Is Megaupload "a lot less guilty than you think?"

Jennifer Granick, a Bay Area attorney blogging for Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, has risen to Megaupload's defense, calling the site "a lot less guilty than you think."

Granick focuses on an issue that didn't come up much in our earlier discussion: the distinction between civil and criminal law. Traditionally, copyright enforcement has largely been a civil matter—that is, it focused on private disputes between copyright holders and infringers. But in recent years, Congress has increasingly made copyright infringement a criminal matter, getting the federal government directly involved in prosecuting alleged infringers.