MegaUploads Shut Down, 99% of Retromags Collection Unavailable

[E-Day]

Today, the U.S. Justice Department shut down the MegaUpload site during an investigation into alleged copyright infringement. Normally this is just another story about a site dealing in copyright infringement being shut down. However, MegaUpload was the "official" site Retromags used to host its magazine collection after the previous site host shut this site down when the magazines were hosted locally. This means that 99% of Retromags' collection is currently unavailable for download.

I am not sure how long this will last, or what this site will do with the current situation at hand. Stay tuned.

E-Day

Retromags Curator

[Bill Smith]

I will be writing to my congressional leaders to complain about the shutdown.

[KiwiArcader]

Considering what we are doing is not legal we'll just have to take a wait and see approach methinks. That or use alternate hosting providers in the interim.

Ironically I just renewed my MU account for another 2 years in December. Drat, drat and double drat Muttley ....

[E-Day]

One alternative is to make it legal by getting content owners permission if things with MegaUpload stay the same down the road.

[KiwiArcader]

One alternative is to make it legal by getting content owners permission if things with MegaUpload stay the same down the road.

That's the big problem.

Companies like Future Publishing don't push to have older content removed but they won't give permission either. Then for me there's the issues around who owns copyright now for content from the likes of Argus Press who disappeared in the late 80's etc. It's a nightmare!!! The only thing that differentiates our cause from movies, novels, comics and music is that those are relatively timeless while gaming mags are pretty much obsoleted with the passing of the hardware they are written for. that doesn't make it any less of an issue as far as the law is concerned but is Future likely to push for infringement in regards to Amstrad Action magazine? Not likely whereas they would for Nintendo Gamer which is a current title.

At the end of the day I would prefer they supply the old mags just like they do with the current ones on the Apple Store. C'mon Future ... give us Amstrad Action for .99c an issue on the iPad and I'll buy the whole lot. And while you're at it create an app for the PC as well.

[Shotking]

What about going to RapidShare or MediaFire? Their not prefect but its closest your get to MegaUpload. I doubt MegaUpload will come back, or if it does, it will became pay only and/or heavily monitored for content.

[terpsfan101]

I have downloaded most of the magazines Retromags has made available. I also have a good portion of the content from OldGameMags. If someone is willing to give me access to a premium rapidshare, or filesonic account, I could slowly re-upload most of the lost files.

Looking at the Download Manager, I could re-upload the following collections:

Dangerous Waters/Gameshark Magazine

Electronic Games

Electronic Games (1990s)

EGM

EGM2

GameGo!

Game Informer

Game Players

GamePro

Gamers' Republic

Mega Play

Next Generation

Nintendo Fun Club

Nintendo Power

Nintendo Power Flash

Official Dreamcast Magazine (USA)

Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

PC Games

PSM

Sega Visions

Tips & Tricks

Turbo Force

Turbo Play

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment

Videogaming Illustrated

Amiga Format

Club Nintendo Magazine

Computer & Videogames

Dreamcast Magazine

Edge

Games Master

MAXIMUM

Mean Machines

Mega (from out of print archive)

Official Dreamcast Magazine (UK)

Official UK Playstation Magazine

PC Gamer

Planet Gameboy

Super Play

Total Game Boy Color (only have 1st 2 issues).

Various Strategy Guides, mostly from Nintendo

[KiwiArcader]

I am working my way through the OGM content, moving from most recent releases backwards. I think this is going to play ouit in the legal system very slowly so I am uploading to Filesonic at the present time.

[E-Day]

What about going to RapidShare or MediaFire? Their not prefect but its closest your get to MegaUpload. I doubt MegaUpload will come back, or if it does, it will became pay only and/or heavily monitored for content.

I am not keen on that idea for several reasons. The first is that it's A LOT of work moving about 600 files to another file host. And it's a lot of work to change all the links in the download manager. Secondly, there is no guarantee that the next site we go to won't suffer the same fate. Thirdly, unless we pay for another lifetime membership, files won't stay on there long, and I am not willing to pay the price of a membership with the risk of having that site shut down as well.

I am not saying that this isn't the route we'll eventually go down, but right now that is not an option I am interested in exploring. I am hoping some other solution will come along.

[terpsfan101]

I don't think that the other file-sharing sites, like Rapidshare, filesonic, hotfile, etc..., have anything to worry about since they actively remove copyrighted content. Megaupload never implemented any significant measures to remove copyrighted files. This is why the Justice Department went after them. I'm sad to see megaupload go. They were easily the best web based file-host. They had the fastest download speeds for free users, no wait times between downloads, and best of all they did not police their content. I'm not very optimistic that they'll be back.

[MBJ]

I heard the news from Phillyman yesterday. This is definitely a bummer. In the early days of Retromags there were more torrent-based releases (e.g. Nintendo Power by year), but I inderstand the desire for an alternative. I hope that you;re able to figure out a stable solution.

[Sb20]

This site was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news. Totally dismayed at this turn of events. I hope a solution to this archive arises soon!

[BarbieOnWeed]

I have maybe 90% of the files on the site,

and upload to the torrent page is no go, to many f*****g leeches. :(

[Bablefish]

I use 4shared and Dropbox and haven't had a problem with either one.

[Bablefish]

It seems Megaupload is back on line read this by abc news

[E-Day]

Well, all that is up is an IP address with a page saying it will be the new MegaUpload. Obviously it's just some nerds trying to bring it back on their own.

Either way, all this site's content is on the servers that were seized.

[Schloss Ritter]

Ugh, I knew there was some reason I recognized the site name. Sorry to see it gone, but thankfully it looks like our users have copies of most (all?) of the content we lost.

I also remember the days when a certain Torrent site was how we hosted files. The downside is that it required registration invites to get in and thus limited or sharing with the general public. However, that site having a relatively smaller community (about 30k members) means that it's low key enough to slip under the radar and well policed against malicious content. If I had enough storage space and bandwidth, I would personally seed all our content there as well as any other solution we have. (not mentioning the other site's name in case watchdog bots are trolling for references to Megaupload in order to find other "bad" sites)

[Data]

I could also help with seeding. The general public might find downloading a torrent and having it auto open in a torrent handler to be seamless as well. One drawback is having to change all the download links from megaupload to .torrent. Secondly it would be the age old problem of never having enough seeders to cover the vast selection of content. My Internet will allow me to upload 200-250 megabytes an hour or 40-50 KB/s

I hope Megaupload settles this and business as usual.

[E-Day]

Any method we move to will have a positive aspect and negative aspect.

External File hosting (ie. Rapidshare and similar)

Pros:

Files are located elsewhere which removes burden from this site

Cons:

Files expire after a certain amount of time

Memberships are expensive, and most are not "lifetime"

Can go the way of MegaUpload

Torrents

Pros:

Can easily be distributed

Does not rely on third party servers

Cons:

Relies on people seeding, which often they don't

Would require hundreds of torrent files for everything Retromags had

Retromags Server

Pros:

Files are located with the site

No reliance on external sites or people actually seeding torrents

Access for everyone without any waiting times like on file hosting sites

Cons:

Site host can shut site down for copyrighted material (happened already)

Lots of downloads can slow Dreamhosts servers, drawing attention, and causing the above con to happen

IRC

Pros: Allows sharing scans without drawing a lot of attention

Cons:

Requires IRC

Requires members to run IRC all the time

File transferring is a hassle

[badinsults]

Sorry to hear about Megaupload shutting down, effectively closing this site down. Makes me regret not keeping up to date on my magazine collection. I appreciate all the work you guys have done, hopefully a long term hosting solution can be made.

[Retroguy]

Like Sb20, I thought of you guys first when I saw the news. There's one thing nobody has been willing to say yet, so I'm gonna say it. The copyright nazis (yes, that's what they are) have gotten to a point where they think they can do whatever they want with no consequences. And now they've shown that they're no better than terrorists. But they do not own the internet and they do not own us. However you do it, you MUST find away to make this site's contents available again. You cannot let them win. Whether the publishers appreciate it or not, you guys provide a valuable service by being THE archive for gaming literature and anyone with an interest in gaming history owes you a HUGE debt of gratitude. If you give up and let the site die and fade away, it's likely that no one else would ever try again on the scale that you have and much of what you've collected here would be lost forever. You cannot let that happen. One possibility is that you could sidestep the lawyers by claiming that you make the material available for the purpose of historical research, something the publishers have been unwilling to do thus far. If you could find a way to legitimize what you're doing, like an online library of sorts, that could go a long way towards making sure that this stuff is preserved properly. Don't quit on us now. Do the right thing.

For what it's worth, in the wake of the MU shutdown, the vote on PIPA (which would have been on Tuesday) has been postponed. Here's hoping it never gets voted on.

[Ferneu]

Any method we move to will have a positive aspect and negative aspect.

Fact.

Torrents

Pros:

Can easily be distributed

Does not rely on third party servers

Cons:

Relies on people seeding, which often they don't

Would require hundreds of torrent files for everything Retromags had

No arguing with you there, but perhaps we could try something on the torrent lines, at least until the MU dust settles. My suggestion is:

- make torrents for "packs" instead of single issues. Like "all EGMs" or "EGM #1 to #50".

- use the Retromags Server as a seeder only when the torrent has none. And make it so that the global upload speed is very slow. I mean 1KB/s slow.

[E-Day]

I don't know if I would go that slow. That's severe underkill

[Bill Smith]

What is the total size of the existing scanned collection? Underground gamer would be a good place to host it.

[Pseudo3D]

MegaUpload had legitimate content, and I'm sure there will be lawsuits of some type following this (unlike NinjaVideo or the like, this has legitimate content), so I wouldn't give up yet. A crushing blow, but not a fatal one.

In the meantime, let's try to gather up downloaded copies. I know I have several Nintendo Power and EGM issues, as well as a few player's guides.