Major artists record song to benefit MegaUpload, even as RIAA vilifies it as a "pirate site"

Drunkenmaster sez, "MegaUpload is one of the main sites frequently vilified by the RIAA and MPAA as a rogue site dedicated to destroying their business models. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. The song itself is pretty mediocre, but still seems like a PR coup."

Megaupload Mega Song (Thanks, Drunkenmaster!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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peterblue11

aehm, where is the megaupload link? ;)
no seriously this is awesome. but i thought megaupload was owned by the same fat piece of crap who owns rapidshare. hes a german big time criminal hunted in several continents.
http://facebook.com/johnhupp John Hupp

I’ve always hated the file-sharing sites for passing costs on to downloaders, with persistent, aggressive upselling.

For sharing with friends or colleagues I much prefer Dropbox and its ilk.

And if you’re not infringing on copyright, YouTube much? And it’s not that hard to get into the various music stores.
- Jonathan Roberts
  
  Unlike with Facebook, Megaupload users are their customers, not their product. That’s why downloaders have to pay.
  - http://facebook.com/johnhupp John Hupp
    
    Non-sequitur? I pay to use Dropbox. When I share with my friends, they can download for free. If I were to use megaupload to share with my friends, it would try to upsell them to premium accounts. Sites that pass on costs like that are for cheap bastards and pirates.
    - Jonathan Roberts
      
      This is true. Megaupload is marketing itself as a content provider rather than an actual uploading site. Even if they don’t explicitly approve of uploading pirated content, that’s how they make their money. It is interesting to see where the money comes from in these websites (uploaders/downloaders/advertisers etc.), as it gives you some idea of who gets the most value from the site and what it’s going to be used for.
      - http://facebook.com/johnhupp John Hupp
        
        So one could say that megaupload, et al, are integral parts of the online informal economy. The Canal Street of music stores, for people who have no interest of buying or selling through [the digital equivalent of] Macy’s.
morkl

“This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”

Oh, the irony…
Nimdae

Funny, video has been taken down on copyright grounds by UMG.
stoutpants

This link works, for now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9caPFPQUNs
Also, how the hell could UMG have a copyright on this?
- morkl
  
  $5 say they don’t, but send out claims about videos, songs and whatnot that somehow relate to artists they represent no matter who has the rights.
- marilove
  
  Nope…no longer available due to copyright infringement. Oh, the irony.
  - http://sarahhayes.is-a-geek.net/ SarahKH
    
    Really shows how messed up the (C) system is doesn’t it?
http://twitter.com/Kajortoq Kajortoq

this is mediocre and the people who made it should feel bad.

it’s effective neither as a song, nor as an advertisement, and it’s mish-mash of signifiers, celebrities, and unremarkable sounds all add up to one a big joke. i can’t believe money was spent on this.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The unlistenable benefit song is a traditional musical form, of which We Are The World is the first known example.
Larry Anderson

tracked it down with Google Search – not a bad ad or video – I am wondering what UMG considers infringing content… Cause it looked all original to me.
- http://twitter.com/dreamtroit Steve Barman
  
  It’s not copyright infringement. The RIAA is claiming it is to silence the song.
http://clarinerd617.myopenid.com/ Henry Goodwin

UMG probably blocked it specifically because they do not like MegaUpload…
Finnagain

And if our intrepid Congressional copyright protectors have their way, soon not only will the link be gone, this whole site will be shut down.

I feel safer already.
nickquest

Didn’t get to see it. More links would be nice.
http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

Per Wikipedia, Kim Schmitz, co-owner/founder of MegaUpload was “convicted of credit card fraud, computer fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement.

In 1998 Schmitz was sentenced to a probationary sentence of two years for computer fraud and handling with stolen goods.[5] According to a report by News & Record he had traded with stolen calling card numbers he bought from hackers in the United States.[6]

In January 2002, Schmitz was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, deported to Germany, and sentenced to a probationary sentence of one year and eight months, and a EUR 100,000 fine, the largest insider-trading case in Germany at the time.[14] Schmitz also pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and received a two-year probation sentence.”
- peterblue11
  
  yea thats the guy. i was confused thinking kim was some asian upstarter but yea he is that german piece of crap. i wouldnt really endorse this guy.
Tony

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmvpu4_megaupload-mega-song_tech
Nimdae

What’s funny is UMG is likely doing this vengefully, and the DMCA includes bits to punish them for that. I guess we’ll see where this goes!
nickquest

Wow, not very good. But still I wonder what the supposed reason for the takedown was, other than spite. It all seemed original to me.
ChibiR

The currently embedded vid gives me an even better error: “This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
But thanks to thisRobot for linking to a working version!

Edit to add: Not a super-great song, but still quite catchy!
disillusion

Torrentfreak has an article up about how the takedown was indeed vindictive and that UMG has no rights to the video whatsoever.
http://torrentfreak.com/universal-censors-megaupload-song-gets-branded-a-rogue-label-111210/

It also has the video embedded at the bottom of the article.
- http://twitter.com/silentkpants Katrina Voll-Taylor
  
  Thanks for the article link, disillusion, that was illuminating.
- ocker3
  
  That article has a link to a Youtube vid that’s been taken down, at the bottom is a link to a new article with a vimeo video that’s still up (new article is linked below)
  
  http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-label-artists-a-list-stars-endorse-megaupload-in-new-song-111209/
  - disillusion
    
    At the very bottom of the link I posted it’s embedded from MegaVideo. I think you saw the Youtube takedown notice that was just a picture and not the video itself.
oasisob1

Those that can… d/l it and r-u/l it to youtube every chance you get.
jenjen

Honestly, why are there not penalties in DMCA for abuse of takedown notice procedures? UMG owns nothing about this content but they can have it taken down. The penalty for fraudulently claiming infringement should be the same as for infringement. So wrong. (Even if I don’t like MegaUpload OR this video)
- ocker3
  
  How does that help? Any penalty that’s appropriate for a single person who violates copyright is going to be small beans to a corp like UMG.
  - http://twitter.com/russ Russ
    
    Easy, give them 3 chances, then take away the corp’s right to use the internet.
- http://twitter.com/regularfry Alex Young
  
  There are, it’s a felony.
Jonathan Roberts

In some ways, this is the best thing to have happened. UMG gets egg on its face for obviously and repeatedly overstepping its bounds by claiming ownership of a song that they have no rights to. The copyright issue gets a whole lot more publicity because people start to see what’s at stake when uncreative people own creative content, and we don’t even have to watch the mediocre video for it to become viral. Everyone wins! Except for UMG.

Oh wait. No, come to think of it, probably UMG ignores all of the publicity, screws everyone because they can and everyone loses.
Grey Devil

Taken down for TOS Violations. Hilarious.
vicx

Hey I liked this. It sounds as good as any top40 song and it has all these stars pimping. M E G A MegaUplooooooaaaaaaad!

Srsly the abuse of DMCA has to be addressed. I think there should be a three strikes rule for false claims of ownership. If you get overuled three times you get banned from any further claims.
- Teaflax
  
  “It sounds as good as any top40 song”
  
  Exactly, it sucks donkey balls. Insipid, pandering to the lowest common denominator and repetitive to the point of madness. Yeah, top 40 quality, alright.
http://redesigned.com redesigned

the dmca is dead, it just doesn’t know it yet. copyright is one of those issues that most people under a certain see as obvious that it will change. this is just one of the dinosaurs of our era.
noah django

>2011
>using MegaUpload
>ISHYGDDT

Mediafire, y’all. go to Google type this—> site: mediafire.com (album title, artist)
you’re welcome.
kjh

Corporations are people now but some people are more equal than others.

Just remember many-legs good, two-legs bad.

Only good people can really own copyrights.
penguinchris

What exactly was the motivation for these people to participate in a “benefit song” for MegaUpload, a rather scummy site?

I believe MegaUpload has every right to exist, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still scummy and run by a known criminal (as has been noted).

Is the site actually being used at large by people – including these pop stars, presumably – for purposes other than sharing copyrighted material, and pornography of a dubious nature? If so, perhaps I could understand these pop stars participating. If YouTube were in danger, for example, I would expect tons of stars to stand up in support of it.

In this case, I can only presume that the people who run MegaUpload paid a lot of money to arrange this, and most of the stars involved had no idea what it was.

edit: I read an article and watched the video, and this is definitely the case. They’re totally insincere and probably don’t know what megaupload is. Not that I actually recognized any of the people in it, but I could tell they were being insincere. The song itself is awful, but it’s interesting… if it was edited down by maybe a minute and a half, to take out the slow, boring bits – it’s got what could be a decent African-inspired (ala Graceland) song in there, with pretty funny MegaUpload lyrics.
delafield

UMG has a history of issuing take-down notices for videos that are “critical” of the company. See the Wikipedia article under “controversy.” You publish something critical of UMG, you get a take-down notice.
With respect to Kim Dotcom, the RIAA and MPAA constantly cite his criminal past. But that side steps the issues at hand. When someone is critical of your past rather than addressing the issues at hand, it usually means they are weak on the issues. His past seems irrelevant to the copyright issues at hand in this particular situation.
http://twitter.com/dbrunker Dave Brunker

How to hide a video on YouTube: describe it in a non-English language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8aUCnyKH2U