With MegaUpload Down, Who’s Next? RapidShare? SoundCloud? DropBox? techcrunch.com
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Forget SOPA and PIPA, apparently the US Federal Government doesn’t need new legislation in place to shut down major file storage sites and lock millions of users out of their file lockers. The bigger question, then, is who’s next?
It’s clear that the US Federal Government is ramping up its fight against illegal file sharing and hosting. It’s the new war on drugs. The plan is to have taxpayers foot the bill and then attack websites rather than regulating or encouraging innovation...
The case of TVShack and Richard O’Dwyer is slightly different. The 23-year owner didn’t have life-size giraffe statues on his rolling New Zealand estate. No, instead, the young British student is now facing extradition to the US for simply linking to sites hosting illegal content. His mother says he has no connection to the US, a fact confirmed by his lawyer who stated the site’s servers were not even hosted in the US. In fact, as the story goes, O’Dwyer shut down the website himself the day after a visit from police and US officials in November 2010. O’Dwyer was not charged with racketeering, money laundering, or anything of the sort. His crime was linking to copyrighted material [pdf], a crime which could land him in a US jail for five to ten years under pre-SOPA and PIPA laws.