As you likely know by now, the hugely popular filesharing site Megaupload was taken down last night, prompting retaliation hacking attacks on websites including the Department of Justice and the RIAA.

Some facts that we didn’t report last night (well, a website’s gotta sleep at some point), plus some fallout and opinion on the news:

It’s emerged that before Megaupload was closed down, the website issued the following statement: “The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.”

Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group who’ve claimed responsibility for the takedowns of the Department of Justice and more, have made an in-depth post on their website about the attacks, reporting that the full list of sites hit includes Warner Bros, the US Copyright Office and The White House.

Late last night, at least one new website emerged claiming to be a Megaupload replacement made by the Megaupload team, but according to Torrentfreak, “there is NO official MegaUpload replacement online and it’s highly doubtful that there will be one anytime soon”. Responses to the new sites on Twitter indicate that they contain malware.

Techcrunch claims to have pictures of the Megaupload founders’ seized cars.

And a side of the story that was glossed over last night: thousands, if not millions of people used Megaupload as an online storage spot for their personal – and crucially, legal – files; files that, for the moment, appear to have been lost. Another post on Torrentfreak has collected Tweets from people who’ve fallen victim to this.

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