So most of us webbernet savvy people are more than aware of the whole debacle around the shut down of Mega Uploads by the FBI, and the follow up counter attacks by anon that though simple and mild still took the podium right out from under the authorities in their moment of triumph. In that time the FBI has openly placed ads looking for dedicated developers to create “ the most sophisticated web crawlers ever” to help them in their oh so important task of fighting piracy. I also hope they and the united recording artists don’t find my stash of mix tapes I made in 86.

All joking aside, and lets even set aside any idea of “ who was right and who was wrong” over this whole matter and focus on one development that is posing a headache for the feds as well as defenders of the constitution. The issue comes in the form of the true contents of Mega upload. The media made it sound as if the site was designed for the L337 hacker pirates and that is all the site was. The truly educated knows very well that this was not the case.

The site is also used by many many legit users. Files may include back ups of work files, all the way to collaboration projects between artists- be it any medium- and in fact many recording artists whom were suppose to be “ rescued” by the FBI's assault. The initial plan was to shut down and purge the site of it's contents en-mass. The problem here comes from the millions upon millions of data fragments that are protected under the first amendment. This spells trouble for that plan. It's an easy way to get the pirated files off “ that “ site ( forget that there are about a billion others) but now you run a legal nightmare. The other option? Renew a warrant, and go through every single file one by one and remove only the ones deemed un protected, or in violation ( which this ALSO has problems in the way that US copyright law- fair usage clauses, and international protection laws also do not share the same guidelines) It also would be time consuming and costly. And lets also consider another perk/downside to that option. It means every single up loader will be searched, legit user or not. I don’t see this case going too far in the short term, at least nothing definitive, but it is something everyone should be keeping some tabs on for the time being.