Made an Example of: the U.S. Government perfectly times the shut down of Megaupload

The past few weeks, the topic of discussion has been Internet piracy.  Between SOPA, PIPA, and Wikipedia, I’m sure you have run into it. What resulted was one of the largest public protests in history.  With an Internet outcry from users, and blackouts from websites, the public successfully postponed the bills.  Just as the dust of this was settling, however, the government indicted individuals and companies who are responsible for the file-sharing site, Megaupload.  Not only that, but they immediately shut the site down and put up this nice little welcome message:

The funny thing is that most people can name, off the top of their heads, at least half a dozen sites exactly like Megaupload. Right? Not so fast.  What differs is the fact that the owners of this website made millions of dollars from it.  The owner, a cleverly named Kim Dotcom, received millions, which he spent on lavish houses and cars.  They offered a premium membership for users to receive faster upload and download speeds if they paid a fee and helped share Megaupload links over the Internet.  They received high cost ads for their site, which drove them to try and generate more users.  It was reported that this money was laundered through coding teams spanning the US, Europe, and New Zealand; only some of the money going back into the site itself.

Now my question is, even with the blatant disregard for certain laws, was the shut down of Megaupload for justice, or a scare tactic after the small defeat of SOPA/PIPA?  Megaupload has been around since 2005 and the government had a 72-page indictment when they shut the site down January 19^th.  Scheduling coincidence? Or did the government pull one of those moves where, when a child sees he won’t get his way, tattles about something that happened forever ago? Reaching with that analogy? Meh, think about it.

Either way, this leads me to a few more questions:

What will happen to sites, and seemingly legitimate services, like Dropbox?

If there is a crackdown on online cloud computing, the so called future of the Internet, how will this affect heavy hitters like Apple with their iCloud service?

References:
What's left of Megaupload.com
CNN Tech Story on Megaupload
Gizmodo on the Shutdown