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FileSonic disables all filesharing
- gburt 15y agoThis is exactly what they wanted to happen. MegaUpload was about causing fear. First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
- dangrossman 15y agoThe services that are reacting to Megaupload are the ones that we all know operated exactly the same -- with actual knowledge of infringement, removing only links instead of files, not disabling accounts of infringers, etc. Every underground media and software sharing forum has thousands of links to these handful of services with identical business models. There are even "multi-upload sites" that let someone distribute their file to all these services at the same time. They should be scared. What they're doing is illegal in 168 countries. They're not complying with the letter or the spirit of laws like the DMCA that would limit their liability. I don't think your quote really applies in this case. Megaupload is being prosecuted for plain old copyright infringement, under the Copyright Act of 1976, nothing new. If you want it to be legal for a site's owners to upload DVD rips and pay other users to share them, then that's the law you need to attack.
- incongruity 15y agoWell said. We can debate the merits of file sharing and, IMHO, there are real arguments on both sides, but I'll make the claim that there clearly ought to be a line drawn at people charging money/basing business models on the access to copyrighted files that they don't own the copyright to. To argue against that, you have to go after the larger notions of copyright and IP laws as a whole, just as dangrossman said. edit: I'm not sure why this is being voted down – but I'd ask for you to respond rather than just voting down comments you disagree with – discussion seems much more valuable than moderation.
- ftwinnovations 15y agoUpvoted. I'm with you, and don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude. I am 100% against piracy in every form, but also 100% against aggressive government involvement in nearly everything. But if people are blatently stealing or providing a platform based around theft, they deserve to be punished. And governments are the only system of punishment that exist. SOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course but I don't understand this sad Hacker News trend where people downvote anything they disagree with. Downvoting is meant for trolls and irrelevant posts.
- icebraining 15y agoSOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course Insane laws like SOPA and worse are the only possible answer if you want to enforce copyright. Nothing less than full blown constant network surveillance would work. Supporting copyright as it's defined by law and not supporting laws like SOPA is an oxymoron.
- nitrogen 15y agodon't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude I'm thinking it's at least partially an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude. Megaupload was about to launch a music distribution service for indie musicians, MegaBox, that, due to Mega's popularity among non-technical users, would have been a significant threat to the major labels, iTunes, and Amazon MP3. They were also fighting Universal to defend their Mega Song. Copyright is out of control, the public domain is stagnant, so maybe some people think that anyone fighting the copyright establishment is worth supporting. Another part may be that some people here survived their teenage years on downloaded music and developed their skills using pirated software, and would never have become programmers/designers/hackers without it. Maybe they feel like the excessive force shown to combat piracy is like an indirect way of the government and major copyright owners saying, "Your career is illegitimate." It's an attack on their identity.
- jonhendry 15y ago"It's an attack on their identity." Which is pathetic. They need a better identity, because they one they've got is hollow.
- gburt 15y agoYour compliance claim, to me, is absolutely false. I've dealt with both Megaupload and Filesonic with DMCA requests. Megaupload not only disabled them promptly but went a step further and would remove links to identical files that I hadn't even found yet (and would tell you about it). I just checked and I've sent 15 DMCA requests to Filesonic and had them all removed within 24 hours.
- dangrossman 15y agoYes they comply with DMCA complaints on the surface. No that's not enough to run this kind of business above the board. What you see in file sharing forums are the same people uploading large amounts of pirated media to these sites, DMCA complaints trickle in over the next few days/weeks, and then the very same people "re-up" the files to the same sites and post the new links in the same thread. Over and over. To be protected by the safe harbor laws in most nations you need to not have actual knowledge of infringement. If files in someone's account are being flagged on a regular basis, you have a hard time arguing you don't know what they're doing anymore. The indictment against Megaupload says that there's physical evidence of exactly this occurring -- the site owners know that much of their traffic is from users uploading pirated content, even looking into their file lists, yet they reward these users instead of blocking them.
- spdy 15y agoIs there a legal requirement to shutdown the account as well ? Or is it enough under the DMCA to just remove files/links? Common sense does not apply if you are not forced to do something by law. (loophole)
- dangrossman 15y agoMy argument was that if an account is repeatedly uploading files that are flagged as infringing, then it becomes hard to argue that the ongoing infringement is not apparent to the service provider. So it's not a direct requirement to close accounts, but an effect of the law nonetheless: > Under the knowledge standard, a service provider is eligible for the limitation on liability only if it does not have actual knowledge of the infringement, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent, or upon gaining such knowledge or awareness, responds expeditiously to take the material down or block access to it. http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf And as the Megaupload indictment showed, these sites are not taking efforts to stay unaware of what their users are doing -- they're looking into their accounts, seeing that the top shared files are DVD rips and commercial software, then rewarding these users instead of removing the content. That's illegal.
- tedsuo 15y agoI agree. I think taking them to court is reasonable, whether they will be convicted of anything is up in the air. It sets precedent that SOPA is not needed, and is not a precedent that can be extended to p2p sharing or anonymous search linking (neither of those activities are provable as conspiracy or racketeering, which is what I think is going to stick in this case). There are HUGE problems with copyright and IP law, and those also need to be fixed. The damage caused through the corrupting of those laws has been far worse than copyright infringement.
- andrewfelix 15y agoI think the quote while dramatic, is pertinent, in that it describes a slippery slope. Significant change might not be immediate, but this could be the beginning of a gradual erosion.
- nitrogen 15y agoremoving only links instead of files I mentioned in another thread that this is the most sensible way to handle this, because there's no way of knowing whether some of the links to identical/deduplicated files were legitimate. My previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489054 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489054
- dangrossman 15y agoRight now the law says that a service provider must take down or block access to the material. Taking down only links (whether they're HTTP links, or pointers in a software app, etc) pointing to the material does not meet that requirement -- the material is still there, and it's still accessible through the other links. So while it would be sensible to only remove the one link that you were notified of, if there are others, then by not taking them all down the service provider does not gain the safe harbor protection of the DMCA and remains liable for copyright infringement. Right now, as a non-lawyer reading the DMCA, it looks to me like any storage service that dedupes files is required to remove the file (from everyone's account) when any link to that file is reported, even if the other accounts have permission to store that file.
- pyre 15y agoThat would make sense, and I agree. I feel like this should probably be a grey area to be sorted out in court, if not a reasonable codification into law. But as I understand it the wording of the DMCA can be interpreted to mean that you must remove all links to the file, regardless of whether or not some of those users had the legal right to distribute while others didn't.
- funkah 15y agoOh, come on.
- cynicalkane 15y agoCan we please not do this? The Megaupload employees were conspiring to commit piracy. These weren't trumped-up charges. They were accused, among other things, of attempting to copy Youtube 1 for 1, and knowingly conspiring with users and sites dedicated primarily to pirated content. It seems a little banal to compare all this to, you know, genocide.
- iamandrus 15y ago>of attempting to copy Youtube 1 for 1 ... since when is this a crime? There are tons of "clones" of YouTube out there.
- cynicalkane 15y agoReally? Probably almost every video on Youtube is owned by the video creator. When you upload a video to Youtube, you still own the video and you're granting Youtube a revocable license to use it (see section 6 of the Youtube EULA, https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms). In addition, Youtube enters commercial licensing agreements for much free and paid content. Youtube videos aren't public domain just because they're on the Internet! No, you can't copy and host data you don't have the license to. And recall that these videos belong to little guys as well as big ones.
- pyre 15y ago> Really? I think there is a disconnect here between whether "1-to-1 copy of YouTube" is referring to the content on YouTube or just the general implementation/interface/idea of YouTube.
- william42 15y agoThe former is what Megaupload was doing, though. They had software to download YT videos and upload them on Megavideo.
- easp 15y ago
- jonhendry 15y agoOh good lord. Yeah, not having access to free entertaiment == holocaust. Get over yourself. People need to do some introspection and figure out how they became so pathetically dependent on being entertained.
- AlexFromBelgium 15y ago"In the Press Filesonic joins the Internet Watch Foundation to combat online criminal content. They join over 100 companies from across the world in the fight against online child sexual abuse content." Omg, this IS how they are going to push through the piracy laws!!
- molmalo 15y ago-- We'll scan everything you have. We'll monitor everything you access. We'll sniff, everything you. All this, to protect our corporate children. Yes, they'll make anyone fighting those laws look like a pervert. Erase all traces of credibility from their opponents, and to make the political cost of fighting this enormous. Like somebody else said: welcome to the mayor leagues.
- thehiddentech 15y agoinb4 :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497787 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497787
- benton 15y agoI bet they will create another category of accounts called 'group' accounts that will allow multiple log-ins and simultaneous downloads of files uploaded to that 'group' account. Lo and behold we are back to the original state of affairs with an extra layer of indirection.
- scrod 15y agoHow many more lessons do you need that centralization of information leads to centralization of control?
- seqastian 15y agoYea people needed to learn that filehosters are not a replacement for real p2p the hard way I guess
- dangrossman 15y agoWhy seed a torrent day and night, linking your actual IP to the infringement act, when you can just upload a file to a bunch of file sharing services on a cafe's wifi and post a link on a forum? If your goal is to illegally distribute files without getting caught, real P2P seems like a suboptimal choice for now.
- Zirro 15y agoThat's why you use a VPN-service, which doesn't keep any logs.
- loopdoend 15y agoI don't know of a single VPN service that doesnt keep logs, they might not log the sites you visit but they all log which customer has which IP at which time.
- Zirro 15y agoI trust my VPN-provider when I ask them explicitly if they keep _any_ logs at all, and they reply no. They are not required to do so by law (yet, at least), where I live.
- gst 15y agoPeople won't really care. They just use whatever is easiest for them. When central storage sites are shutdown other mechanisms will be used for sharing. But why bother as long as it works? You're not locked into a particular site, so there's no reason to use other approaches just because something might happen.
- Paulholz 15y agoWhos next?
- moses1400 15y agowhat happens to those with premium accounts?
- avallark 15y agoI asked for a full refund on my lifetime membership. -------- I subscribed to filesonic when sharing of links were allowed. I am no longer interested to have this account if there is no sharing of links allowed. The functionality of the service that I signed up for has signifcantly reduced. Thus I would like a refund of my subscription fees. Since my membership was for Lifetime $149. I would like a full refund of this amount please. ---------------------
- grandpoobah 15y agoWill be interested to find out what they say. Glad I didn't renew my account when it expired recently.
- avallark 15y agothey arent really responding. I am sure they are busy preparing papers for bankruptcy filing.
- darkstar211 15y agoWhat is stopping people making a account, and when sharing the file, give out the account details with the link? Say I upload 50 divx films, and give out that accounts details, so people can freely take what they want, or even add files?
- barik 15y agoWhat equally stops someone from simply logging in using those account details, deleting all the files, or simply changing the password? Feels like whack-a-mole to me.
- ovi256 15y agoProbably nothing, but it could trigger some anti-hacking heuristic that would disable the account. It's also much less convenient than just sharing the link. Plus some troll would just delete all the shared files.
- benton 15y agoThat's probably what they will create next. A special type of account that allows download/upload access to users other than the original owner of the account.
- uptown 15y agoNothing. That actually is a method that's been used by "evil doers" in the past. The government had been monitoring email correspondence using Carnivore. What they found was that instead of sending emails back and forth, a shared inbox was being used, and information was simply being communicated using progressive edits of email drafts. It lived on a server, so it was available for discovery ... but since nothing was flying back and forth, it took awhile before it was detected.
- barik 15y agoGiven that almost all files on RLSLOG: http://www.rlslog.net/ http://www.rlslog.net/ use FileSonic for downloading copyrighted material, I was wondering myself how long it would be before FileSonic either shutdown or disabled sharing entirely. I'm sure there are other "scene release" sites, but this is one in particular that I've been aware of for a long time.
- kristofferR 15y agoOuch. This is gonna hurt their profits a lot, for the last year they've been one of the top filesharing sites used by pirates. It will likely bankrupt them. Having to shut down because of a lack of profits is way better than being sent to jail though.
- droithomme 15y agoIt's not very convenient to go back to transferring files to clients via email. Now that files can be 4GB or more it's a real problem in fact. This culture of fear the US is creating is damaging business and work.
- cmelbye 15y agoWhy are you going back to transferring files via email? Are MegaUpload and "filesonic.com" the only methods of transferring files other than email or something? Ever heard of Dropbox?
- c0n5pir4cy 15y agoDropbox sharing doesn't always suit me, especially when I need to sent really big files to clients, these files tend to linger and take up Dropbox space. Dropbox is brilliant for teams working together though.
- tedsuo 15y agoYou should check out yousendit, it's like megaupload but without the network effect so it can't be used for piracy.
- iamandrus 15y agoOr MediaFire, or RapidShare, or even Box.net.
- dangrossman 15y agoI would be hesitant to use the first two right now. They're heavily used for very visible piracy.
- xxqs 15y agorapidshare is a Swiss company, and the law is less crazy over here. but for corporate file sharing, i would recommend renting a VPS and organizing some simple SSH-based copying with FileZilla, for example. Or some HTTP-based sharing if you want.
- piquadrat 15y agoAre there any semi-reliable sources for world wide internet traffic available? Between this and Megaupload, I guess there should be a measurable dent...
- rmoriz 15y agoWhen will they shut down NNTP for good? scary.
- slig 15y agoWe're not supposed to talk about it, and hopefully it will never get mainstream.
- codesuela 15y agoit probably will with aggressive advertising all over various file sharing portals and clients like newsbin that make downloading easier than using napster. only entry barrier left is that you have to pay for it but there are already services out there that provide ad financed usenet access.
- barik 15y agoIndeed, it is interesting that the focus is on these web-based file download services, yet NNTP services like GigaNews (http://www.giganews.com/ http://www.giganews.com/) continue to make money while falling under the radar. And let's face it -- most of their traffic probably directly comes from pirated material from alt.binaries.* groups. These NNTP services even boast large retention times for binary groups and offer anonymous VPN access.
- funkah 15y agoYeah, I'm hoping that one continues to fly under the radar.
- wcoenen 15y agoI guess dropbox will be next. Very annoying, as I'll have to go through all my publicly shared files and figure out where the broken links are. Or is dropbox doing something fundamentally different with their sharing feature that avoids a megaupload scenario?
- wmf 15y agoYes, Dropbox has a different business model that discourages infringement.
- badclient 15y agoSure - dropbox exclusively monetizes the uploader, not the downloader. Megaupload, filesonic etc. actually pay the uploaders who upload high-demand pirated content that attracts downloaders who can then be monetized. Very contrasting business models.
- barredo 15y agoI found this handy image that resumes most of the large filesharing websites (except Rapidshare, which has not changed yet). http://i.imgur.com/p0nqK.png http://i.imgur.com/p0nqK.png
- muyuu 15y agoYou can now update Filesonic. All filesharing is disabled there.
- martindale 15y agoWhat is the source for this?
- badclient 15y agoFor those wondering how dropbox is different... Dropbox exclusively monetizes the uploader of the file, not the downloader. Megaupload, filesonic etc. actually pay the uploaders who upload attractive pirated content that attracts downloaders who can then be monetized aggressively for faster or no-wait downloads. Very contrasting business models.
- aneth 15y agoNeither of those business models explicitly condones piracy. YouTube and Flickr also reward users for popular content. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and it's entirely legal - as long as you comply with DMCA and don't knowingly contribute.
- gburt 15y agoWhy is the government regulating the business model? These crimes are far too vague to be sensical.
- john_flintstone 15y agoDoes anyone know if Usenet will be in the firing line, or is shutting that down a whole other ball game?
- spdy 15y agoA lot will depend on the MU case in the USA they got on of the best lawyers you can buy for money. And we will see what kind of rabbits he can pull out of his hat. On the other hand the hydra effect will come as it always will be. And there are countries in this world the FBI cant go after the people ( Russia / Mainland China etc. ). Data will just move from one to another datacenter if servers get confiscated. And everyone could see how much money can be made out of this sector. If the content industry does not abandon their old business model they can witch hunt forever. TBP is a prime example for this they have thrown a lot at this problem and the site is still operating.
- mikecane 15y agoAgain, Hollywood was founded by and on piracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company#Backlash_and_Decline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company#...
- wmf 15y agoAnd you're going to hold that against them a century later? It also sounds like the patents they were "pirating" were owned by an illegal cartel. As then as today, one man's pirate is another's freedom fighter.
- greenpizza13 15y agoTHis is how it starts... shit.
- downandout 15y agoDoes it disturb anyone else that the government is basically using the threat of very questionable prosecutions to scare people that were at least purportedly adhering to US law into essentially shuttering their businesses? I've read the Mega Upload indictment. It's pretty weak, and could easily apply to YouTube. If innovative businesses that believe they are following the letter of the law must live under constant threat of arbitrary criminal prosecution that will destroy them whether or not they are ultimately acquitted, it's going to have a serious chilling effect on our economy.
- joering1 15y agoit always amazed me reading youtube sell blurbs again and again how instead of raiding it and closing for obviously at least 3/4 of content being illegal and persecuting owners, they got bought by a multibilion company with Board to execute and stockholder to answer to. And now they are heroes for the deal they pulled off. I dont find the difference between original youtube owners and megaupload owners business-wise.
- necro 15y agoDon't kill the messenger, but here is a real scenario. My "friend" used to use megaupload, filesonic, and other services to watch all his tv content every night, and even paying for a megaupload account (never putting any money back to the creators of content). It was really convenient and the price was right. Now without it, even in the last few days, the pain point has shifted enough that he started buying the seasons of shows he is interested in on itunes. (giving a cut to the creators) There was a point even a year ago that he could get the latest film on piratebay so easily that there was no point going to the theatre. Now it seems a little harder to find the releases, or at least more inconvenient, so my friend has gone to the movies a lot more. Now I personally get the whole internet freedom side of things, but at the same time I have seen my friend screw the content creators out of their cut because some middle man made it a lot more convenient to get the content. I get the idea that some people have used these services for personal content, but if the business model of a service is _primarily_ around the sharing of copyrighted content then something should be done. And especially if the service pays the uploader based on how popular the stolen content they upload is. At least in my friends case, he spent $100 on itunes in the last day, _only_ because megaupload was not there, and there was enough pain to look for another source. If there are millions of people out there like my friend, that is a lot more revenue for the creators/studios. And no, I'm not a troll from the film industry. This is just a real observation.
- pyre 15y ago> And especially if the service pays the uploader > based on how popular the stolen content they > upload is. This should be reworded. As I understand it, they weren't limiting payment to only users with stolen content. It's just that the stolen content was probably the most popular.
- jpeterson 15y agoOkay, this is one example. I personally don't know any such person. The question is not: "can you come up with an example of the MPAA/RIAA/FBI collusive measures working?" It's: "will it really make any difference overall?"
- 15y ago
- andrewfelix 15y agoFileserve have also shut down their affiliate plans http://www.fhscout.com/how-to-move-your-files-from-fileserve-to-other-file-hosting-sites/ http://www.fhscout.com/how-to-move-your-files-from-fileserve...
- pyre 15y agoI'm confused. On the account creation page, it says that you can have private and 'password-protected' files. Is this still true? Is the sharing that they disabled for files that had no password (i.e. publicly accessible)? Or have they just not updated that page yet? If you can still send files with a password, then this still be an alternative for 'sending large files to clients.'
- eduardordm 15y agoMegaupload and FileSonic were my source of The Daily Show episodes. I don't live in the US, there isn't any other way I could watch it. It used to be on cable (sony) but not anymore. I used to have a SSL tunnel and a plus account on Hulu to watch some series, but then I got tired of maintaining a VPS. I don't go to theaters. I think it's a stupid waste of time for a bad quality experience. I watch tons of movies on pay-per-view, but the list I can choose from is 5-10 movies long. Netflix here is also limited to a few titles. I record a lot of series, but some of them are incomplete or translated. There is no other option to me. I need to be a pirate if I want that content. I tried way too many times to get MPAA to accept my money, but they don't want it. Good thing is that I've been discovering some really cool stuff made in Europe (specially France) (and they accept my money for their content!!!). EDIT: I also need to make Itunes believe I'm in the US in order to buy the stuff I want. I can't use my credit card, so I buy gift cards using some "illegal" websites. This is pathetic.
- throwawaysnipe 15y agoYou can watch The Daily Show on the site proper by setting the X-Forwarded-For header you send to '12.13.14.15'. For more details see http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/onath/stephen_colbert_understands_reddit/c3io29s http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/onath/stephen_colber...
- jonhendry 15y ago"I need to be a pirate if I want that content." Or you could find better to do with your time rather than wasting it watching TV shows and movies and trying to figure out how to get them.
- jackob 15y agoGuys if you really need great filesharing service, use demanoid, use rutracker.org (Russian)