I would agree. They've dotted every i and crossed every t here. This will inevitably be followed by a prosecution of some sort and/or there's also scope for Megaupload to sue the USG for restitution. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out - especially wrt any safe harbor provisions in the DMCA for providers (which do have a provision for due diligence being exercised etc). Probable cause for seizure should have been easy to establish - no shortage of warez, cp etc on these free upload sites. On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 7:39 AM, Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
What differentiates this from many of the earlier domain name seizures is that this is based on a grand jury indictment, not just an administrative decision by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It may be heavy-handed or questionable, per the Ars Technica analysis, but as a matter of process it's about as good as you'll get.
-- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists@gmail.com)