I can hear the glass that was the internet shattering from the future.
Mike Masnick: Update.... Or not. Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further.
I'm actually trying to get a Congressional Gallery pass for Wednesday, to see the session in person.
Although it looks like if I do, I can't live-blog/tweet it, as you can't bring anything electronic into the gallery. That makes watching it on CSPAN a little more appealing.
Legal tax avoidance in the United States (I'm not American - qualifier) is a common trait throughout most large businesses. If anything, taking part in avoidance would put Megaupload into the same company as GE, Wells Fargo, DuPont, Boeing, Honeywell... All companies who had revenue in the hundred of millions and billions of dollars, yet still received Government rebates.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that it doesn't make Megaupload "shady" for using these legal loopholes.
Furthermore, most people in the piracy "scene" know not to use Megaupload because of their quick compliance with DMCA takedown notices - something that's come over years of investment in their technology and takedown procedures. Anything but shady in my opinion.
You've got to take into account the fact though that the labels don't give two poops about what they're doing to the services they're killing.
Spotify. MOG. Rdio. Hulu. They're all fronts to appease those of us that are interested in a different delivery route for our content. They're the proverbial pylon that the industry can point to and say "there, we tried to innovate, piracy is bad, killing us!"
We talk about guaranteed failure of the labels and studios in the long run because of their pig-headed nature and their resistance to change - but they say "nay-nay".
They know that these short term gains will accomplish a few goals that will guarantee their business model for decades to come.
Paying their lobbyists to run up to capital hill and enact new favorable legislation...
If we've learned anything, having power is the key to business, not a good idea or a steady execution.
Once you get to a certain point you're immune to the regular rules of market dynamics.
Just as the banks before them, we're currently seeing legislation being put forward to protect a broken, legacy, business model by ensuring a monopoly for a select few, and stifling innovation for many.
And just as the financially misguided before us, the people in black suits will soon be coming to take our homes, or in this case, our domains.
It's not "censorship" as TorrentFreak wants to linkbait. All results are still indexed, even sites that are obviously piracy related.
All Google is trying to do is cover their asses when it comes to contributory infringement.
If they were ever sued search engines are USUALLY safe. The exception being when sites actively push users towards pirated content - as we've seen through cases such as the isoHunt case where having a "Top Torrents" list that had mainly studio IP condemned them to heavy losses.
I think the last thing anyone wants is Google to lose a copyright infringement case. The precedent would be the gold standard against search engines and would be enough to start knocking out indexers and torrent sites all over the place.
If they see cause to do a bold move such as this to protect themselves, I say all the more to them.
This is plain old stupidity at its finest on Backify's part. They should have at least called, confirmed, and triple confirmed in writing that client files would be saved if they unilaterally terminated their contract.
As for the credit card allegations it seems to me as LiveDrive was just trying to protect people who used Backify's service.
We are Backify's reseller -> They cancelled their reseller account through us -> All purchased accounts through Backify are now null -> Are they committing fraud using our services?'
- That's at least what they'll be arguing in court as they're being sued by a stupid company that will undoubtedly soon be sued by their clients for lost data.
Hopefully it won't have to come full circle back to YouTube.
The Puerto80/RojaDirecta case seems like it has lawyers who know what they're doing(cough unlike a certain other Harvard-based lawyer cough) - I'm hoping they get a good precedent before SOPA even takes effect
It's terrible in that a lot of the times smaller organic sites are much more relevant than big-box "trusted" sites.
That's why organic search algorithms are good.
Furthermore, there's a terrible burden for startups moving into certain spaces if suddenly you can't get ranked because you're not a Trusted source.
Plus, controlling search engine neutrality or listing position is not the business of the government or rightsholder. Remember, Google is a private entity.
