Music Blogs React to Megaupload Seizure & Cyberlocker Lockdowns

The day after last week's inspiring protest against overreaching anti-piracy laws, the US Department of Justice demonstrated that they don't need those laws, anyway.  They just went ahead and unilaterally shut down Megaupload, the world's most popular cyberlocker.  Rumor has it that similar sites like MediaFire and 4shared are under investigation and have been deleting files, while FileSonic preemptively disabled all sharing features.

As a result, much of the history of recorded sound has been made inaccessible to the public.  I'm talking, of course, about the music blogosphere.  The best music blogs aren't pirates.  They are libraries, sound archivists and music preservationists sharing recordings that would not otherwise be available.  And now sites like Global Groove, Mutant Sounds, and Holy Warbles have lost large swaths of the material they'd salvaged from obscurity.

Fortunately not all of the music on these blogs have been lost; because of the nature of online sharing copies now exist all over the world.  Some of the links on Mutant Sounds are still active, too, like this Karen Cooper Complex album.  1981's Shinjuku Birdwalk came out of the vibrant Richmond VA experimental scene, it was never even released until it appeared on the Free Music Archive (previously featured here, and on Mutant Sounds here).  These are the types of genuine "Artifacts" I would love to host more of, but since we do things by the book here at the FMA, it's often difficult to track down rightsholders to get official permission.

It always bothered me to discover artists sharing their own original work via an untrustworthy website like Megaupload.  I never liked their approach of charging for quicker access to files, and their advertisements (including the Mega Song) always felt kinda icky.  The Mega Conspiracy alleges that Megaupload was actually designed to profit from media piracy through tactics like a reward for users who pirated films before their release date.  Paramount Pictures claimed that Mega sites made as much as $300 million a year in large part by selling ads and charging for access to copyrighted work.  That figure is from a great SSRC article titled "Meganomics."  Author Joe Karaganis describes how most cyberlockers and torrent sites don't profit nearly that much if at all, and he proposes that we factor this in to a clearer definition of what it means to infringe on a "commercial scale."

Back to the site that tipped that scale: even if they were just the new sleazy middleman in the distribution chain, millions of users had come to rely on Megaupload for very legitimate uses.  Now their files are gone.  But they are not lost, thanks to the nature of online sharing which necessitates the creation of new copies.  It is inspiring to see the Mutant Sounds community come together along these lines, re-upping files from their personal collections to restore the communal archive (link).

Long live the blogosphere!

Comments

[Oro]

Thank you for this informative post.
We (bloggers) are still on boat.

[Alex Goldstein]

thanks for this, jason. very inspiring.

[Doug Horne]

I'm happy to see the conversations that all of this has spawned. Fact is, the "music industry" does not care about the history of recorded sound. The bloggers and sharers care far more about this material, since their interest goes well beyond what is profitable, and includes everything that is worth listening to. Saying that the music industry should control all recorded sound is like saying that art dealers should control the entire history of art, and it should never be held in galleries or museums. It's saying that art is purely and exclusively about it's commercial value. If they want to be in control, they have to make everything available and provide it in a way that consumers desire, or step aside and let someone do it right. If they say "we're doing a bad job, won't let you have what you want, and demand that you use our system ... well, f$%k 'em.

[Gary Sullivan]

It looks like Holy Warbles is now down. I don't know if it's temporary or permanent, or if Owl took it down or if Blogger did.

[Chris Stubbs]

Unfortunately, sites like Megaupload are clearly designed for profit through illegal means and content. It is a nice Utopian idea that we should allow them to continue what they do and let them function while these things are investigated, but reality states that in a case like this, drastic measures need to be taken in order to stop sites like this. A service like this, making the amount of money they do can certainly afford MANY people to police it's own site to make sure no illegal files make it through.

[Gary Sullivan]

Drastic measures, Chris? Like extraditing people who don't even live in the U.S.? Because people were downloading crappy Hollywood movies that no one in their right mind would ever watch more than once--if that?

The wholesale blocking of Megaupload has destroyed whole online communities, communities that were organized around interests in cultures and cultural expression that the people who've bought the FBI to do their dirty work couldn't give two flying f*cks about. The blogs mentioned in the post above were just the tip of the iceberg.

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for these greedy, soulless, corporate *ssholes. They had no right to shut down all of the people--thousands, tens of thousands, god really knows how many--using that site for legitimate, culture-sharing reasons.

[Gary Sullivan]

Let's put it another way, Chris. Should Britain have allowed Iran to extradite Salman Rushdie for his blasphemous Satanic Verses? Because that's basically what we're looking at here. One culture's laws trumping everyone else's.

[Chris Stubbs]

So your theory is they should only shut down the site if people are downloading popular Oscar-worthy films? Please, be real. I'm not saying I agree that other sites following the law should be shut down, only Mega, which is an obvious outlet for illegal activity. The CHOSE to have no self-policing but had no problem profiting from that and now they are paying a very harsh price. The days of online services not having to follow the same rules other companies do are over. Take some responsibility for your actions and services, don't change the subject by pointing at the results of being caught and focusing on that. Don't break the law and this won't be an issue.

[Gary Sullivan]

Right. Don't break sharia and putting a fatwa on your head won't be an issue.

I think it's worth watching this and considering some of what they have to say on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Mar34oLtWXE

[Gary Sullivan]

Here's Chris Dodd, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, from an interview on FOX News:

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

I'm sorry, but scum like that is who the Megaupload action, who SOPA/PIPA are trying to protect. F*cking politician-buying *mob*sters.

[chris stubbs]

I love the extremes that are always jumped to in these discussions. I act that people don't agree with and it's "Everything will be destroyed forever!". It's the same as when the right says Gay marriage will lead to marriage between people and pets and trees, etc. It doesn't have to be that cut and dry, because it isn't.

What, may I ask, would be YOUR solution to the Megaupload fiasco. They clearly shouldn't be allowed to function as they do. How do you make them follow the law?

[ExtraT]

Yeah, Hollywood should just disappear and go to hell. Who needs them when all they do is push their one-sided agendas. Millions of users bending over and taking their whining is pathetic. All this does is increase the real life crime rates. No one can see past their own disillusionment, including myself. Instead of reaching an enlightenment plateau, we argue about copyrights. America's starving while the people in charge worry about silly movies. What a natural disaster the human race is.

[Michael Yahwak]

there is always setting up private networks over winmx

[jim]

the terms of this debate are inane. is it really ok to enjoy the fruit of somebody else's labour - without recompensing them? (oh, that would be like stealing the oil reserves of a foreign country!)

you want something to be really outraged about? try this: staff sgt. frank wuterich, demoted for "negligence"

[Ben Century]

I maintain a blog that showcases oddball music myself. After the site I was using to host my audio files ended up useless, I decided that I had enough readers to justify paying for my own webspace. No more ads, no more unreliability, no more browser incompatibility, and no more worrying what to do if the site goes down. Paying for my own webspace to store my files was the best decision I ever made.

If you're down-right serious about your music blog, you really should have your own storage. Re-uploading all your content (and possibly re-digitizing it) is very time-consuming.

[Eminem fan]

This really disturbs me. How can they mess with or even shutdown sites which are usefull for the people and doesn't do anything wrong. All these thing with SOPA AND PIPA are made so big companies can make more money and so the ordinary people get censured and noone can hear and see their ideas. It's just sooo wrong.

[Neville Ross]

@Ben Century: Yeah, I'll admit that you've got your own space, but considering that what you have on your blog is crap anyway, I wouldn't be worrying about the long arm of the U.S. government coming to get you in the near future. It's only the popular good stuff that they're concerned about, not this crap.

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