BUSTED

Feds Shut Down Megaupload

Charge owners with online piracy.

Time to start hunting for a new place to watch TV: Megaupload, one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several others were charged with breaking piracy laws. Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s founder, was arrested in New Zealand along with several executives at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. An indictment accused the site of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue. Megaupload hosted television shows, movies and music that it allowed users to download for free and sold subscriptions for faster downloading privileges. A statement from the site ahead of the arrests said, “The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue.” Shortly after the site was shuttered, the Justice Department site went down. The hacking group Anonymous claimed responsibility.