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File-sharing firms clamp down in fear

by Alistair Lowe on 23 January 2012, 09:49

Tags: FileSonic

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It appears as though the arrests made by the US of several Megaupload employees have sent shivers down the spines of top-dogs at other file-sharing services.

Just last night, Filesonic, one of the top-10 cyberlocker services, ceased to offer its content-sharing functionality and rewards program, with currently only existing users able to access their own uploads for retrieval. This came as a shock announcement, with the firm not confirming any timescales or even if the matter is a temporary one; users were left with a brief and uninformative message on the Filesonic homepage.

Filesonic Message

Much like Megaupload, Filesonic is based in Hong Kong with some servers likely to be present in the US, and from the Megaupload case we know this is enough for the US to claim jurisdiction if they wished it; we wonder if the US also has any dirt on the Filesonic employees or if they are simply being overly cautious.

Two months ago, Filesonic announced a partnership with Vobile and its content-filtering service as an effective means to fingerprint and filter copyright content. It's unlikely that the new service had gone live in the short space between the announcement and yesterday's actions but it's clear that the firm was looking to take a step in the right direction from the eyes of the US legal system. Perhaps yesterday's actions are in preparation for rolling out such a system or perhaps the top Filesonic employees have simply panicked - hopefully we'll have more to report over the following weeks.

Meanwhile, Filesonic isn't the only firm to make a voluntary move, with cyberlocker site uploaded.to blocking access to its services from within the US, in the hopes of keeping the US out of its business and itself out of the jurisdiction of the courts. It's clear that the world of file-sharing is to change significantly throughout 2012, mostly to our detriment, as some of the world's largest and thus most convenient cyberlocker services close-up shop either partially or fully, with it seeming less and less likely users will wish to expose themselves to the more affordable, long-term account options.

Come on Hackerspace Global Grid!



HEXUS Forums :: 53 Comments

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A massively irritating development as I have a decent number of things backed up to dropbox. Who knows who will blink next.

Guess I'd best look at the offerings from people too big to take on - google & apple.

/sigh
roachcoach
A massively irritating development as I have a decent number of things backed up to dropbox. Who knows who will blink next.

Guess I'd best look at the offerings from people too big to take on - google & apple.

/sigh

Dropbox is fine as you cannot search for content on the internet.
Filesonic didn't have a search function either, afaik. Link aggregation was by scraping forums etc as I understand it. Hell even megaupload didnt have a search function :D
roachcoach
Filesonic didn't have a search function either, afaik. Link aggregation was by scraping forums etc as I understand it. Hell even megaupload didnt have a search function :D
That's one reason why HEXUS forums are careful about what we allow. Discussion of the nature of copyright, piracy, etc, is fine. How-to's or links to copyright materials, especially file downloads, are not. Even then, it's impossible to absolutely prevent any and all links to copyright material, as that could include people using a picture in a sig, or block-quoting an entire BBC (or whatever) article(s) rather than linking to it. In many, probably most, such examples, the person doing it probably doesn't even realise the copyright issues. And we're not experts either.
Maybe I'm being horribly naive here, but surely the DoJ should rightly be chasing the folks submitting/sharing the copyrighted materials rather than the method used to “carry” them?

Also, what happened to the idea of clearly bunging a bit in the Terms Of Service that “storage and sharing of materials protected by copyright without the consent of the copyright holder is prohibited”. My impression was that if Joe Public had to sign up to this when taking out the service from Big Slab O' Disk Corp, then BSOD Corp were regarded as another victim (since Joe Public had violated the ToS) and couldn't be prosecuted - or at least had the defence that they were merely an innocent carrier and it was the evil user that was to blame.

Parting shot - can't see the point of a file sharing service that only allows you to share files to yourself. :(
Saracen
Discussion of the nature of copyright, piracy, etc, is fine. How-to's or links to copyright materials, especially file downloads, are not (allowed). Even then, it's impossible to absolutely prevent any and all links to copyright material, as that could include people using a picture in a sig, or block-quoting an entire BBC (or whatever) article(s) rather than linking to it.
Didn't realise that block-quoting was a no-no - thought it was okay to do "if you go to http://don't-click-this-its-a-dummy you'll see it says…" and then include a snippet. After all, the link is giving due attribution etc.