Yesterday's shutdown of the Megaupload file storage web site, and also the arrest of 4 of its founders in New Zealand, illustrates how a world Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is also facilitating coordinated multinational clampdowns on alleged digital content piracy.The move, led by the FBI, comes simply on a daily basis when huge protests on the net against SOPA - controversial US legislation designed to prevent on-line piracy.
As New Scientist wrote in 2008, ACTA has long promised difficulty for such file-sharing sites. The treaty aids multinational cooperation on this issue - and also the operation against Megaupload was a highly transnational affair. The FBI says authorities within the US, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany and also the UK helped them seize Megaupload's employees and $50 million in assets.
Megaupload allowed users to upload and store giant files to form them simply downloaded by others, while not using refined peer-to-peer software. however the FBI alleges it had been posting "movies, music, TV programmers, ebooks and business and entertainment software on an enormous scale" - allegedly costing copyright house owners $500 million in lost sales.
The Megaupload shutdown brought a speedy response from the hacktivist sector. Anonymous directed its denial-of-service attack weapon, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), at the US Department of Justice, and major-league copyright house owners like movie studios, recording firms and their respective copyright protection arms, the MPAA and RIAA. Unusually, it used a brand new trick that harnessed Twitter users to amplify the LOIC's effects.
Signed in October 2011, ACTA brings in sweeping measures to stop working websites, disconnect infringers, arrest uploaders and force ISPs to observe traffic for intellectual property theft. Even individuals swapping sports highlights on their cellphones may come back beneath its purview, as may searches of electronic equipment at border posts.
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