A: Tunnels under the US/Mexican border are to be shut down because they are used to transport drugs.
B: Well the US Postal service is used to transport drugs as well, are you going to shut it down too???
ahem Do you really not see any difference between what MegaUpload used to do and what Google does? If so, I suspect willful ignorance. Again, I'm not arguing that copyright laws are sane, just saying I'm confused about the reactions of "how DARE they cast aspersions on MU and suggest that their model was based on piracy" when, well, casual observation of MU's case and the industry as a whole (RapidShare etc.) seems to strongly suggest that their model was based on piracy.*
Heck, I'll just say it straight: it's universal common knowledge that RS, MU, etc. build their businesses on piracy; people in this thread and on TorrentFreak who are trying to suggest otherwise are willfully ignoring the obvious in order to make a point. This makes the point weaker, so I suggest they stop. :)
Ok, so then I'll use Youtube as an example. The reason it became so popular was because it had TONS of copyrighted content on it in the beginning. I can remember back in my college days sitting and watching full episodes of South Park with my study group instead of doing homework. I could very easily have made the argument back then that Youtube was "built on piracy" (whatever that means).
OK, why does any P2P site ever get in trouble? If the standard is only linking and not hosting, why were Napster, Kazaa, Grokster, isohunt, oink, etc. shut down? None of these were hosting content, they just provided links (or the equivalent of links).
The reality is that the courts have recognized that operators who should have a knowledge that the content on their network is almost completely infringing don't have a viable excuse by just saying "we just provide links, we have nothing to do with the actual content". See the Grokster case.
So, here's the question: how much of Google's index is out of copyright, and would it be reasonable to expect Google to know that they are making money off of a catalog that is almost entirely copyrighted content without any license from or compensation to the copyright owners?
