How can the USA authorities take down a Hong-Kong based company and arrest people in New-Zealand ? Ars Technica explains, it turns out that the actions are based on the fact that Megaupload's clients were often in the USA, they ran adverts there and interacted with the USA market actively. In a way they are considered to have been running at least part of their business on USA grounds.
Fair or not, it seems that that is how the cookie crumbles, and crumbling it is. Personally I don't care for such websites and Kim Dotcom, aka Kimble Special Agent, seems far from being an angel. However it's still hard to accept that they can be taken down in an instant drug lord style. It doesn't seem like the accusations are half as bad as some towards companies that have either leaked petrol all over the world or have bankrupted families.. ...(insert long list of companies that messed up way more seriously and have in some cases even been bailed out).
In reaction to such news, an other "upload" service provider called Uploaded.to has decided to close it's service to the USA, this should help avoid breaking USA law on USA territory.
This whole abusive world policing attitude could earn the USA some Interweb censorship, but not from SOPA/PIPA this time, but simply from websites that do not want to have to deal with USA law. It's true that this Megaupload takedown happened right after the anti-SOPA strike, the what when why questions have been talked about all over the Internet, but now I am wondering if this isn't exactly what the USA wants, a censored Internet, like China and Iran, but censored voluntarily by website owners in fear of a possible breach of USA law and it's possible effects on one's postal address.
Update: In the past couple of days, many companies that provide the same services as Megaupload have either limited their services, closed their services to the U.S.A. or even just plain closed. Torrentfreak's report on the disturbance in the ecosystem.
