Didn't read the article yet, but I am of the opinion that distribution channels are the things media execs are targeting.

Megaupload was used for legitimate business that is providing people with access to things not in the interest of the content industries, especially if they are not getting paid in the process of this distribution.

The more stuff they can have quashed as a byproduct of "copyright infringement" accusations....the better for them. They've already caused other MU-like sites to change the way the distribution works....non-shareable.

If you can give your stuff away for free and still get paid for every thousand hits....and do that with multiple files. You might just make a living, outside of the influence of big media.....until they take down the site you host it on.

Yes, they should boycott and in protest send half of what they would have spent on an Apple product to some charity in my name and the other half to me.

Phew, good thing I was here to answer this.

I like to believe the absolute worst when it comes to media anymore. In this case it would be doing this intentionally to create more piracy to prove their need for more laws to prevent piracy......because they TRIED everything else......obviously.

I still wonder what kind of money the major DRM scheme out there cost on a per title basis.

I am not willing to drop 40+ dollars on games anymore. Just because the chance of said game, even if it's a sequel to something I liked, sucking or being bug ridden, etc is just too high.

If I wait 1-2 years, I get a fully patched game for 5-10 bucks most of the time. And the ones that don't drop in price CoD and Blizzard titles...I really don't care for anyway.

And I still avoid the stupidly DRM-heavy titles even after it's 5 bucks, because I just don't want to deal with the bullshit.

So piracy may be a factor, but just flat out overpricing, under delivering, nickel and dime tactics, and outrageous DRM "hoops"....they have all definitely factored into my purchasing decisions. Yet I rarely see developers even consider that perhaps their efforts are like throwing gasoline on a fire.....giving people even less reasons to buy (which of course means they are now a pirate, because there's no way someone can say no to a game....they are like crack
......right?......right?........hello?........fanboys?.......hell we lost the fanboys too?).

They have stated before that they only want to spend time and resources on original IP which they own.

That statement coupled with Vanguard withering at their hands. I don't think they will support it. Im guessing they got it for pennies, milked the money out of it as best they could and kept it from competing with their games without them getting a cut.

Whole Vanguard situation still pisses me off. It looked to be a really good game, but it crashed constantly for me, was like magic with the memory leaks..every 30 something odd minutes I'd crash at a higher resolution, turn it down and it'd extend to about an hour....but I'd crash like clockwork. And it was in a game where dieing meant you got majorly screwed, not a good combination.

So they are being geographic-ist.

Shok wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 08:26:

I can see me liking the visit back to EQ up until the point that I leave a zone and see that "Loading, please wait..." screen. WoW's seamless world has spoiled me.

If they still have the same pathing and aggro system.....the trains in a seamless world would be.........monumental.

I just remember what Mistmoore and Unrest were like with the trains...insanity.

Tried playing my old druid on a free month a couple years back and I was just lost. I'd have to start a new guy to even begin to learn about the game without getting my guy killed a dozen times in the process of learning and potentially losing all my stuff.

I'd be willing to try it, but I doubt I'd give it much time to grow on me. SOE is not on my "Oh they'll take care of" list....it's sad they are one of the few successful MMO developers and have had one of the bigger selections but just end up nosing them all into the ground.

No, but it's easier to attempt to stop it than make games people want to keep and play more than once.

Most hacks/cheaters aren't going to be obvious about it. They want you to be their buddies and hang out with other people in game. So they aren't going to go out of their way to cheat/exploit/etc in obvious ways. They get you to go along with their "people are just that good" mantra. Then the more obvious "good"/cheating ..... if they are of the caliber of player you think exist in droves, they should be competing in the competitions and walking away as a top 10. If they didn't compete in a place that prevents cheating to a higher order than online play......then you can't reasonable expect what they claim to be true.


I would attribute the less subtle hacks to the game being f-in expensive to keep having to buy a new copy if you get caught cheating. So that means their banning/punishment methods are somewhat effective, even if their cheat detection isn't.

And I've seen plenty of cheaters in games, subtle and blatant. I even caught a friend cheating in WoW, and he tried to deny it because he knew I loathed the bots and stuff people employed in WoW that were slowly infesting battlegrounds matches and such. He stuck to the story for a long bit, until I caught him 2 more times and told him if he wasn't botting I think his account was being used without his knowledge. Then he told me the truth, which I knew all along........he was turning on a bot for about 4-5 hours of the day to queue up for and play battlegrounds. He'd play just enough of the day doing other things that you'd think he was around and afk or just not paying attention when the bot was on.

After I learned he was a bot, I saw other people follow the same path as him and play just like him when he was botting...and I found that about half the population in BGs were bots when you played during the lean population hours. I think it had profiles for each type of class, even caught a feral druid that would cat form and cloak a pattern each and every map. He'd walk a loop on one from point to point, and on another he'd make like a T pattern. Just repeating them over and over and over if no one detected him and killed him as soon as he was hit, he'd fight. Even if he had 6-7 players on him. No thinking whatsoever in combat was the prime example of a bot, they wouldn't change the way they did anything. When they died...they'd walk the same path.

And I realize it's not the same with FPS games, but I think it hints at a person's ability to justify their cheating as an "edge" that others are probably using so they should too. Otherwise they are chumps for putting in the time and effort to actually be earn their abilities/place.

It doesn't become cheating when you justify it by saying EVERYONE does it, and the only people who don't are just stupid (You don't use this and keep losing = not fun, so why wouldn't you use this and win - fun?....stupid)/poor(they probably can't afford the up front cost or monthly subscription some hack sites want for their hacks.....cheap mofos)/whiners (They are just jealous of my.....their hacks aren't as good as mine......it's fun to win, so why don't they just win and quit whining.....all of the players on their team has lower scores than our lowest player....they just suck, despite our higher player having more score than our team AND theirs combined....but it's the team supporting him...yeah that's the ticket).

I think we should apply it to physical goods. What would happen if the owners of a mall were found to be doing something potentially illegal, like being accused of making or distributing illegal DVD copies.

Would the entire mall be frozen, including all subsidiary shops that only rent space from the mall? I mean their store COULD be used to hide some of the production....so you can't let the store come in and take everything without looking first.

So they lock it all down......do they ever let the store recover it's goods? Or does the store write them off as a loss?


Now a storage unit rental place. If they are found to have a meth lab on the property, they freeze everything. Does that mean since the rental place owners can no longer receive rent payments from people renting they can run around and lock all the doors and sell off the contents later?


This is a case of, corporations digital property being "worth something" and everything else is considered worthless. I think people should absolutely sue to get their digital property rights established. Especially if it's a major source of income for them. And by doing so they may create a situation where the government has to realize that many of the tools out there have purposes beyond piracy, despite what the record labels tell them.

Wait a year or two and get the game new for 5-10 bucks...once the studio has went out of business.

There's a disconnect in thinking there. They want maximum profits, people want the most they can get. Always has been this way. But by the publishers and studios FORCING people to either buy at inflated prices for the content or wait for prices to drop, they essentially put the developer out of business.

I think it's amusing to see Indies who bend over backwards to make people happy succeed, and published studios basically tell people to kiss their asses end up not existing a year or two later. Except in the second half of that sentence, the excuse is PIRACCCCYYYY tuk er juuuubbss.

Anytime I see "Good News Everyone!".....I hear the professor's voice for at least that much of it.

Beamer wrote on Jan 24, 2012, 10:46:
No doubt corporations are basically sociopaths (as is Erin Brockovich, for that matter, just look at what she's doing now) but this whole strong-arming the conflict of interest doesn't happen.

If it did it would just be lost revenues for top attorneys, who would complain to the ABA, who would change the rules, as the ABA basically does whatever the big firms tell it to.

Like with all things, easier money tends to rule the day. Judging by how hot button the MegaUpload thing is, and how it would set a nice precedent for RIAA and MPAA, along with the enforcement agencies. Plus the nice 20+ million dollar bounty there is up for grabs if they manage to convict in the goal of splitting assets. I think they'd be willing to help the law firm smooth out it's revenue woes.

They are basically setting up a case for the future takedowns and/or censorship of any online medium which could be used to propagate piracy...wherever it may be. And no matter what the outcome of the case, it's another argument to be made for the case of a SOPA/PIPA like law.

If they win, it's SOPA/PIPA will reduce the cost of these investigations by........

If they lose, it will be more campaign donations and SOPA/PIPA is needed to make it so we can prosecute the next dotcom.


It shrinks the distribution channels of piracy, but also for legitimate indie artists who provide free alternatives to the RIAA/MPAA stuff. And just general alternative content to be had, youtube makes it pretty easy for people to take down your stuff via "report as offensive"......not so much with the others.

Beamer wrote on Jan 24, 2012, 09:33:
Veterator - no, your theory does not work. It's very rare that a law firm goes after both sides. If a law firm defends someone distributing tainted beef it does not go after people that distribute tainted beef and vice versa. Firms, and lawyers, tend to either defend or go after. While each makes exceptions to this based upon the circumstances, law firms specialize in things, and it's difficult to specialize in working with corporations and working against them, even from a mere standpoint of justifying to your clients why you do this. People would not want a firm famous for getting a corporation off helping them take a similar one down. Corporations would not want to get cozy with a firm famous for taking their peers down.

It's not that the law firm essentially knows that they've dealt with the company directly. It could be a subsidiary that does advertising under another name. But both companies being blanketed by the same parent corporation.

It could be on something where they are going after someone who is using or messing with their trademark. A really small subsidiary, which would appear to be a small business and they tie up a firm who represents small businesses and/or individuals in fighting the big guys.

A corporation wouldn't necessarily want to be cozy with them, just have them unable to act against them. And conflict of interest is a way to get that accomplished. I suspect it's why you see a lot of virtually unknown lawyers taking cases, because they are not mired in the conflicts of interest through any firm like more established lawyers would be.

Hell the Erin Brockovich case the movie was based on had a different form of conflict of interest in which the judges were known to have associated with the lawyers involved.

But hiring lawyers to do small tasks is a fairly cheap way to avoid issues with them in the future, they'd have to fight the conflict of interest claim before they could even start with the actual issue at hand.

So I think my theory holds up fine. Corporations are basically sociopaths, you can't assume they don't do any underhanded thing they can to get an edge. In this case, legally preventing the ability of people to present the best defense possible by taking the top lawyer out of the equation. Once they name the client claiming conflict, then we'll know. Im betting it doesn't get announced.

Napoleon Theme Park, they stole the idea from Bill & Ted. Someone should sue.

Responding to "Megaupload loses its top lawyer over conflict of interest."

I believe this is a tactic used by corporations to prevent people from getting a lawyer to support their side. If you have the firm do even the tiniest bit of work for you, you can prevent someone else from using that firm to sue you through conflict of interest.

For an example, if you had a local company who was distributing tainted food and you believed they did it knowing it was tainted or kept distributing after it was found to be. When it first came up, they could run out to all the law firms capable of putting up a fight and hire them to draw up a contract or some other minor thing. They are now clients of said law firms.

People being hurt by tainted food, now seeking a law firm, which is going to be local since it's be crazy expensive without a class action to get one from outside of the local area. They can only get the smallest of outfits who are incapable of putting up the funds to fight these guys.

And they can continue this process by hitting all the big players with small contracts or whatever, making themselves clients and preventing people from getting the huge firms to back them in an action against these agencies.


Just speculation, but the timing of the takedown, the information provided so readily on the takedown especially the negative connotation of it all, and now this "conflict of interest" on a top lawyer in their defense. Seems like someone is playing nasty to get a case against Megaupload, when if they were obviously guilty....there'd be no need for this.

Sounds like they are trying to add a TF2 crate system to their services, without actually bothering to do all the hard stuff associated with it.

And want more money per chance to boot.

5g, the next way to force you to upgrade.

Introduce data plan.....require people to be 5g capable. Forced phone upgrade.

Unlimited data plan......don't want to support it anymore. Make it so it only applies to 3g phones, 4g and 5g won't work with it.

Guess that's the new trend now, force people to update phones more often.

rist3903 wrote on Jan 21, 2012, 21:05:

Whole timing of it being right around the time the anti-SOPA/PIPA stuff was going down.......

Just leads me to believe that while they may have been investigating him, I think they pushed it through to happen at a specific time for the most sensationalism.

To what end? This closely coupled with the protests against the originals seem like they would make passing a SOPA/PIPA 2.0 into law about as easy as winning the war on terror.

They are showing they can already do it, but it takes time. So with SOPA/PIPA and the removal of the need to get actual evidence and have a grand jury trial, they could have already had them taken down before they had amassed their 25+ cars and 20+ million dollar mansion, etc etc.

Because, the guy was obviously up to no good....you wouldn't need to cut an innocent man out of his saferoom/bunker. Plus his license plate said GUILTY. If you just bribe donate more money, they could get these laws on the books and these guys wouldn't have gotten this far. The other countries are willing to work with us, we just take too damned long due to lack of SOPA/PIPA.

It'll go down something like that, even better if they manage to get themselves off the hook......so they can add some stuff in there to SOPA/PIPA 2.0 to make it easier to convict next time after they skip grand jury and evidence collection.


From what I've read they asked for help from NZ in early 2011 and were collecting evidence before that. So over a year probably more like 2-3. I fail to see how 1-3 years evidence collection culminates right around the time that the law that would help them do this stuff easier/quicker and they react at the time of the protests against those laws. Just.......too coincidental.