The FBI closes Megaupload and arrested its founders

The U.S. government has closed the web site content download Megaupload , preemptively arresting its founders and several employees of massive violation of copyright. This is the latest skirmish in a high-profile war against piracy of movies and music.

The Justice Department announced the arrests of four company executives in New Zealand.This move comes at a time when the debate on Internet piracy reached a peak in Washington , where lawmakers try to develop more stringent legislation, the controversy SOPA Act . The industries of film and music want Congress to combat piracy and theft of online content, but large companies Internet as Google and Facebook have complained that the current draft legislation would lead to censorship.

An official from the Department of Justice has declared that the time of the arrests was not related to the battle in Congress. Police in New Zealand has entered into a mansion in Auckland and arrested the founder of Megaupload , Kim Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz , 37, a German national resident in New Zealand.

About 70 policemen, some armed, entered 10 properties and arrested the president of marketing for the website, Batata Finn, 38, technical director and co-founder, Mathias Ortmann, 40, both also Germany and the Netherlands Bram van der Kolk, 29, who also lives in New Zealand.

Police have seized millions of dollars in assets, including luxury cars including a Rolls Royce Phantom and Drophead Coupe. Also seized more than NZ $ 10 million (eight million U.S. dollars) of financial institutions.

The answers

Reactions Internet these facts have not been slow to appear and the first responses have come from the collective hand of Anonymous hackers announced that it has blocked at least six major sites, including the Justice Department and U.S. company Universal Music Group , in response to the closure of the service on-line file hosting Megaupload by the FBI .

Both universalmusic.com as justice.gov have dropped off the network on Thursday afternoon and remain without service at 03:00 hours on mainland Spain. Other sites affected are theAssociation of Recording Industry of America (RIAA) , Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Copyright Office of the United States and the Association of Chief Police Officers of Utah .

At 03:00 hours on mainland Spain, only the page of the MPAA was functional. The websites of the RIAA and the Copyright Office do not serve, while the website of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Utah has been modified by the logo of Megaupload .

Also, Anonymous has threatened the FBI to be the next organization to be ‘hacked’. ”There are orders that ‘fbi.gov’ (…) is the next report when it” has published a Twitter account affiliated with the group, as reported by the U.S. television channel FOX News .