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- Update:MegaUpload Shutdown by US Department of Justice( Press release)
- Rapper Swizz Beatz Revealed as CEO of File Sharing Site 'MegaUpload',Sues Universal
- Gunmen Attack Daddy Showkey for the third time within One year
- Nine foreign films make cut for Oscar shortlist,Nollywood nowhere to be found again
- Adele's Album Matches No. 1 Run of Titanic Soundtrack Atop Billboard 200
| Update:MegaUpload Shutdown by US Department of Justice( Press release) Posted: 19 Jan 2012 12:58 PM PST  After rapper swizz beatz was revealed as the CEO of Megaupload, and sueing universal Music Group for trying to hinder the activities of the file sharing site , federal prosecutors in Virginia say they have shut down the website which is of the world's largest Internet file-sharing sites because of piracy.They have charged its founder and others with violating piracy laws. A press release regarding the shutdown has just been published on United state Department of justice website, Read below Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, January 19, 2012 Justice Department Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement WASHINGTON – Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced today. This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime. The individuals and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 5, 2012, and charged with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement. The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement. The indictment alleges that the criminal enterprise is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand. Dotcom founded Megaupload Limited and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites. In addition, the following alleged members of the Mega conspiracy were charged in the indictment:
Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand authorities, who executed provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Bencko, Echternach and Nomm remain at large. Today, law enforcement also executed more than 20 search warrants in the United States and eight countries, seized approximately $50 million in assets and targeted sites where Megaupload has servers in Ashburn, Va., Washington, D.C., the Netherlands and Canada. In addition, the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., ordered the seizure of 18 domain names associated with the alleged Mega conspiracy. According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies – often before their theatrical release – music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale. The conspirators' content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet. The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy's criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $500 million. The conspirators allegedly earned more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships. The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. The indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The conspirators further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world. In addition, by actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicize infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicize such content on the Megaupload site. Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users. As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file. The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites' uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section in the Justice Department's Criminal Division. The Criminal Division's Office of International Affairs, Organized Crime and Gang Section, and Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section also assisted with this case. The investigation was initiated and led by the FBI at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations. Substantial and critical assistance was provided by the New Zealand Police, the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand (OFCANZ), the Crown Law Office of New Zealand and the Office of the Solicitor General for New Zealand; Hong Kong Customs and the Hong Kong Department of Justice; the Netherlands Police Agency and the Public Prosecutor's Office for Serious Fraud and Environmental Crime in Rotterdam; London's Metropolitan Police Service; Germany's Bundeskriminalamt and the German Public Prosecutors; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Federal Enforcement Section and the Integrated Technological Crime Unit and the Canadian Department of Justice's International Assistance Group. Authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines also provided assistance. This case is part of efforts being undertaken by the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force) to stop the theft of intellectual property. Attorney General Eric Holder created the IP Task Force to combat the growing number of domestic and international intellectual property crimes, protect the health and safety of American consumers, and safeguard the nation's economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work. The IP Task Force seeks to strengthen intellectual property rights protection through heightened criminal and civil enforcement, greater coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement partners, and increased focus on international enforcement efforts, including reinforcing relationships with key foreign partners and U.S. industry leaders. To learn more about the IP Task Force, go to www.justice.gov/dag/iptaskforce . Criminal Division  |
| Rapper Swizz Beatz Revealed as CEO of File Sharing Site 'MegaUpload',Sues Universal Posted: 19 Jan 2012 09:43 AM PST  Super Producer and rapper Kasseem Dean known as Swizz beatz has been named the CEO of popular file sharing site , Megaupload.com. As the CEO of the online storage and file-sharing site, Beatz asked buddies Diddy, Kanye and Will.i.am to spread the buzz in a promotional video.The artist's label,Universal Music Group allegedly did not approve the video. UMG issued a "take-down notice" late last year and Megaupload has responded with a counter lawsuit against the label. MegaUpload is currently in the process of filing a lawsuit against Universal Music Group , the music conglomerate which owns HipHop powerhouses like Def Jam and Interscope accusing them of blocking distribution of the video which also included cameos from Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Chris Brown, Mary J. Blige, Jamie Foxx and boxer Floyd Mayweather. See the video below  |
| Gunmen Attack Daddy Showkey for the third time within One year Posted: 19 Jan 2012 07:01 AM PST  Musician John asiemo poularly known as daddy showkey was attacked recently for the third time within one year.He was attacked by suspected hired assassins near a petrol station on Agidinbgbi, Road, Lagos. Accoring to PM News,showkey was on his way to the petrol station when he noticed that two men on a motorcycle were riding behind him. "On getting to the petrol station, I joined the queue to buy some fuel, and suddenly a young man appeared beside me and informed me that my vehicle (a Toyota Landrover LR3), had a flat tyre. Though I suspected foul play , I decided to come down and fulfill all righteousness."But immediately I got down from the vehicle one of the men said, sewo niyen, meaning: 'you are the one', and shot at me twice."When the shots missed me, I engaged him in a fight and his partner came to his aid and opened fire on me again, which also did not hit me."They later managed to escape. While I was being attacked, motorists who were at the station to buy fuel all fled when they heard the gunshots," "I'm not involved in any shady business, I am a musician and I do other businesses outside Nigeria. I know say God dey," Showkey later reported the incident at Alausa Police Station.  |
| Nine foreign films make cut for Oscar shortlist,Nollywood nowhere to be found again Posted: 19 Jan 2012 04:57 AM PST  Nine films have made the cut for consideration in the foreign-language category at the Academy Awards. Among them is Iran's "A Separation" from writer-director Asghar Farhadi, which won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film last weekend and has been racking up kudos from critics groups nationwide. Also on the list is German director Wim Wenders' "Pina," a 3-D tribute to the career of groundbreaking choreographer Pina Bauschwhich is also on the shortlist for best documentary feature. The other contenders are: Belgium's "Bullhead," Canada's "Monsieur Lazhar," Denmark's "Superclásico," Israel's "Footnote," Morocco's, "Omar Killed Me," Poland's "In Darkness" and Taiwan's "Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale." This year its a morrocan film that got nominated , last year a south african film ,Life above all was nominated . Our own nollywood is no where to be found again this year , actors and producers have been claiming the third spot in the world after hollywood and bollywood . When will a nollywood movie be nominated for an Oscar Golden Globe or BAFTA ?.It's hightime our producers and directors bring out the professionalism in them and not produce movies with baseless storylines and popular singers name as title Oscar full nominations will be announced on Tuesday, with the ceremony set for Feb. 26.  |
| Adele's Album Matches No. 1 Run of Titanic Soundtrack Atop Billboard 200 Posted: 18 Jan 2012 11:34 PM PST  Adele 's 21 album has matched titanic soundtrack with 16 weeks run at the number one spot on Billboard chart. Prior to titanic ,it was the sountrack of the movie bodyguard by whitney houston that held the number one spot with 20 weeks on the chart . 21 album earned her six grammy nominations and sold additional 140,000 copies last week .Meanwhile,there are rumours that Adele will be making a comeback performance at the grammys on february 12 after being away for sometime due to having throat surgery . © celebregion |
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