At the risk of megadownvoting here...

Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content.

It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.

Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips,and then charge $10 a month for access then no wrong has been committed. But I think most right-minded people would say that is wrong - otherwise we'd all be doing it.

Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money over a five to seven year period doing this. But the risk that came with that was that eventually he'd face serious jailtime.

I cannot believe that Megaupload is being touted as an anti-SOPA posterchild. It is, pure and simple, a piracy site full of pirated material. I'd be astounded [see update] if anyone here uses it for anything other than pirating. But let's not pretend it's Dropbox - it isn't.

I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business. What was its business? Was it being used to distribute Wikipedia archives? To host videos of people's kids singing? No - it was hosting pirated content. Not torrents, not links. AVI files of films. AND THEN CHARGING FOR ACCESS.

[Update: It seems some people below did use it for sending big files. Colour me astounded. I've never had to do this so it's new to me. I guess the fact remains that they had to subsidise this activity somehow - and that they made their money off popular content. They have to hope this is enough to cover their asses.]

The baby boomers didn't change a damned thing.

In Britain, liberalism was architected primarily by people who were part of our very old establishment. The decriminalisation of homosexuality was achieved largely by the work of Lord Wolfenden, Lord Pakenham and Arthur Gore (8th Earl of Arran). The same goes for most of the political changes we associate with modernity and progress - with the notable exception of Bevan and his peers, the people turning the wheels were mainly minor aristocrats in dusty tweed. A great many of the most significant changes were made contrary to public opinion, the most obvious being the abolition of the death penalty - a policy which most Britons still oppose.

The boomers credit themselves with having changed the world when they were young, broke and essentially powerless, but deny any credit to the generation that constituted the establishment at the time. Conversely, now that they control the majority of capital, make up the biggest electoral demographic and holds most of the elected offices, they deny responsibility.

The most destructive act of the baby boomers was creating a culture in which the individual is seen as having supremacy over the institution. The consequences are obvious and stark - a political system with single-digit approval ratings, where nobody feels represented and nobody feels responsible. A political culture defined not by fundamental ideological allegiance and difference, but by special pleading. There's no such thing as a socialist anymore, no such thing as a conservative or a trade unionist, just people with opinions. America always pretended to be classless but Britain has gone the same way, preferring the egoistic fantasy of an egalitarian society over the reality of one where power and wealth and privilege are still very much in force.

We're trapped in a solipsistic nightmare, where conspiracy theories have replaced an understanding of social power. Until the people who are in charge actually admit that they are in charge, we're fucked.