the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place
I might be reading too much into this, but to me this sounds like ten people uploaded the same movie (maybe with different filenames, maybe different encodings/file formats), the DMCA request only named one of these files, and MegaUpload removed only that one file.
(I know the quote says "link" not "copy" but it wouldn't be the first time people get confused over the distinction.)
If so, this sets a dangerous precedent for other (maybe more legitimate) file sharing sites: firstly, if you host millions of files, detecting which files are copies of another file, or deciding which filenames are similar to other filenames, is not a trivial task. Secondly, as far as I understand the DMCA, it doesn't even require you to go to these lengths.
Of course, I might be totally off base and they might really have kept the very same file in place and just removed a link to it on some pages while keeping the link on others.
Even if it is the same file if the provided links are private I think they should be safe under how DMCA is worded. Each link can be considered a key to locker and it would not be Megaupload's job to know who should have a key and who should not. DMCA would require them to reject keys but not necessarily the locker under many situations.
My previous post:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3486903
I might be reading too much into this, but to me this sounds like ten people uploaded the same movie (maybe with different filenames, maybe different encodings/file formats), the DMCA request only named one of these files, and MegaUpload removed only that one file.
(I know the quote says "link" not "copy" but it wouldn't be the first time people get confused over the distinction.)
If so, this sets a dangerous precedent for other (maybe more legitimate) file sharing sites: firstly, if you host millions of files, detecting which files are copies of another file, or deciding which filenames are similar to other filenames, is not a trivial task. Secondly, as far as I understand the DMCA, it doesn't even require you to go to these lengths.
Of course, I might be totally off base and they might really have kept the very same file in place and just removed a link to it on some pages while keeping the link on others.
Does anyone know more details about this?