MPAA sues Hotfile, battle for cloud begins

[ShareShiz]

MPAA sues Hotfile, battle for cloud begins

For the first time, a group of Hollywood film studios has filed a copyright lawsuit against a cyberlocker.

File-hosting service Hotfile has made a business out of offering a stash box for people to store their pirated movies, the Motion Picture Association of America claims in its suit against Hotfile.

"In less than two years, Hotfile has become one of the 100 most trafficked sites in the world," the MPAA said in a press release issued today. "That is a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes."

According to the MPAA, Hotfile is operated by Florida resident Anton Titov, who was not immediately avaialble for comment.

A growing number of digital-locker services have come under fire lately by copyright owners. Liberty Media, the company with financial stakes in QVC, Starz, and Sirius XM radio, last month also filed a copyright suit against Hotfile. On the music side, EMI, the smallest of the four record labels, is suing MP3tunes.com, a digital locker specializing in the storage of songs.

The cyberlockers are an alternative to BitTorrent file-sharing services and are growing in popularity. With these services, there's no need to download any software. A user logs on to a locker service and watches whatever films or TV shows are stored there.

The MPAA was careful to make the distinction that not all cyberlockers are unlawful. That's important because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor protection Internet service providers as along as they play by a set of rules. The trade group for the top film studios said Hotfile doesn't. The service "openly discourages use of its system for personal storage," the MPAA wrote. "Hotfile's business model encourages...users to upload files containing illegal copies of motion pictures and TV shows to its servers and to third-party sites."

According to the MPAA's suit, Hotfile is no free-information advocate. This is straight-up piracy for profit, the trade group said. Hotfile collects revenues by charging a monthly fee.

More to come

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20031011-261.html?tag=mncol

 

[zer(O)]

Good bey HF ! Burn XD

 

[Lifetalk]

I'm actually quite interested in seeing how this tuns out for HF.

 

[Trueno22]

zero you're an idiot. if they fall so will every other filehost as it will set a precendent and tatute for doing the same exact thing to any other filehosting site.

 

[Maniac_]

Now imagine what they will do to FileServe and FileSonic, they even promote their service on warez boards.. XD

 

[spreea]

@maniac

lmao your right about that..

 

[ENC0DE]

this is sad! because if hotfile fails, so will the others too, as said above!

 

[The Coon]

Now imagine what they will do to FileServe and FileSonic, they even promote their service on warez boards.. XD

Jep. Apart from encouraging uploaders at warez-bb and pornbb (with banners) they also all have topics on w(arez)junction.

 

[Lifetalk]

The simple fact that they reward people with cash (and not points like RS used to) is enough to bring them down. Not only are they profiting, they're encouraging it with monetary rewards.

HF and the likes better get ready with good enough lawyers. The last thing anyone wants is a precedence being set. That'd be a bad thing, indeed.

 

[so19]

and that's why warez is getting killed by uploaders who are doing it for the money.
Great job guys, greatt jobb..