(no subject)

[cleolinda]

MegaUpload has refused to pay Erin $100, the reward for 100,000 download points. I'm going to reformat the Golden Compass parody and post it as a regular entry later today. ETA: Done.

Comments

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

Those total bastards!

I'm glad she's filing a claim against them.

Edited to note: I think this may be the first time ever that I'm the first person to comment. Oooh.

[bigeyedrabbit.livejournal.com]

I believe the word I'm looking for here is "ASSHOLES."

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

I beg to differ- this is nothing but pure, unadulterated douchebaggery if ou ask me. I think we should submit them to www.cracked.com for their douchebag of the week countdown.

[soleta-nf.livejournal.com]

This is worthy of Digg as well!

omg.

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

Ok so you digg, you do the cracked... and possibly from your journal tag, do you support threadless as well?

Re: omg.

[soleta-nf.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have the brown outdoors TV tee and bought my brother the communist party tee. ^.^

Re: omg.

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

Yay! I have the "in case of zombies" and "X-Ray Goggles work" and I got a few boys in my life the "You really grate on me", "In case of fire" and "If you can read this (make me a sandwhich)" lol... I love that place...

[allichaton.livejournal.com]

Oh, those fuckers.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

I think the people who manage to get to administrative positions do so because they are complete assholes. No other explanation.

[stokerbramwell.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say that I'm surprised. I really do.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, you'll notice how calm I am. I'm just glad that Erin was smart enough to test them now rather than wait until months of effort from now. It's shitty and it's frustrating, but it's not exactly shocking.

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad that Erin was smart enough to test them now rather than wait until months of effort from now

God, seriously. x_x

[stokerbramwell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was DAMN smart of her. I wouldn't have thought of it.

[minmorton.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the update Cleolinda - please give us more news as it comes ... how disappointing for her ...

1 word.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

DOUCHEBAGS

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ravengirl/]

Ugh :(

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

What jackasses. :-P

[christigilly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what a ching-wah TSAO duh liou mahng!


(translation: frog-humping sonofabitch)

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll never use THAT site again....

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I've always preferred sendspace.com, myself.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Gyargh. (I've already gyarghed at projectdownload, but I decided to repeat my sound of displeasure.)

This rage-causing-reneging finally moved me to look at MegaUpload's reward page (http://www.megaupload.com/rewards/), and holy crap: that page is as classy as I'm drunk. Which is to say NOT. Small claims court had better love this...

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Aren't they based outside the U.S.?

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

You'd know better than I would. I don't know. Someone on projectdownload has said which small claims court they think redscorner should go to...

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found the post from back when we started (http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/539111.html?thread=26596583#t26596583). It's in Hong Kong. Actually, that post discussed the fraud issue, and it turns out the reasoning was "it doesn't hurt to try," which still applies, I think. I'm very glad she decided to check it now at the 100K level.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Here's where the court is mentioned (http://community.livejournal.com/projectdownload/31200.html?thread=645088#t645088).

[shezan.livejournal.com]

How did they even start justifying it?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

They're accusing her of fraud, although we've been careful to make sure we didn't use scripts or upload content that didn't belong to us.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

That's just evil. How could they?

[craobhruadh.livejournal.com]

I looked on their rules here (http://www.megaupload.com/rewardrules/), and their section on fraud is below:

"Absolutely no fraud

You will be disqualified and banned if you try to manipulate the results. Automated mass downloads are easily detected and strictly forbidden."

So, I don't know, perhaps they're trying to stretch it into a case of "manipulating the results"? I think the listed rules are pretty clearly intended to apply to things like bots or anything similarly automated, which she didn't do.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

We looked into that issue way back at the beginning of the project (http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/539111.html?thread=26596583#t26596583) and decided that it couldn't hurt to try, basically.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

That's probably what it is. What I love about that rule is that basically, they're ensuring that it would take a million billion years for anyone to qualify for that payout at a normal rate, at which point they probably won't exist as a company anyway, and anything constructive towards actually gaining the reward ("manipulating results," i.e., probably, "asking people to download") is considered "fraud."

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

At least the DJs I used to listen to (Don & Mike (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/main.shtml) in Washington, D.C.) were obviously joking about their million-dollar jackpot, "A dollar a year for the next million years..."

This is no joke. And I hope redscorner can find justice. And, of course, a solution to her health problems that prompted this in the first place!

/ venting

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

You know, aside from Erin, you're the person I feel bad for most, because of how hard you worked on this. But if you're taking it calmly (at least according to appearances), then I kind of feel like the rest of us should follow your example.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

You know, mostly, I just feel a little dead inside regarding this whole thing. (I mean, not about life in general.) I think that's me trying to protect myself from feeling furious or embarrassed or something. It's kind of how I deal with things in general, I guess--the angrier I actually am, the quieter I get, which is why you'll get a lot of indignant squawking from me over something minor like someone miscast for a movie, and deadly quiet when something's actually important.

[kirsdarke.livejournal.com]

Assholes.

I bet they're gonna use that "manipulate your results" BS. Poor Erin.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a dreadful shame for Erin, and shame on MegaUpload! Thank you for working so hard on this and getting the word out. I'm sorry.

[leucocrystal]

The cynic in me has been fearful of something like this happening from day one. Sure, that hasn't stopped me from clicking daily and faithfully, but the fear was there.

Good on Erin for filing! Anyone got a spare legal dictionary we can chuck through the Internets at MegaUpload? I'd very much like for them to literally get hit in the face with the actual definition of "fraud".

[thisiamdenied.livejournal.com]

I hope MU knows that baby Jesus is watching them and will smote them with thunder and jelly and jam.

[farasha.livejournal.com]

I have submitted the story to Slashdot. I cited the journal entry you posted originally telling everyone about Project Download, several of MegaUpload's pages including their rewards ToS, the letter to Erin, some discussion of small claims court in the comments and a comment thread on your journal where it was mentioned that MU is based in Hong Kong.

Hopefully Slashdot will find that I have my facts straight.

What I Want to Know ...

[velvet4269.livejournal.com]

Is why haven't we seen more about this in the media? The media usually eats up stuff like this.

Or have I just been avoiding newspapers, radio, and tv news for too long? I still would have expected to see something on the Yahoo! news feeds.

Re: What I Want to Know ...

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

redscorner said back when this started that she didn't want to involve the media because- well, I'm not too clear on the because. I think it had something to do with not losing healthcare assistance, but since then, some asshole lost her her healthcare anyway (http://community.livejournal.com/projectdownload/30021.html), so I don't know.

[alexthedevil.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the latest? Some amazing angel just donated $9000 to Erin via her RC page, so she's now got the 10k that she needs.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I know! My internet went out just after I saw that, so I haven't been able to post. I was going to pull together a new linkspam, but I may just run with that anyway.