Megaupload closes ... and related news!

File sharing site Megaupload has been closed down by US authorities who believed that the site was being used as a conduit far copyright infringement on a massive scale as well as racketeering and money laundering, with the FBI initiating the closing down of the Hong Kong hosted site after an indictment was granted.

A US grand jury granted the indictment against seven people connected with the site - with the site's leader, a Hong Kong and New Zealand resident called 'Kim Dotcom' (he changed his surname from Schultz) being arrested after being found in a panic room in his New Zealand home by local police. He has been denied bail whilst US authorities request his extradition.

The FBI and the US Justice Department (DoJ) announced that the site had caused more than half a million dollars of damage to copyright holders, with the DoJ saying:

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the US and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime."

The announcement that got the ire of the hacktivists at Anonymous who then took down both their websites and those of rights holders in a revenge attack.

There have been other repercussions as a result of the case too.

Digital locker provider FileSonic has heeded the arrest of the Megaupload founders by turning off the file sharing features of their service, deploying the following prominent message on their homepage:

"All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally."

There could also be a further knock-on effect on other file sharing and digital locker websites like RapidShare and Dropbox, who will at the very least be reviewing their own content hosting policies in the wake of the ruling - which authorities have hailed as a massive anti piracy success.

Megaupload's closure has overshadowed the controversial ruling by a Westminster Magistrates Court judge that 23-year-old computing student Richard O'Dwyer can be extradited to the US over his TVShack website - which hosted links to copyrighted material but not the material itself before it was closed down.

A similar UK prosecution was thrown out last year, but his defence were unable to convince a judge that this was sufficient grounds to prevent an extradition - the ruling for which his legal team will appeal.