Where Did All The Megaupload Traffic Go To?

Megaupload was one of the most visited sites on the Internet before its take down earlier this month. No one up until now looked at the consequences of that takedown in regards to the traffic the site received. Did it just go *poof* or did users flock to other sites instead to do whatever they have been doing on Megaupload?

One way to find out is to look at Alexa’s comparison chart. Alexa computes a site’s global and local rank from data gathered by its toolbar and a number of additional sources. While not 100% accurate, it can give an indication of a site’s traffic performance over time.

Even better, you can key in up to four competitive sites to compare their performance with the selected site. When you do that for Megaupload, and the four sites ThePiratebay, Rapidshare, Mediafire and Filesonic, you come up with the following graph.

Megaupload was shut down on January 20, and you can see a big drop shortly thereafter (the blue line). The site stayed on a high level nevertheless. This is explained by users still clicking on links leading to the site. While these links return a 404 error, Alexa may still count the visits. It is likely that the site will slowly drop to 0 over the coming months.

You also see that Filesonic experienced a drop. This is because of the site’s announcement that they would block the site’s file sharing component.

The Piratebay on the other hand saw a huge increase in daily reach a few days after the takedown. The site went over the 1.5 daily reach mark in percent which it never crossed before in January. Mediafire saw a big jump in traffic as well during that same time. Rapidshare, another file hosting company saw a lighter increase.

This is no proof obviously, and traffic may have increased because of other reasons. It is however likely that Megaupload and Filesonic users simply moved on to use other services. And those are not only file hosting related, considering that The Piratebay’s traffic increased as well. What’s your take on the matter?

EFF Starts Operation Mega Retrieval

When the Megaupload servers were taken down, no one bothered to distinguish legitimate data from data that infringed on the copyright of others. Users who had been using Megaupload as a host for their own files were now in a position where they were denied access to those files, even though they were in many cases completely legal. It was even worse for some users who had no access to local backups of the data. With the take down of Megaupload, access to those files was no longer available.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation in cooperation with Carpathia Hosting has started the Mega Retrieval project. The main purpose of the project is to connect affected end-users from the United States with the EFF to assess options.

It is not clear at this point in time if the EFF and its attorneys can aid Megaupload users in the retrieval of files that they have uploaded to the service. Affected users are asked to contact the EFF (an email address is provided on the Mega Retrieval website).

f you believe you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help to retrieve your data, please email the best contact information for you to the EFF at:

Megauploadmissing@eff.org

The page notes that users shall not send any details of materials they have uploaded. It is likely that this initial step is needed to assess the number of users who are affected by the Megaupload take down.

Affected users should not get their hopes up to high though, as it is not clear at this point in time if anything can be done to prevent the deletion of all server data.

It may also be difficulty for users to come up with additional information if requested. While they may be able to look up their account name, they may have troubles listing the files that they have uploaded to the service.

What’s your take on the development?

Megaupload Down, Here Are Some Alternatives

If you are a regular Megaupload user you have probably already noticed that the site and all of the files hosted on its servers are no longer accessible on the Internet. Check out Megaupload Shuts Down, Arrests Have Been Made for an overview of what happened in the past 24 hours.

Internet users who have been using Megaupload regularly or sporadically for file hosting or downloads are now left with the task of finding a comparable service that they can use for these operations.

Probably one of the first file hosts to be mentioned in this regard is Filesonic, as it is providing the same upload size limit of 1 Gigabyte per file and unlimited storage. The site has an affiliate program that rewards affiliate for bringing new users to the site or for downloads. Please note that you need an account before you can start to upload files to the service.

MediaFire on the other hand is a free and simple file host. The biggest advantage of the service is that you can upload files right away without having to create an account first. The maximum file size for free accounts is 200 Megabytes which is considerably lower than the 1 Gigabyte supported by Filesonic.

Rapidshare is another popular file hosting service. It too requires you to create an account before you can start hosting files on the Rapidshare server. Rapidshare has no file size limitations when it comes to uploading files to the server. Free users have to endure wait times and slower download speeds though on the download side of things.

Oron lets you upload files with a size of up to 400 Megabytes directly on the site’s frontpage. Registered users can upload files with a size of up to 1024 Megabytes, which is also the maximum download size for free and registered users of the service. The site has an affiliate program in place that rewards uploaders and sites in various ways, for instance by paying per download or sale.

Here is a selection of additional hosts that you can use to upload files to or earn money from:

• Multishare – Up to 5120 Megabytes, 3 files max per upload. Pays 67% of all premium sales and rebills.
• Content Cooperation – Pays for a variety of services, including uploading or promoting files.
• Uploading – Files with a maximum size of 5 Gigabyte can be uploaded to the file hosting service. Multiple revenue models available including pay per download or sale.

Which file hosting service would you recommend as a Megaupload alternative? Lets hear some suggestions in the comments.

Megaupload Shuts Down, Arrests Have Been Made

The popular file hosting site Megaupload has been shut down by US authorities on Thursday, and the site’s leaders have been charged with widespread online copyright infringement. According to an US Department of Justice press release, Megaupload generated more than “$175 million in criminal proceeds” and caused more than “half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners”.

Seven members of the site and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in Virgina, and charged “with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement”.

Arrests have been made in New Zealand, were Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and three others were arrested at the request of US officials. According to The Verge, a total of 20 search warrants have been issued in the US and eight other countries including The Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Australia. In addition, assets worth more than $50 million US Dollars have been seized as well as 18 domain names associated with the business.

Users who try to open the Megaupload website, any of the site’s inner pages, hosted files or one of the related domain names will notice that all connections time out. Megaupload, which has been listed as one of the top 100 sites at Alexa, and its cousin site Megavideo, in the sub 200 rankings, have been two of the most popular file sharing sites on the Internet.

The core question that many Internet users will have right now is if this will affect other file sharing services like Rapidshare as well.

If you read the Department of Justice press release thoroughly you will notice that much of it can be applied to nearly every popular file sharing site on the Internet.

• A business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download
• A structure to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded
• A rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites.

Will we see a ripple effect? What’s your take? (via Neowin)

Update: The Department of Justice website, as well as several music industry related websites are currently targeted by Anonymous as a response to the take down of Megaupload. More information here at The Next Web.