Megaupload Fallout in the File Hosting Arena

On April 26, 2012, Megaupload data negotiations began. Carpathia reported that maintaining the data costs over 9,000 USD a day, and wanted to seek a formal resolution on whether to delete the data or release it to interested parties. United States district court Judge Liam O'Grady seemed sympathetic to Carpathia's plight and ordered all parties to return to the negotiating table. 

Oops! Carpathia, in the attempt to relieve themselves of the backbreaking cost to maintain thousands of servers - yes thousands - they instead got the wrong sort of attention when the DoJ pointed out that 35 million USD had been paid by Megaupload to Carpathia, and alleged that Carpathia wasn't as innocent as they were portraying themselves.

Meanwhile, the fallout of Megaupload's shutdown has brought the self-imposed limitations of other file sharing services. FileSonic.com, FileServe.com, FileJungle.com, Uploadstation.com, x7.to and 4Shared.com, withdrew the ability to share links to files, canceled affiliate programs and/or began to allow users to only download what they themselves uploaded. Other files hosting services blocked access to users in the United States or those with US based IP addresses; Uploaded.to and Turbobit.net (a torrent indexing services) began blocking access to U.S. vistors in February. BTJunkie, another popular torrent indexing site, completely shut down of their own accord in Februrary as well, as did QuickSilverScreen, a streaming video link site.

MediaFire and RapidShare spokespeople have stated theses companies are not concerned because file hosting is a legitimate business and Megaupload essentially got greedy and careless. RapidShare spokesperson pointed out that Microsoft's SkyDrive also operates in the same way of other file hosting services.

So even though, some of us may have lost access and convenience, there are still options out there. And more to come. Where one service shuts down, another one starts up.