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8
Apr

Major movie studios finally file a lawsuit against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom


We’re not sure what took so long, but the MPAA just announced that major movie studios (Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia and Warner) have filed a civil lawsuit against former filesharing site Megaupload and the people who ran it. This comes over two years after federal investigators shut down the website, seized its files and filed criminal charges against founder Kim Dotcom (aka Kim Schmitz). MPAA lawyer Steven Fabrizio claims that at the time of its shutdown, Megaupload was “by all estimates the largest and most active infringing website targeting creative content in the world.” Specifically targeting the site’s Uploader Rewards program, the claim is that its business model was “designed to encourage theft.”

Kim Dotcom was arrested on those criminal charges in 2012, but now he’s out on bail and fighting against extradition to the US from New Zealand. While doing that, he’s also opened up a new, secure, file service called Mega, launched a political party, recorded a song and even returned to the top of the Call of Duty leaderboards. Dotcom has maintained that Megaupload operated legally under the DMCA, and never received a lawsuit or cease and desist letter from any of the studios.

In response to the lawsuit, he tweeted a link to a whitepaper describing a collaboration between the MPAA, former senator and now Chairman/CEO of the MPAA Chris Dodd and Vice President Joe Biden to selectively target Megaupload on the grounds of copyright. Grab a cup of coffee and give it a read along with the MPAA’s complaint here — given the pace of proceedings we figure you’ve got plenty of time.

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Source: MPAA (PDF), The United States vs. You (and Kim Dotcom) (PDF)

8
Apr

Microsoft’s working on Xbox 360 emulation for Xbox One, but ‘there aren’t currently any plans’ to make it


Xbox-related news from Microsoft’s Build conference last week wasn’t just relegated to Kinect for Windows, it would seem. Redmond is having a hard time bringing the Xbox 360′s considerable catalog of games to the Xbox One via hardware emulation. Last week an audience member asked lead partner developer Frank Savage if there were plans to bring an Xbox 360 emulator, as spotted by Kotaku’s Australia wing, to its new console. Savage said there are, but “we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately.” He went on to say that emulating the last-gen console’s PowerPC architecture on the Xbox One’s x86-based platform is actually pretty hard to do. We reached out to Microsoft for confirmation and were told, as Savage said, nothing has been assembled yet. “It is super challenging to emulate two completely different architectures, and there aren’t currently any plans to build this,” the Redmond spokesperson said. Just like that, our dreams of playing Red Dead Redemption with the Xbox One’s controller have (temporarily) been dashed.

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Source: Kotaku Australia

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