[RawAlex]

What I found interesting was that the US feds didn't just look at one single site and do that, rather they looked at the whole ball of wax, and worked out the structures under which the money was moving.

The money laundering is going to be the hardest part of Kimble to get away from. Basically, the "sub-sites" were actively getting paid for referring people to download, which is what allowed the money to move from the rather illegal concept of charging people for download access, to the more legal "forum" and discussion sites. The feds saw through this bullshit charade, and realized that it was just a front.

Mega also specifically made it harder for rights holders to track their material, by not having any search functions. They are apparently specifically excluded major movies and software off their "top downloads" lists, to hide those facts. Finally, even when they got a DMCA or copyright notice, they apparently made another mistake. In order to be effecient, their storage systems apparently would only maintain single copies of files, even if they were uploaded by different users to different accounts. When they got a DMCA style notice, they would only remove the single point complained about, and not the root files that might have been on 20 other links on the site.

Just as importantly, the US got the various countries involved to move on them all at the same time, effectively shutting them down all over AND getting most of the player arrested direction. Schmidt is currently enjoying jail food, from what I gather.