REPORT PREPARED FOR:   BY SUMIT MAGGON JENNY CHONG RUZAN ICHAPORIA   POSTGRADUATE DIPLOMA IN BUSINESS APMG 8119: DIGITAL ENTERPRISE 2016

Business Background of Megaupload Megaupload, founded in 2005, is a cloud service provider allowing users to upload, store, share and download including copyrighted content via links and conventional search engines It had an average of 50 million daily visits, and four percent of the total traffic on the Internet Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom, at present is accused of running the now-defunct file storage site as a piracy ring and encouraging users to upload copyrighted material illegally When Megaupload.com was shut down in 2012 by U.S. law enforcement, it was by all estimates the largest and most active infringing website targeting creative content in the world

About The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay is the world’s largest bittorrent indexer The Pirate Bay was started by the Swedish anti copyright organization Piratbyrån in the late 2003 In October 2004 it separated became run by dedicated individuals Today the site is run by an organisation rather than individuals, though as a non-profit The Pirate Bay was first run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, who are known by their nicknames "Anakata" and "Tiamo", respectively They have both been accused of "assisting in making copyrighted content available" by the Motion Picture Association of America On 17 April 2009, were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 4.2 million USD, after a trial of nine days

Content The Pirate Bay allows users to download via peer-to-peer networks which, when opened in a BitTorrent client, begin downloading the desired content The torrents are organized into categories: "Audio", "Video", "Applications", "Games", "Porn" and "Other".

Funding From 2004 until 2006, The Pirate Bay had a "Donate" link to a donations page which listed several payment methods Since 2006, the website has received financing through advertisements on result pages According to speculations, the advertisements generate about US$84,000 per month. In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in US$169,000 per year from advertisements The prosecution estimated in the 2009 trial from emails and screenshots that the advertisements pay over US$1.4 a year

How does BitTorrents Work ? BitTorrent consumes 12% of total Internet traffic in North America and 36% of total traffic in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a 2012 study

NZ Copyright Laws The copyrights act of New Zealand was penned in 1994 to protect the rights and interest of artists, authors and other media owners against deliberate and in deliberate act of violation from ownership and public broadcast of such media The primary scope of the acts states the scope but not restricted to the following: copying the work publishing, issuing or selling copies to the public performing, playing or showing the work in public broadcasting the work making any work derived or adapted from the copyright work.

NZ Copyright Laws The copywriter works includes the following: Literary works Dramatic works Artistic works Musical works Sound recordings Films and movies Broadcasts Typographical arrangement of published editions

Customer and Data Ownership Data ownership is the act of having legal rights and complete control over a single piece or set of data elements Since the user pays for the cloud storage which is stored in a public/private account, there is always ambiguity for the integrity of data as to if the copyright laws are being violated or not. But at the same time the innocent incumbent users pays the price for the serial violators We believe the ownership should remain with the users as not everyone is hosting illegal content or public sharing and sends some implications for the host websites to track the user base with extremely high traffic and conducts integrity checks on the data being stored so as to safeguard the interest of the users following the norms and complying with the copyright laws

Data Ownership in NZ context According to New Zealand Data Future Forum, there are 4 guiding principles for data using, storage and sharing:   Value New Zealand should use data to drive economic and social value and create a competitive advantage. Inclusion All parts of New Zealand society should have the opportunity to benefit from data use. Trust Data Management in New Zealand should build trust and confidence in the institutions. Control Individuals should have greater control over the use and distribution of their personal data.

Summary A large number of hosting websites are in a big dilemma over the integrity of data being hosted, neither can they check each and every gigabite of data being uploaded, nor could they overlook the possibilities of potential violations being conducted by doggy users and hosted on their websites. Website like thepiratebay.org, magaupload, megashare, etc have been listed as illegal in nature and are considered a serious offence but still not banned and with a slight change in the IP address through a VPN could be easily accessed without getting tracked A way to completely block the hosting violation could be tying up with the Internet service providers and making the websites inaccessible and forcing the law and order instead of cracking down the violators.