Megaupload/Megavideo was shut down by the Federal Government last week! It was sad. Also—coincidentally, or not—right around the time SOPA and PIPA, the anti-piracy legislation meant to prevent sites like Megaupload from ever doing business, died their own lame legislative deaths.
A week later, the Recording Industry Association of America has issued a press release basically dancing over the grave of the cloud-upload site.
Via Billboard, RIAA’s VP of something called “Strategic Data Analysis” (or “Why We Hate The Internet, In Numbers), one Joshua P. Friedlander wrote a blog posts about how great it is that Megaupload is dead. The post bears the not-at-all-subtle title of “Why Closing Megaupload Matters.” In your face, everyone who isn’t the RIAA:
The shutdown of illegal sites helps create a thriving and diverse digital marketplace. It encourages users to go to legitimate sites, and enables great new services to be launched – like Spotify, which launched in the US last year and quickly signed up millions of new users. It’s always reassuring when the data we see in the market reflects what we thought was just common sense.
What most other people think is common sense is not paying for something they can get for free. Like music. On Megaupload. Granted, this is also known as “stealing,” but they’re probably going to split hairs on this one nonetheless. Also, goes without saying, but the RIAA is probably not helping their odds of coming under another hacker attack with this one.
Pitchfork Media points out two other interesting facets of this story:
1. Other sites making sure their dead corpses don’t end up like Megaupload’s. This is probably going to make Filestube a whole lot less fun.
2. Megaupload’s founder, the absurdly-named and not-surprisingly-obese Kim Dotcom, will be making an album. Which nobody will likely pay for whether he charges them for it or not.
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek