Uploaded.to is now blocking US users in response to the MegaUpload takedown

Backlash to the Department of Justice’s takedown of MegaUpload and the arrest of its owner and its employees comes in many different ways it would seem. Not unexpectedly Anonymous has been launching DoS attacks against companies that supported the now shelved SOPA and PIPA bills that were headed to Congress; but wasn’t expected was the reaction of Uploaded.to another file-hosting site.

It seems that the company has decided that rather than risk facing the same fate as MegaUpload they could do without the business from US users. At some point today the company turned off access to the site for anyone in the United States.

There is no official statement yet from the company or if the access blocking is permanent but the only thing US users will see when they try to access the site is “Not Available: Our service is currently unavailable in your country. Sorry about that.”

This is definitely a different way to deal with the actions that seem to becoming a regular practice for the US government; but it also raises an interesting question.

What if more web companies started doing the same thing as Uploaded.to has done. Granted business on the web is predominately US based but not all of it is and with more and more cutting edge web companies are being started outside of the US it would be interesting to see what the reaction would be if US web users slowly found themselves being ostracized by the larger web.

It is called the World Wide Web after all.

via TorrentFreak