However, if the company's lawyers don't manage to mount a convincing defense, Megaupload itself could disappear forever. It's too soon to tell, but in the meantime, we thought we'd take a look at some key dates and data points in the history of Megaupload.

Founded in 2005, Megaupload grew to be a massive and incredibly controversial site over the years. Estimates vary as to its actual traffic and user base, but suffice it to say that the service was huge. The controversy didn't start on January 19, 2012 when New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom's mansion and arrested several Megaupload executives. Prior to that, the company had faced copyright lawsuits, a Google AdSense blockade and country-wide bans outside the U.S.

The users who are really upset are the ones who, wisely or not, used the serve to send important, non-infringing personal and work-related files to themselves, friends and colleagues. Immediately after the shutdown of Megaupload, we saw a surge of angry tweets from people who were using the service for personal purposes and can no longer access their files. Now, there's talk of those users suing the FBI in response.

The Pirate Parties' complaint doesn't express solidarity with Megaupload or its founders, but rather it takes issue with the far-reaching nature of the site's shutdown and the negative impact it has had on unsuspecting users who weren't necessarily using the site for anything illegal. In fact, the parties claim that the economic harm done to users by shutting off access to private data could exceed the damage done to the record and film industries by Megaupload's practices.

That's a difficult claim to prove, but then again so is the copyright lobby's assertion that Megaupload cost them $500 million in damages.

Some may find it hard to sympathize with users who were using a service like Megaupload to store files without backing them up elsewhere. While that's certainly not the smartest approach to personal file storage, it also probably wasn't conceivable to many rank-and-file users that the site they were using was suddenly going to get shut down by the FBI and Justice Department. That's not something that happens everyday, even to notably controversial websites.

Many people would use Megaupload similarly to how a service like Dropbox is used: as a convenient way to toss some files into the cloud or give somebody quick access to a project they may be collaborating on.

It's unknown how many of the files hosted on Megaupload were of the personal, non-infringing variety, and it may not be an easy thing for authorities to determine either. It's a safe bet that most of the site's traffic was attributed to piracy-related activities, but that doesn't offer much solace to those who had other purposes in mind.

How serious the Pirate Parties' threats are isn't yet known, but it's evident that they're genuinely displeased with how this whole thing went down, as are many of the site's former users.

Some companies that are perceived, correctly or not, of having a similar model to MegaUpload's are now scrambling to prevent their own demise now that that the legitimacy of that model has been very publicly - and dramatically - challenged.

Popular sites like FileSonic and FileServe are preventing users from downloading files uploaded by anybody other than themselves. Uploaded.to, another service used for hosting and sharing files, has stopped accepting users from U.S.-based IP addresses all together. In total, Evolver.fm's Eliot Van Buskirk counted nine different file-hosting services that have made some kind of substantial change to their functionality since the MegaUpload shutdown.

Where's the Line?

MediaFire and RapidShare, both of which are often used to host and download copyrighted content, have gone on the offensive, giving statements to the press that attempt to draw the line between their models and what MegaUpload was doing.

"We don't have a business built on copyright infringement," MediaFire CEO Derek Labian told VentureBeat, adding that his company is more akin to services like DropBox and Box.net than it is to MegaUpload. There's little reason to doubt him, as much of what has surfaced about MegaUpload's operations has turned out to be rather shady. MediaFire, by contrast, claims to have solid relationships with many of the relevant federal agencies.

Similarly, RapidShare has been quick to distance itself from MegaUpload and paint a stark contrast between the two services. The company, which recently released a native app for iOS, put out a statement explaining that they "differ from services such as MegaUpload in many crucial points," most notably that they've always been transparent about their company's location and the identities of the people running it.

Each of these services is different in terms of its functionality and legal compliance, and it would appear that those with the least confidence in the integrity of their own model are taking measures to scale things back a bit.

If the charges are to be believed, what MegaUpload was up to was particularly egregious. Still, the whole affair raises questions about where the line is. People can use any number of mechanisms for sharing files with each other, including copyrighted material. If the FBI can raid MegaUpload and shut it down, what's stopping the authorities from going after other services?

As for Megaupload.com, the site is inaccessible, perhaps indefinitely. That's a bummer for the millions of people who used it to share copyrighted albums, movies and software. It's an even bigger let down for users who used the service to store personal files, sometimes without a backup.

It's a painful lesson for those users, who may never see their files again. It's also a reminder to the rest of those of us who use the Web everyday that online file storage is never a substitute for safely backing up data on a local hard drive, far away from the cloud. Granted, legitimate personal file storage services like Dropbox, YouSendIt and the countless online backup providers probably won't get raided by the FBI, but that doesn't mean some catastrophic event couldn't result in downtime.

To some, it's hard to have sympathy for people who thought Megaupload was a safe place to store personal files, especially given the controversial nature of the site. Yet for a lot of rank-and-file users of the Web, there is a certain inherent, blind trust given to Web-based services. They keep their email in the cloud, their calendars, their social contacts and activities. Seldom does anything disappear out of thin air. In the case of Megupload, the site offered premium accounts, which users paid for. Surely a service for which you shell out money couldn't just disappear overnight. Could it?

Megaupload's takedown may be on the more dramatic end of the "what if" scale, but there's no guarantee other services won't go down for any number of reasons. If backing up one's local hard drive to an external device is a no brainer, doing the same for cloud-hosted data should be even more imperative.

Once a complaint is made, a judge can order ISPs to block access to sites that host copyrighted material or have them shut down entirely. The law, which was officially passed early last year but never implemented, was approved by Spain's new, more conservative government last week and will now be enacted as planned, much to the delight of the film and music industries, as well as other media companies.

Under the new law, copyright complaints will be heard by a panel called the Intellectual Property Committee who will decide how to rectify the issue and are endowed with the power to go after site owners.

In the U.S., the anti-piracy legislation currently being debating in Congress would be limited to websites hosted outside the country's borders and wouldn't be quite as far-reaching as Spain's new law. Still, to many the passage of SOPA's Spanish counterpart feels like a taste of things to come should big media companies in the U.S. succeed in getting some version of SOPA or the Protect IP Act passed by the U.S. Congress.

Paving the Way For U.S. Investments

Pressure from Spanish copyright holders and media companies wasn't the only factor in ensuring this law was passed. The country stands to see major investments in online streaming services there now that the law is enacted. U.S. media and technology companies, among others, have been waiting to make such investments until more serious steps were taken against file-sharing and online piracy in Spain. The passage of this law is exactly what they were waiting for. The country is already awaiting the launch of Nextflix within its borders early this year, and presumably more services will follow.

The law may lead to more legitimate online streaming services and delight the media industry, but that doesn't assuage the concerns of digital rights groups, who take issue with SEL along lines similar to those of opponents to SOPA and PIPA in the United States. In short, they argue that granting media companies and judges the ability to shut down websites sets a very bad precedent and could easily be used to censor legitimate sites.

The news wasn't good for LimeWire back in October when a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction, forcing the P2P filesharing site to close down both the website and its client. And arguably, things went from bad to worse when a figure named MetaPirate took advantage of the open-source code for the client and recreated a Pirate Edition of LimeWire, causing both the RIAA as well as LimeWire to scramble to track him down. Those meddling kids.

The company had long indicated it planned to launch a music subscription service, but those plans now seem unlikely as well. Considering such a project would require licensing agreements with the very businesses that have sought to shut LimeWire down, that's not really a surprise. Once the world's most-installed filesharing application, this looks to really be the end of LimeWire.

In justifying the increase in damages in this ruling, the appeals court said that it had "to a greater extent than the district court, accepted the plaintiff companies' evidence of its losses as a result of file-sharing."

A fourth defendant from the original conviction, Gottfrid Svartholm, was not included in today's verdict as he was absent at the court hearings due to medical circumstances. His case is still pending.

While awarding large damages in these sorts of cases has become common, sentencing people to prison is unusual. Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that ""They're giving us jail even though it's not the right thing for the 'crime.' It's just to scare people. That's what you did in the 1600s." He indicated that the group intends to appeal today's decision to the Swedish Supreme Court.

One of the entertainment industry lawyers, Monique Wadsted, is quoted in the New York Times as saying "My assessment is that in two years this type of piracy activity will be completely dead." However the court battles, including today's ruling, have yet to impact the ability of The Pirate Bay to stay online.

The tech comes from Detica, a company better known for working with government data and intelligence agencies than media files and P2P networks. Their CView product is designed to help put an end to illegal filesharing, and with ISPs showing interest, it's unlikely that Virgin's deal will be the last we hear about.

Beyond measuring user activity on P2P networks, CView will not collect data on individual users. Raw traffic data and identification information is reportedly deleted in the closed system and cannot be accessed by a human operator. CView gathers data on peer-to-peer packets in user traffic and then inspects the packets to see whether the content is being shared illegally.

Although the tech only examines aggregate traffic data, and although a Virgin spokeperson states that records will not be maintained on individual users, privacy concerns are right behind raining-on-our-parade concerns when one examines the question of monitoring user behavior. Isn't warning, fining, censoring and/or restricting access for infringing users the next logical step?

Give us your doomsday scenario - or your vote of confidence for the Detica/Virgin partnership - in the comments.

Before jumping to it, it may be smart to remind yourself of the legal issues currently facing both the Pirate Bay founders and perhaps more importantly, the non-commercial cases of Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas-Rasset.

Most recently, the Department of Justice upheld the award of 1.92 million dollars to the RIAA from single mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Minnesota woman Thomas-Rasset is expected to pay $80,000 per song for 24 KaZaA files she'd downloaded in 2004. The RIAA has gone after more than 20,000 people for music piracy, but has more recently chosen to focus on internet service providers rather than on non-commercial infringers. Depending on your country of residence, getting caught using the Pirate Bay archive file could be devastating.

If you're still curious, or you simply want to read the comments, the download page is available here.

On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
"If the new owners screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want it to. And - you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat off us."

Judging by blog comments, it's obvious that users are extremely concerned. Global Gaming Factory will be taking over operation of the site in August 2009. As part of this acquisition, GGF can now incorporate the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science's new data distribution technology - Peerialism. Presumably the service will increase torrent speeds.

Additionally, says GGF CEO, Hans Pandeya, "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site."

It will be interesting to see if fans will stick with the service and how the company's revenue program will differ from predecessors like Grooveshark's compensation service for file uploaders.

Thanks to Steven for the tip!

UPDATE: According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay will be using a 3rd party tracker and host for torrents. We'll just have to wait and see if this has to do with GGF's move with Peerialism.

Qtask Overview

Like SharePoint, Qtask offers a number of features for team collaboration including discussion boards, wikis, file sharing, form creation tools, RSS, calendaring, and full contextual search. With its comprehensive tool set, projects can be created, managed, maintained, and tracked. Because all the information relating to various tasks is online, new team members can get up-to-date quickly on the status of various projects just by signing into Qtask.

Getting Started

When you first sign into Qtask, you're presented with a global dashboard from which you can see an overview of all the most important items, including tasks and their status, meetings you've been invited to and those you're scheduled to attend, recently updated wikis and files, your schedule, team members and other important top-level items. The layout of these items is similar to that of iGoogle and its widgets, which makes it easy to see at a glance everything that you need to focus on.

Global Dashboard

At the top of this dashboard is navigation that can take you deeper into the site - to discussion boards, team calendars, project homepages, and more. Like the global dashboard, each project's homepage focuses on just the key items (meetings, tasks, files, etc.) for that specific project.

It's All In The Details

Although there are many portals for team collaboration like this available today, it's the little details in Qtask that make it worth a look. For example, in the discussion threads, discussions can be set to public or private, unread items appear in a different color, and you can flag items as "hot" to draw attention to them. Team calendars feature thumbnails of the members faces and discussion areas where members can work out details, discuss agendas, etc.

Editing the Meeting Deatails

Other great features include version control for uploaded files and syndication (via RSS) of file shares and wikis - and both of which can even be shared with those outside the company. A site-wide search box lets you perform searches and also offers a number of advanced options to help you find just what you need:

Other Features

Built-in tools for form creation are also included with Qtask as is a mail feature which can be used for internal communications. Outside email like that from Gmail or Yahoo can be integrated with Qtask via IMAP support.

However, one of the most useful features in Qtask is its ability to track changes. File history can be tracked as to who uploaded, downloaded, or accessed a file and when. Tasks, meetings, wikis, and discussions can be tracked as well. This feature has made Qtask so popular with lawyers, that the company will soon be releasing a customized version just for them. (Out of Qtask's initial crop of 2000 users, many are lawyers).

Keeping Track of Changes

Finally, Qtask is available via a mobile browser - a must have for today's on-the-go workforce and remote workers. Whether you use a Blackberry, iPhone, or a standard mobile of some sort, you have access to everything on the site.

On The Horizon

In addition to the upcoming version of Qtask customized for lawyers offices, the company also hopes to create more customized versions for several different types of companies, including perhaps doctors or real estate offices, as those are other popular users of their program.

They also plan to release an enterprise version later on which can be implemented on a company's own servers as an alternative to the SaaS solution they have today.

Affordable And Feature-Rich

Qtask offers plenty of features which will appeal to the SMB market looking for a project-focused web-based tool for team collaboration. The service is very affordable, too: free for 5 users for the first year and comes with 5 hours of free training. Additional users are $50/each per month. Prices include the ability to create unlimited projects, access to online training and online technical support.

At launch time, Qtask is offering a special: charter accounts will only be charged $25/year for additional users.

You can learn more about Qtask from visiting their web site, available at www.qtask.com.

But the competition here is not Microsoft. For the business user, the competition is Blackberry; and Blackberry is not Microsoft. I am a long time Blackberry user and it is seldom annoying. It just gets the job done. So unlike when I switched back from Windows to Mac, which I did with a big sigh of relief, I am in no hurry to switch based on anything wrong with what I have.

And a few reviews are making me think that iPhone could be a high maintenance date. Sure, high maintenance dates can be fun, but I am judging this on boring utility criteria. For example:

1. Keyboard. I am ready to be convinced by touch-screen keyboards. But I am not sure I want to spend the time adjusting. Outside the USA, where SMS is the major use of a mobile phone, I think this is a big deal. Flipping to horizontal is neat, but does this work for email?

2. Battery. Any mobile device that cannot do a full day's work and play without re-charge is a pain. You don't want to be in "don't leave home without it" mode regarding your charger unless you are going for more than a day. On a normal day, it's plug it in before you go to sleep and pick it up in the morning.

3. It's a bit big as a phone. OK, so is the Blackberry. But, as they say, size matters when you are holding it to your ear. Some people express almost comical amusement at the idea of using the iPhone as a phone - "you still call people, how quaint". Then don't call it a Phone, because it does set that expectation.

I know that resistance is futile. I will get an iPhone eventually. Or Blackberry will give me a better browser, which is really what I love about iPhone.

The killer app for me? Skype to Skype calls over WiFi. I believe that requires an unlocked iPhone. It would dramatically change the economics of mobile phones. Which AT&T certainly knows and will be resisting for as long as possible.

Plus a really slim but full function collapsible keyboard, so I can write full length stuff as easily as on my laptop. And then a simple way to plug into any screen that's around, so I can edit docs stored in the cloud. So that I can stop lugging around my laptop; that's a big win for people who spend a lot of time away from their desk.

My guess is that the iPhone ecosystem will bring all these things to market fairly soon. The iPhone is the first real new platform since Windows (sorry, Facebook).

Image: After the iPhone Keynote, Jan 2007; pic by mac steve