#opmegaupload

#opmegaupload was one of the consequences of the FBI recently deciding to shut down the Megaupload file sharing service. The company’s servers were confiscated when the website was shut down.

Not long after the crackdown, the activist network Anonymous went on the attack against the United States Department of Justice in the form of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks have been organised via IRC and Twitter, among others, under the name/hashtag #opmegaupload. RIAA and the US Copyright Office were two of the websites affected, and so they were unavailable for a time.

The FBI had the opportunity to crack down on the Hong Kong-based company because Megaupload had servers based in the USA. However, the initiative was implemented together with eight other countries; including New Zealand, where the police arrested Kim Schmitz, the owner of the site, and three of his employees.

These four men are now prosecuted for breach of copyright as the website is alleged to have caused losses of more than USD 500 million to the holders of the rights.

However, Megaupload issued a statement on their website just before it was taken down in which they stated that the majority of their traffic is legitimate and that they’d be happy to hold talks with the media industry.