Ah, I found out why the US government was able to do this.
Found out? You make it seem like you had to rummage for it. I posted it two pages ago.
This is the only legitimate criticism you have of my post (and honestly, I read so much shit I can't keep track of where I found what most of the time).
Also, they didn't have servers in just the US. So, I think they should only be charged in the US for those servers that were on US soil. Most of their servers are in the Netherlands and will probably never have a single finger lifted against.
I never said it was just in the US, but since they broke US law while they were operating in the US, that means the US is able to act against the company.
You also can't ignore the other facts like what actually pushed this to happen, such as the stupid 'not a real top 100' and 'no real search tool'.
Addressed already so I won't do it.
Given that the site was already using US courts to file actions; given that the government had Megaupload e-mails talking about using US lawyers to file cases against other "pirate" sites; given that the site did at least take down content and built an abuse tool; and given that big-name artists support the site, the severity of the government's reaction is surprising.
Which is an agreeable concern.
Okay, we have a hypothetical landlord. Said landlord knows of two different tenants (Bill and Ted) that are independently manufacturing meth, but only reports Bill to the police. Assuming for the moment that it is a crime to knowingly harbor meth labs on your property (it probably is, but I don't feel like looking it up) do you really think that when the cops decide to crack down on Ted's meth lab and find documents showing the landlord knows about Ted's methlab that saying 'but I reported Bill's!' is going to mean anything?
In other words, reporting one incident does not absolve you of responsibility to report another incident.
I'm not even going to bother with the celebrity endorsement because that is a completely bullshit argument as far as law is concerned and you should know that.