The United States Justice Department charged Megaupload with over $1 billion in damageswhich sites that house and distribute copyright-infringing content will be next?

On January 19th, the United States Department of Justice put the hammer down on file sharing site Megaupload, by charging its owners with online copyright infringement. Seven people and two corporations—Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited—were indicted by a New York grand jury and charged with a variety of crimes. If convicted on all possible charges, those involved face up to 50 years of jail time.

In the wake of this news, several file-sharing sites changed their operation methods. Filejungle and FileSonic eliminated third-party downloads, while Uploaded.to blocked American users from accessing the site. These three file-sharing sites worked preemptively to prevent similar fates, which raises an important question: what are the fates of file-sharing sites as a whole?

It's hard to know which websites, if any, will next taste the swift fist of justice, but there are a handful of choice suspects that are prime candidates for speculation. For example, the MPAA considers three online destinations as "rogue sites" for linking to copyrighted movie and television content: 1Channel.ch, Movie2k.to, and SolarMovie.eu. The reason for the MPAA's concern is obvious; all three sites act as pointers to sites that feature movie downloads for films that are currently in theaters (such as Underworld: Awakening).

Legitimate services that allow users to store files in the cloud without advocating copyright infringement—Dropbox, Box, Mozy, and others—were not mentioned. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those services—or those services' users—are exempt.

"I cannot say who they will go after, but they will get more aggressive," said Much Hakhinian, CISSP, head security architect and leader of application practices at Intralinks, a NYC-based company that provides secure collaboration service to 800 of the Fortune 1000. "If you go to a site that offers [to pay you] 10 bucks to upload a recent movie, there's a risk."

That said, there are plenty of file-sharing and hosting sites similar to the Megaupload (as well as torrent and "pointer" sites that direct you to pirated content) that may be the next to appear in the Justice Department's scope. Are they the next to go down? Here are the websites that may be at risk. And remember, digital piracy encompasses more than just movies, TV shows, and music—it involves software, too.

4shared

4shared lets you share entire files or entire folders. If you install the 4Sync software, you can keep files on your PC and in your Web account in step. 4shared free, basic accounts store 10GB of data, and lets users upload files no larger than 2GB. Premium accounts (starting at $4.55 per month) up the overall storage capacity to 100GB, increases the maximum file size to 5GB, removes advertisements, and boosts download speeds.

Potential Danger: A quick search for "The Lion King" using the site's built-in search engine revealed tracks from the film soundtrack that could be streamed or downloaded.

Hotfile

Hotfile provides free, one-click file uploads (400MB maximum size) for registered users.

There are three Premium membership tiers: $9 (one month of unlimited downloading/100Gb of Hot/Direct Linking), $35 (six months of unlimited downloading/600Gb Hot/Direct Linking), and $55 (one year of unlimited downloading and 1,200Gb of Hot/Direct Linking). You can also tack on additional hotlinking packages for $8 (200Gb), $38 (1,000Gb), or $108 (3,000Gb).

Potential Danger: Googling "Hotfile" and "The Lion King" returned a portion of "The Lion King: Special Edition," which was available for download.

MediaFire

MediaFire has a free basic plan that lets users upload files that are 200MB in size with "limited" long term storage, and no direct downloads. The Pro plan ($9 per month) ups the maximum file size to 4GB, long term storage to "forever," and direct downloads to 100,000 MB per month. The Business plan ($49 per month) lets users upload 10GB files, store them "forever," and all 250,000MB of direct download bandwidth per month. The premium accounts removes advertising and lets users create unique custom domain.

Potential Danger: Googling "MediaFire" and "Gaga" returned Lady Gaga's "Wonderful," which was available for download.

RapidShare

RapidShare offers swift, one-click file uploads. Buying "Rapids," Radipshare's currency, lets you shop for games, or upgrade to a premium RapidPro account. One Euro equals one Rapid. Premium account holders get unlimited storage time (vs. 30 days of inactivity for basic, free account holders), multi-platform administration tools, unlimited downloads with zero waiting time, and 100% SSL-encrypted file transfers.

Potential Danger: Googling "Rapidshare" and "Bieber" returned the pop singer's "Home For The Holidays" special which was available for download.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is the poster boy for websites that have incurred the wrath of content providers—Swedish police raided and shutdown the operation in 2006. Why? The site is a search engine powerhouse that's designed to sniff out thousands upon thousands of torrent files, some of which (many of which?) are television shows, movies, comics, and albums.

Potential Danger: Visiting the site's "Applications" search area and discovering software such as Adobe Illustrator C2 5.1 and Microsoft Office 2010 Professional.

Project – Free TV

Project – Free TV's tagline is "Unleashing the Free TV Revolt," but it appears that it may do so in a way that violates copyrights. The contains links to a number of popular movies and TV programs, as well as a disclaimer stating that it doesn't or "know who and where videos are coming from."

Potential Danger: Links to external sites that house "Tower Heist," "Big Bang Theory," and dozens of other popular shows and movies.

1Channel.ch, Movie2k.to, and SolarMovie.eu

It would be a massive oversight to not mention these three websites, as they were explicitly mentioned as copyright infringers by the MPAA. Like Project-Free TV, these sites feature links to television and film programming that's hosted on other websites.

Potential Danger: Links to external sites that house "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn," "Criminal Minds," and a plethora of other copyrighted content.