So a man constructs a heavily fortified, state-of-the-art port on the coast of Somalia.
He allows any ship in the world to come into the port carrying whatever they want to carry—as long as they promise, cross their hearrrrrts, that they’re not pirates.
“We promise! We promise!” say all the ship captains. (“We promise! AWK! We promise!” the parrots on their shoulders repeat.) “But what’s in it for you, port owner?”
“Just let me sell ad space on the side of your ships, that’s all.”
“Deal!” They reply. “Arrrrrrr!”
“Stop saying that!” says the port owner. “People might think you’re all pirates!”
The port owner invites merchants around the world to inspect the ships’ cargo to prove that they’re not full of stolen goods. But over 800 ships per second come into the port year round; it’s a little hard to keep up.
The FBI smells something fishy in the port. They raid the port owner’s ostentatious mansion and freeze his assets. Now the port owner, in a pretty fascinating interview, claims categorically that he has done nothing wrong.
So what does Dropbox, Google Drive, etc., do that Megaupload.com doesn’t do to keep it legal?
Dropbox has bandwidth limits, so it will shut down downloads if too many people try to download something in your public folder. Not sure about Google Drive (just got that).
This has some more interesting info that will differentiated Dropbox and Megaupload:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Basis_of_indictment