Why Megaupload was really shut down?

CitizenSmif

CitizenSmif

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Jan 26, 2009
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In December of 2011, just weeks before the takedown, Digital Music News reported on something new that the creators of #Megaupload were about to unroll. Something that would rock the music industry to its core. (Digital Music News - MegaUpload Is Now Launching a Music Service Called MegaBox...)

I present to you... MegaBox. MegaBox was going to be an alternative music store that was entirely cloud-based and offered artists a better money-making opportunity than they would get with any record label.

"UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings," MegaUpload founder Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz told Torrentfreak

Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.

"We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free," Dotcom outlined. "Yes that's right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works."
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https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq
 


Yeah I saw this on facebook. If even remotely true then the amount of control the MPAA/music industry has over our government is truly frightening.
 
These asshats got busted because they were advertising all over every torrent site on the planet "Instant downloads now!" "Only $29.95/mo for every song on earth!" so gimme a break on the conspiracy shit. It was their advertising that bit them in the ass, not their service.
 
Even if it's not true, the concept is still sound.

The entertainment industry only has itself to blame for piracy in many ways.

A prime example -

Tried to buy season four of breaking bad, not available in the UK, available online in the US but only if you're in the US.

So I can't get it legally, can rip it off within 3 clicks.

Have money, want to buy, can't...

Traditional distribution channels are dead or dying and customer demands have changed. I never thought the entertainment industry would still be fighting this in 2012.

And for the record, I don't pirate but I'm sure as shit am not going to go down to the record shop or be in front of the TV at 8pm on Wed to watch a half hour program with a further half hour of advertising shit.
 
d_diggler said:
A prime example -

Tried to buy season four of breaking bad, not available in the UK, available online in the US but only if you're in the US.

So I can't get it legally, can rip it off within 3 clicks.

Have money, want to buy, can't...

Traditional distribution channels are dead or dying and customer demands have changed. I never thought the entertainment industry would still be fighting this in 2012.

And for the record, I don't pirate but I'm sure as shit am not going to go down to the record shop or be in front of the TV at 8pm on Wed to watch a half hour program with a further half hour of advertising shit.
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Exactly. I had this argument on FB with one of my local politicians in my state. He couldn't seem to wrap his head around anything but, "Pirates are only thieves as an explanation of why people download copyrighted content."

Yeah, some people are just cheap and want it for free, but 90% (probably more) would buy it if it was either more convenient to get legally or was available in their area. There's a reason why piracy has been on the decline in the last 5-7 years, and it's not because of legislation. It's because of services like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc.

The main-stream-media and big entertainment just keep pushing the idea that pirates are just theives, but it's because big entertainment wants to nickle and dime for everything that piracy is such an option. I am not advocating piracy, but they bring it on themselves.

For instance, on Netflix, I found the show Leverage from TNT. I watched the first two seasons online. Season 3 rolled out and TNT pulled all online episodes (yeah, even the first two seasons) to artificially try and boost their TV ratings. What's more, it was available on HULU the day after it aired, so I watched it there. Then they made it so the new episodes would only show online 3 weeks after it aired. WTF?

All the entertainment industry is doing is alienating customers and forcing them to have to pirate to view their content. They seem to want to keep people tied to traditional models of sitting and only watching TV or listening to music when "they" decide to release the content, instead of to get it and view it at the customer's schedule.

All music and video is digital now during recording and filming, there's no reason why content shouldn't be available for download at prices less than DVDs as a whole at the time it airs.
 
If this is remotely true (where are the "over 1 million testers?") then someone here needs to figure out how his biz model worked. It said that he could pay artists when their songs were downloaded for free. -Yeah, it could be an offer in exchange for a free track, but I'd bet it was something easier for the masses to accept than an offer form.

If someone can figure out exactly what that biz model was the next step is to get the word out to as many as possible so someone with some resources and balls will hear about it and start the next Megabox up ASAP. Kim Dotcom would want this to happen. We all do.

As for google music; it's not as easy to swallow as megabox was going to be. (According to the story.) there are more restrictions with gmusic than just 70%.
 
ShadowCaster said:
Maybe a percentage of revenue for clicks on ads placed on download page or something like that?
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Ad revenue was only a small portion of the $175 million they've estimated. Most of his income was from 'premium accounts'. Plus if you divide estimated ad revenue by the number of downloads, it'll add to a pittance. Conversion ratios will be horrible, but volume makes up for it. I bet premium account conversion rates are like 0.03% or something ridiculous like that. But with 50 million visitors a day that's still like 15,000 sales a day with price ranges from 5.00 - 199.00 EUR or so.
 
Rexibit said:
The FBI has been investigating them for the last two years.
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This. Beside that they made some big mistakes.

First, hosting around 1200 servers in the US like everybody knows now.

Second how they handled file uploads and DMCA notices.
See, when someone uploaded a file there was a MD5 hash created and compared to their DB to see if it already exists.
If so, the newly uploaded file wouldnt be saved on the servers, the user just got a "new" link to the old file.
So when a DMCA complain came in, they would only delete the link from the complain, but let the file up with all the other links to it.
I am pretty sure thats one of the main reasons which broke their neck.

Another issue is that it looks like they where paying people to upload copyright material. Seems there is prove for that also.

If they can nail them on that,they are really fucked.
 
Another (yet totally divergent) example to throw into the mix - saw an article posted on another forum yesterday discussing the Xbox 720. It's supposed to have all these upgrades and shit, but one of its supposed characteristics is that it's not going to have the ability to play used games. Your brand new game will somehow sync up to your machine specifically or your Xbox Live account or something like that.

If they end up going through with this, this does nothing but alienate the ever-living hell out of the customer. Can you imagine not being able to buy used games at Game Stop? Or rent via Gamefly? Or that your kids can take a game to their friends' house?

I know this is a totally different kinda example than what's being discussed here, but these companies are going so overboard with their anti-piracy issues, that they actually end up driving more people to piracy, IMO.
 
Wiggy said:
Another (yet totally divergent) example to throw into the mix - saw an article posted on another forum yesterday discussing the Xbox 720. It's supposed to have all these upgrades and shit, but one of its supposed characteristics is that it's not going to have the ability to play used games. Your brand new game will somehow sync up to your machine specifically or your Xbox Live account or something like that.

If they end up going through with this, this does nothing but alienate the ever-living hell out of the customer. Can you imagine not being able to buy used games at Game Stop? Or rent via Gamefly? Or that your kids can take a game to their friends' house?

I know this is a totally different kinda example than what's being discussed here, but these companies are going so overboard with their anti-piracy issues, that they actually end up driving more people to piracy, IMO.
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I think this is the least of your worries. Everything is moving to downloadable content anyway. In the very near future you wont even be able to buy games on a disc at the store. You'll buy "points" which you use to buy games. The game is downloaded to your XBox and you can't take it anywhere.

Gamestop, gamefly and there rest have their days numbered. Writing is on the wall.
 
Interesting. Mediafire is claiming it is different because it does not incentivize the upload of copyrighted material. Your post makes sense in line with that thought
 
lukep said:
Nah, the difference will be that money was paid to people for pirated content... Basically incentivizing piracy. YT never paid for vid uploads.
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Don't they though in a round-about way? I mean if your channel gets enough views then Google does a profit sharing on the advertising revenue with you.
 
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