Wikipedia has joined tomorrow’s SOPA Blackout.
Numerous sites have already confirmed their participation in this protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act as concerns mount with the extradition of TVShack co-creator Richard O’Dweyer to the United States.
UPS to Expand in Atlantic Canada
UPS will be expanding their Canadian network, this time in the Atlantic provinces.
“UPS will begin to perform pickup and delivery services for its customers in Moncton and Halifax beginning in April 2012, replacing its current agent. Additional cities in the Atlantic provinces will be added to the network later in the year.” – November 2011 Press Release
Radio Canada Television reports that the additional cities are Fredericton and Saint John in New Brunswick, Sydney and New Glasgow in Nova Scotia, Charlottetown in PEI and St. John’s in Newfoundland.
The company had previously partnered with a local courier to service these provinces.
White House Will Not Support SOPA/PIPA
An official statement from the White House was published yesterday and it appears that the White House will NOT be supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act :
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
This comment was left in response to two petitions against these acts.