Megaupload!

     On June 21, 2005, Kim Dotcom founded Megaupload, the website where you could share documents and records online. Was so popular because you could get all the documents or records that you needed. The problem was that a lot of people used this hosting service to share movies, songs, software... without paying the price of the service. This freedom in the hosting caused that megaupload was the first website classified as digital piracy. This situation led the closing of the hosting website and the arrest of all its leaders. Currently, Kim Dotcom has created a new web called Mega, but Megaupload still is closed  by FBI.

     The intention of the company was that all people would could share the materials to other individuals by putting it on-line. The problem was that the people use the hosting to share a lot of piracy material. The book of Philippe Aigran, ‘Introduction’ and ‘The Internet and Creativity Debates’ support this idea. "The non-market sharing of digital works is valuable and must be recognized as a legitimate activity" (1). This author proposes a new business model where the access to the culture must be free and all the people can share the materials. Philippe Aigran says that is impossible fight against the piracy, so the only solution is found the way to share and maintain the earnings for the culture producers. The problem is that the culture creators have to make money and is not clear the system to compensate to the creators.

     A lot of people think that this sentence against Megaupload is unfair because the company did not know the type of archives that their clients shared. The problem with Megaupload encompasses a larger problem, because both of parts (cultural producers and consumers) have convincing reasons to defend its position. A lot of companies lost many important archives when the FBI closed Megaupload. But is true too, that the culture companies: film producers, music groups, writers... were losing a lot of money with the illegal downloads. The closed of megaupload has not solved the problem with the piracy, so the only solution in create a new business model for the cultural industry.

SOURCES:

(1) Philippe Aigran, ‘Introduction’ and ‘The Internet and Creativity Debates’ Amsterdam University Press 2012, pp.15-25

Pedro Huichalaf Roa. "Minuta explicativa sobre Proyectos de ley SOPA y PIPA de EEUU y sus posibles efectos jurídicos"

"Lo que siempre quiso saber y nunca se atrevió a preguntar sobre el conocimiento abierto en la redConocimiento y cultura en internet. ¿Lo masivo o lo libre? ¿Lo gratuito o lo comunitario? David García Aristegui. Page 1-17

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