

Uploaded.to blocked U.S. visitors as a response to the MegaUpload takedown - nextparadigms
http://uploaded.to/

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yuvadam
This is a great initiative, and one that sparks an interesting dilemma.

Might the US wake up one day to find itself secluded on the internets? Just
like the average Nigerian, who has exactly 0% chance of successfully ordering
a product on eBay.

What happens when the world becomes fed up with the horrendous US legal
system? I can easily see a file-sharing site (e.g. megaupload) blocking all US
IP addresses from accessing its service. Essentially annulling any trace of
liability against a corrupt and rotten legal and political system.

Granted, we're still pretty high up on the slippery slope. But, it still would
be very interesting the moment _the US_ becomes the country with 'unfavorable
political climate'.

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mintplant
Right, punish the users for the failings of their government. What are they
supposed to do?

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gst
It's not about punishing the user's, but about keeping yourself out of jail.

Why should the operators of a site risk getting extradited to the US, when
what they are doing is perfectly legal in their home countries and lots of
other countries?

If you are a user and want to access this site just buy VPN access in the free
world and enjoy uncensored browsing.

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rickmb
As a European who constantly runs into the same "go away, foreigner" notices
on US sites, I find this way funnier than I should.

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statictype
Yeah it's weird going to a site you expect to see blocked and seeing that it
works just fine. Anyone have a screenshot of what it says to US visitors?

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alexis-d
arn posted this screen below: <http://imgur.com/BJJOs>

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rplnt
It's funny how legal content is blocked outside of the USA (every other
movie/music/tv site) and the illegal one is getting blocked in the USA.

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dave5104
Isn't that because the content is only legal to stream in the USA? (e.g. what
you'd find on Hulu) It'd technically be illegal to stream it outside of the
USA, so it _is_ blocked. That's how I've always assumed that online streaming
contracts with the content providers worked. I'd love to know if it works
differently

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rue
What could possibly be _illegal_ about it? The TV companies just don't _want_
to let non-US people watch.

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earbitscom
That's not correct. You have to license different works for different
purposes, and there are many, many stakeholders whose permission you have to
get. This varies by country. For example, a network may by the exclusive
rights to air a show in the US. They only pay for those rights. Then someone
else buys the exclusive rights in the UK. And someone else buys another
country. Then, when it comes time for internet streaming, you not only have to
get licenses from the original owner, plus perhaps this organization or that
organization, and then you have to get licenses from....

You get the point. So with all of that work involved they look at the revenue
potential of smaller countries and, frankly, it's just not worth it in many
cases. They don't know what the demand is there. They don't have a marketing
plan, and they have bigger opportunities available to them by working on yet
another show's licensing for the US or other large country, so they just don't
go to all of that trouble to make things available in smaller markets.

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rue
I did express that poorly. There can certainly be logistic factors at play.

But my point was that it's not _illegal_. It's a decision, not law.

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jzs
I'm a bit unsure this is actually a good idea.

I think the people behind SOPA are happy that uploaded.to decides to block US
citizens. Cause that's exactly what they wanted in the first place.

What i would rather see is that companies move off US soil as a response to US
Law. And stay off TLD's controlled by the US.

Also proxying should be promoted to circumvent the censorship that the
government puts down over it's own citizens.

The movie industry has to adapt to a new market. The government should not
adapt to an industry that has lost it's ability to innovate.

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tomp
If I understood the MegaUpload news correctly, the founders were arrested in
New Zealand. So, obviously the US has a much bigger jurisdiction than it
geographically should have. I don't think that your suggestions would help.

The reason why I believe uploaded.to did this is not to support/protest SOPA,
but to protect themselves from liability.

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tankenmate
But if US users can't access the site then the US has no forum to precede with
legal action, and then they can't call for extradition either. In the end they
would need to prosecute in the target jurisdiction via the Berne Treaty.

~~~
mcherm
No, they wouldn't. You have a nice legal argument there, but JUST THIS WEEK
the owners and operators of Megaupload were arrested by US authorities with no
extradition, no "prosecution in the target jurisdiction", just arrested in New
Zealand for running a company from there.

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rmc
_the owners and operators of Megaupload were arrested by US authorities with
no extradition_

Umm no, they were arrested in New Zealand by New Zealand authorities.

 _Dotcom, as well as Bram van der Kolk, Finn Batato and Mathias Ortman were
arrested by Organised & Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (OFCANZ) as well as
New Zealand police earlier today._ from <http://gizmodo.com/5877779/>

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white_devil
> Umm no, they were arrested in New Zealand by New Zealand authorities.

At the behest of the US entertainment industry.

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rmc
And the US law enforcement authorities. Hollywood did not ring up the NZ
police and say "Arrest these guys". The US police did not fly over to NZ and
arrest them.

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josefresco
If you read the 'evidence' against MU the mere blocking of US traffic to your
website could be seen as 'evidence' that you are concealing a crime.

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drunkenmasta
I thought about this a little more this morning and realized that Megaupload
was shut down because it was using piracy as a means to fund the owners'
multi-million dollar lifestyle. Just because uploaded.to blocks US visitors
does this make it safe from being taken down? I think not. Not if it is making
$$$. They must be in #denial

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codesuela
good thing they are making €€€

~~~
tawm
Your name and comment made me chuckle.

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drunkenmasta
I wrote about this a month or so ago. Sites self censoring. Much easier that
way isn't it? [http://danielmillsap.com/blog/technology-news/using-game-
the...](http://danielmillsap.com/blog/technology-news/using-game-theory-to-
break-the-sopa-code/)

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mappu
How about a screenshot for non-U.S. users?

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ortatherox
It's nothing particularly special

<http://cl.ly/2R3G1t3l2Z2O2A0x1u08>

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mappu
Indeed, doesn't look blocked at all.

Is the submission title correct?

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Vivtek
I'm in the US and it's blocked for me.

Good for them - this is a rational response and I hope it gets a lot of press.

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16s
Maybe some start-up will establish a foreign VPN service (in China or Iran) to
help people in the US to freely connect to these services without fear of
reprisal.

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pacmon
This move makes no sense to me. Blocking US users will not stop them from
seeking out foreign users uploading 'infringing' content. It's also as easily
circumvented as the tactics many Europeans use to access those lame American
sites that block Europe.

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aneth
This is an example of the chilling effect you get when you hold service
providers liable for users' behavior.

Are there any other examples of this post Megaupload?

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mpyne
Except that in this case Mega Conspiracy (the company behind MegaUpload) is
being held liable for their _own_ behavior. I'm used to Reddit being ill-
informed but I was not expecting to see this attitude being so prevalent on
HN!

Just in the comment thread for this post I've seen assertions that the U.S.
avoided extradition treaties (untrue) and that MegaUpload was shut down just
because of what their users were doing (also untrue).

Just as an example of things from the indictment (which you should really at
least read a summary of):

* MegaConspiracy employees were discussing a way to avoid reposts of child porn by killing any video with a matching md5sum of movies which were deemed by MegaConspiracy to be child porn, but did not employ that same tactic for files uploaded that infringed copyright. Now you and I know that it's trivial to make the md5sum change without making the video look any different, but why does MegaConspiracy 'try harder' for some categories of illegal material and not others that just conveniently happen to make them more money?

* MegaConspiracy seeded their own website with videos copied straight from YouTube (thing wget --mirror) without so much as bothering to verify the license of those videos. This wouldn't be acceptable with open source software, why should this be acceptable for Mega Upload?

* MegaConspiracy distributed known infringing videos internally to staff (so it's not "just the users" doing it)

* MegaConspiracy rewarded uploaders monetarily for uploading popular videos despite the lack of authorization on the part of those users to redistribute the video (so it's not "just the users" asking for it)

So while I certainly appreciate that the movie/music industry are hopelessly
out-of-tune with digital distribution, that doesn't make MegaConspiracy a
bunch of good guys, and it doesn't make their behavior defensible.

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thefre
For you 1st point: because in most jurisdiction CP is absolutely forbidden and
typically you are not protected if you don't proactively act to eradicate CP
on your service with reasonable dilligence, whereas an upload of a film might
or might not be problematic, given that it can be for private use or public
distribution.

For the third point who are you kidding. Technically this is problematic. In
the real world even representatives and people in grand jury exchange ripped
films, most probably most judges do it too. So this is both technically a
reason but an highly hypocritical one.

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mpyne
> For you 1st point: because in most jurisdiction CP is absolutely forbidden
> and typically you are not protected if you don't proactively act to
> eradicate CP on your service with reasonable dilligence, whereas an upload
> of a film might or might not be problematic, given that it can be for
> private use or public distribution.

That's not at all the point though. It would be one thing if MegaConspiracy
had a policy to only "full ban" videos that were targets of DMCA-complaints if
it was clear to them that the content was actually infringing. Then they'd
have a plethora of excuses (e.g. no time to sort through all the DMCA
requests, "investigations" revealed it was unclear material was infringing,
etc.)

Instead what the judge and jury will see is that MegaConspiracy had a
"permaban video" tool which they didn't even _attempt_ to use.

> For the third point [MegaConspiracy distributing infringing material
> internally] who are you kidding. Technically this is problematic.

Well, this is the best kind of "technically", given that it's exactly what
they're being accused of! If the grand jury was as sympathetic to that as you
think then why did they hand down the indictment?

Either way it's not very hypocritical given that some naïve users might be
able to claim ignorance of the progeny of videos from the Internet, but
MegaConspiracy went out of their way to establish DMCA protocol so they have
no excuse for ignorance of the "safe harbor" provisions at all.

