Yesterday, FBI launched a vast operation to stop Megaupload. Megaupload is one of the most important Direct Download (DDL) sites or cyberlocker. It offers the possibility to store content, and to allow others to access it. Nevertheless, DDL sites do not offer a method to explore the content or a catalog. The links to the stored data are published by other means such as dedicated sites, and even twitter.
A US grand jury indicted 7 individuals and two societies of
engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.
Four individuals have been arrested in Aukland (New Zealand) and will be hand over to the US. Servers have been seized in the US, the Netherlands, and Canada.
This is probably the most impressive operation against copyright infringement of the last years. Currently DDL traffic exceeds P2P traffic. This a strong message against piracy. It will be interesting to see whether there will be any retaliation from the Darknet.
Update (Friday 3.50pm):
As we could have expected, Anonymous started the retaliation operation with a large scale DDoS. Many sites are down such as the DoJ, some studios and recently the French Hadopi.
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