MPAA sues Hotfile, battle for cloud begins

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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..

 

[Kedzi]

Damn :S I hope they can resolve this by simply deleting content =/

 

[champ of champs]

They delete files very fast lol

 

[bxflow]

Well what can you expect? Hotfile HEAVILY promotes how the pay uploaders for sharing files,etc same goes for fileserve,filesonic.

Its like saying.
"HEY! A new movie was just released in the USA come upload it to HF,share the links and make some cash!."


I doubt anything will happen but if the case gets to a extreme point then HF will probably have to do what RS did and get rid of Rewards.etc

 

[Maniac_]

I was betting HF would stop paying for uploads and introduce a point system, 3-6 months after its opening.. Unfortunately they didn't.

 

[bxflow]

I was betting HF would stop paying for uploads and introduce a point system, 3-6 months after its opening.. Unfortunately they didn't.

A point system would be nice, How you think MEGAUPLOAD is almost always out of trouble! they dont say HEY COME EARN CASH! they basically say HEY COME EARN SOME POINTS AND EXTEND YOUR PREMIUM!

points can also be redeemed for cash btw.

 

[champ of champs]

I dont think that Hf stop pay for d uploads
bcoz they know when they do so All uploaders will run away to other file host
So they cannot take any risk
+ I believe in next few months hotfile will be d best file host
its growing up very fast

 

[Tango]

Hopefully this makes all filehosts remove there rewards systems :D

Then 10,000 people wont bother posting crap to 1,000 forums with autoposters every day XD

 

[Daniel]

I wonder if hotfile is going to pay the warez uploaders/webmasters next week ..

 

[bxflow]

I dont think that Hf stop pay for d uploads
bcoz they know when they do so All uploaders will run away to other file host
So they cannot take any risk
+ I believe in next few months hotfile will be d best file host
its growing up very fast

Then maybe they should improve their system so users would stick around? look at MU and RS, they dont really pay high cash but they are still one of the most downloaded from filehosts because they offer the best speeds!

Hopefully this makes all filehosts remove there rewards systems :D

Then 10,000 people wont bother posting crap to 1,000 forums with autoposters every day XD

+1

 

[FSL]

I dont think that Hf stop pay for d uploads
bcoz they know when they do so All uploaders will run away to other file host
So they cannot take any risk

lol.. so u think rapidshare was mad :P ? they don't know this before closing that points system? lol...
if hotfile does the points system, etc.. (except money as reward), that means they did it under pressure. They of-course don't want this.