Silly people. Arguing over warez.
What GFY is doing to filehosts is wrong. What payment processors are doing to filehosts is wrong. Regardless of if there is CP or not on their servers, it's wrong to say that site should be shut down. At this point in time, the Internet is facing a huge issue, much larger than warez. User generated content is the #1 most viewed content on the Internet. User generated being the keywords. Instead of attacking the filehosts, the users need to be dealt with.
Yet, MegaUpload happened. PirateBay happened. The governments and rights holders of the world are facing an extremely difficult problem that they'll never fully solve. It's difficult to accept that stolen stuff is being pedaled, and I know that from personal experience. However, you cannot stop it. Piracy has always existed, and will continue to do so even if all filehosts, torrent trackers, and the like are shut down.
Despite the best efforts of YouTube and its massive army of content review specialists, piracy is still on YouTube. It always will be. Piracy is found on image hosts like ImageShack. Piracy is found in text on blogs powered by Wordpress's official hosting program(Not warez sites, people that copy/paste content.) Piracy is found on official school forums. Piracy is found on Facebook. Piracy is found everywhere in one form or another.
User generated content is the best content the Internet has ever seen. It always will be. The days of static HTML sites are long gone, and the Internet has evolved into a beast that can vary from educational and witty to gruesome and downright sad. By us refusing to accept a censored Internet, there will always be gore, piracy, child pornography, voyeurism, and the like. It's a negative on a huge positive.
There are only two things I can blame filehosts for:
1.) Gearing themselves towards piracy. By posting on a board like wJunction, where a vast majority of its members are part of the warez scene, they're only hurting their own defense.
2.) Having small investment capital. You must have a content review team. There's no excuse not to. If a team member finds a copyrighted file or child porn or anything else that is illegal, it must be removed from your servers immediately. However, if you start your service with 2,000 dollars, odds are, you don't have any more to dedicate to your service, and you should not have started it in the first place.
If filehosts would actively monitor their content and react(and verify) to DMCA complaints, their reputation would be hugely upgraded much like YouTube's is. They don't. They won't. They succumb to this damning reputation just to turn a buck. That is their fault, not their users.
While I do not condone piracy, per say, I do actively promote freedom of speech and refuse to accept any kind of censorship on the Internet. The Internet is possibly the greatest invention of mankind, and any censorship on it will be the greatest mistake mankind can make.
Now, I'll rant on the payment processors. Paypal is the biggest offender. Paypal has positioned itself as the sole leader in the online payment game. Millions of users, millions in profits. The U.S. government needs to step in and make Paypal act the way a bank does. Their incompetence is nothing short of amazing. Their verification system does not work. Every day, thousands, if not millions, of "unauthorized" payments are sent with Paypal. This is unacceptable. Relating to the subject at hand, Paypal will simply close an account if it's suspected of illegal doings. That is not Paypal's job. That is the job of the police, not a team of "specialists" who get paid by Paypal. While some would argue that Paypal is a company, not a bank, I call BS. When you're dealing with a large volume of money, it is in the public's best interest for it to be governed by an elected body.
/rant
What GFY is doing to filehosts is wrong. What payment processors are doing to filehosts is wrong. Regardless of if there is CP or not on their servers, it's wrong to say that site should be shut down. At this point in time, the Internet is facing a huge issue, much larger than warez. User generated content is the #1 most viewed content on the Internet. User generated being the keywords. Instead of attacking the filehosts, the users need to be dealt with.
Yet, MegaUpload happened. PirateBay happened. The governments and rights holders of the world are facing an extremely difficult problem that they'll never fully solve. It's difficult to accept that stolen stuff is being pedaled, and I know that from personal experience. However, you cannot stop it. Piracy has always existed, and will continue to do so even if all filehosts, torrent trackers, and the like are shut down.
Despite the best efforts of YouTube and its massive army of content review specialists, piracy is still on YouTube. It always will be. Piracy is found on image hosts like ImageShack. Piracy is found in text on blogs powered by Wordpress's official hosting program(Not warez sites, people that copy/paste content.) Piracy is found on official school forums. Piracy is found on Facebook. Piracy is found everywhere in one form or another.
User generated content is the best content the Internet has ever seen. It always will be. The days of static HTML sites are long gone, and the Internet has evolved into a beast that can vary from educational and witty to gruesome and downright sad. By us refusing to accept a censored Internet, there will always be gore, piracy, child pornography, voyeurism, and the like. It's a negative on a huge positive.
There are only two things I can blame filehosts for:
1.) Gearing themselves towards piracy. By posting on a board like wJunction, where a vast majority of its members are part of the warez scene, they're only hurting their own defense.
2.) Having small investment capital. You must have a content review team. There's no excuse not to. If a team member finds a copyrighted file or child porn or anything else that is illegal, it must be removed from your servers immediately. However, if you start your service with 2,000 dollars, odds are, you don't have any more to dedicate to your service, and you should not have started it in the first place.
If filehosts would actively monitor their content and react(and verify) to DMCA complaints, their reputation would be hugely upgraded much like YouTube's is. They don't. They won't. They succumb to this damning reputation just to turn a buck. That is their fault, not their users.
While I do not condone piracy, per say, I do actively promote freedom of speech and refuse to accept any kind of censorship on the Internet. The Internet is possibly the greatest invention of mankind, and any censorship on it will be the greatest mistake mankind can make.
Now, I'll rant on the payment processors. Paypal is the biggest offender. Paypal has positioned itself as the sole leader in the online payment game. Millions of users, millions in profits. The U.S. government needs to step in and make Paypal act the way a bank does. Their incompetence is nothing short of amazing. Their verification system does not work. Every day, thousands, if not millions, of "unauthorized" payments are sent with Paypal. This is unacceptable. Relating to the subject at hand, Paypal will simply close an account if it's suspected of illegal doings. That is not Paypal's job. That is the job of the police, not a team of "specialists" who get paid by Paypal. While some would argue that Paypal is a company, not a bank, I call BS. When you're dealing with a large volume of money, it is in the public's best interest for it to be governed by an elected body.
/rant
.