Hotfile shut down

http://hotfile.com

by bloody0815 • 13 years ago

55 52 13 years ago

hotfile.com

csmuk• 13 years ago

Well that leaves, what 50+ other sites still?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0n8N98mpes

The moles keep coming forever though...

mschuster913• 13 years ago

And once again the question, what about the users with legitimate content on the site? Megaupload all over again?

Don't prosecutors ever learn? Megaupload blew up in their faces and now the next one...

ritonlajoie• 13 years ago

Well, the reverse is true, don't users ever learn ?

mschuster913• 13 years ago

What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?

Every hosting service can and will be used for copyright infringement - Google's Blogspot is a nice example. They host(ed) hundreds of "piracy" blogs (and took them down on DMCA notice, like Hotfile/MU did), so do I have to fear my blog being taken down because some idiots sue Google?

The only thing that protects me/my data from this scenario is that Google is Too Big To Be Sued.

casca• 13 years ago

The media companies need to do something against "piracy", otherwise it looks like they're complicit.

The MPAA/RIAA/equivalent are industry bodies that are funded to protect their members. These members want to see a return on their investment, and press coverage about shutting down a high profile filesharing site shows that they're doing something. Everyone wins.

Of course it will have no impact on the availability of filesharing sites. If anything, the rise in bitcoin mining malware will make it even more profitable to set up such services.

Fuxy4• 13 years ago

Every time they pull this crap a lot of non us copyrighted fan subbed anime (i enjoy watching) disappear off the internet.

Edit: Yes i get them from fan subbing sites because no company is willing to license it and sell it. I buy what i can and take what i can't.

I'm certain there's tonnes of legitimate content being lost on every shutdown some of it permanently if it's not very common or popular.

I think people should be allowed to sue the MPAA or RIAA if they take down content they don't own.

TylerE• 13 years ago

"non-us copyrighted"? Ever heard of the Berne Convention?

Fuxy4• 13 years ago

Do i sound like I would care?

Give me a way of watching what i like the moment it comes out (not 3 years later) and I'll pay for it.

Otherwise I'll do whatever it takes to get it.

There's still series that I watched and enjoyed over 5 years ago that are still not translated and sold outside of japan so should i waste my tine waiting for a miracle because of the Berne Convention?

If the market is not willing to do it the community will plain and simple.

The problem is at the moment the community is a lot better at offering what people want then any company.

rakoo• 13 years ago

Morale of the story: seed it on Bittorrent. Centralized hosting will never be as reliable as distributed methods of distribution in the long term.

Fuzzwah• 13 years ago

The reason why sites like hotfile are used by people who redistribute content is that they can make money from affiliate systems when users pay for premium accounts to access the content with out the download speed throttling or download size restrictions.

peroo2• 13 years ago

The irony of the situation is that it's unprofitable to license anime for the US precisely because the fansubbing community already distributes "free" copies, and most anime-fans consume the majority of their content that way.

radoslawc• 13 years ago

What's even more ironic, is that no one is willing to pay for poor quality subtitles, which is frequently the case with the ones provided by companies.

lmm3• 13 years ago

The thing is, the fansubbed product is better. The user experience is as good as with Kindle books, and better than any commercial video service - the translation quality of modern internet streaming services like Crunchyroll is actually good enough to compete with fansubs. But the video quality isn't, and I can't stream on my commute.

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

I disagree. If the legitimate source becomes easier to acquire, people will migrate. For example, I always youtubed/torrented music. I finally got Spotify and it completely replaced it because it's easier to access. Sure I'm "losing" $10 per month that I could otherwise save, but this service does everything for me. Indexing, discovery, and syncing.

mafuyu2• 13 years ago

You can find pretty much all you want over XDCC and Bittorrent, which are the primary methods which fansubbers distribute their videos.

lmm3• 13 years ago

Recent releases sure; shows from the '80s or even 2004 not so much.

edem• 13 years ago

This reminds me of a hydra. You cut off 1 head and it grows 2 more in its place.

They need to realize that they are tilting at windmills.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

A bunch of sites shut down when they saw what happened to Megaupload (at least, it seemed like it. Maybe it was normal attrition).

menubar• 13 years ago

Problem is, tilting at windmills is what they do best. Job security for as long as they can keep it going.

Sorta like Microsoft Support Technicians.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

Keep in mind - the objective is not to shut down the sites, but make it difficult enough that your average person goes to legal sites instead.

Take me for example - I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to go find an illegal copy of a TV season on a "File Locker" - but I have zero problem finding legit stuff on iTunes or Amazon or Netflix.

I think the MPAA / RIAA have been very effective - in 2004/2005, there were a ton of places I knew about to download stolen content - but today - nope.

staticelf• 13 years ago

You mean illegally copied? There is __still__ a huge difference.

kvinnako• 13 years ago

I think this is taking an easy way out. If every one stops pirating and there is no piracy, raii/mpaa will make it expensive enough that poorer people will not be able to afford it or would be left out. Look at the isps and cable companies where there is no alternative(atleast in US) and they squeeze as much as they can out of the user giving as little as possible. In a way piracy is kind of a competition for media companies to make shows available for a reasonable price.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to go find an illegal copy of a TV season on a "File Locker" -

google.com

maccard• 13 years ago

Exactly. However, the methods of obtaining these files legitimately have improved vastly since then too. I will take whatever route is most convenient. For music, if I can give you my card details and you take a prearranged amount from my account every month, and I don't get interrupted, I will happily pay for this service (Spotify). Give me a TV service where I pay a fixed fee, and get to watch what I want when it suits me (on a saturday night, not at 9pm on a tuesday when I have to be up at 6 the following day), and I'll pay for it (Netflix). Service to get the latest and greatest game that my friend has been talking about all day, but all the shops are closed when I get home? Steam! Note that steam started selling 3rd party games in 2005, Spotify started in 2008 and Netflix started in 2007 (Streaming I mean, not the DVD on delivery). I realise this is only true for a small minority of countries (I'm in ireland), but Before these services, the alternatives were pirate or go and buy in a store. Now that I can easily get the media I want through legitimate means, I have virtually no reason to pirate stuff. Sometimes however, games I want/music I want is unavailable on X service. If I download it/use it I'm probably going to buy it at the next opportunity anyway.

throwawaykf• 13 years ago

Hmm, wonder how much of their 80M settlement the MPAA will actually get...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/hotfile-settles-c...

kr4• 13 years ago

"Sites like Hotfile ...do a serious disservice to audiences who deserve high-quality, legitimate viewing experiences online."

"This judgment by the court is another important step toward protecting an Internet that works for everyone"

Edit: I get a feelling that these quotes in the article have been created off the hn title generator tool [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6815282

derrzzaa• 13 years ago

Wonder if they have a licence for Helvetica used in the banner.

callum85• 13 years ago

You don't need a licence to use a typeface in a design, only to install a font file on a computer. And OS X ships with a version of Helvetica so they might have just used that.

lhgaghl• 13 years ago

But you need a license to put JPEG files on your website. But I guess you already knew that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Patent_issues

nly• 13 years ago

So... when are the Feds going to shutdown Dropbox? More or less the same thing.

nolok• 13 years ago

Afaik Dropbox stops the sharing of file once it goes beyong a given (relatively limited) bandwidth. Not making it legal, but making it pretty much impossible to use it as a "file share" on sharing forums.

Sami_Lehtinen2• 13 years ago

That's also a very bad idea. What if I just happen to be very popular and I want to distribute my data to a large group of people. Does github close down projects which got too many clone requests?

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

Share a Folder containing magnet hash files. All of The Pirate Bay hash files is ~90MB.

At least until someone incorporates the data into the blockchain.

wmf• 13 years ago

Dropbox is a pay-to-upload business model but cyberlockers use a pay-to-download business model (they used to pay referral fees to uploaders, but this was so obviously shady that everybody is dropping it). The judge in the Hotfile case ruled that Hotfile had vicarious liability for copyright infringement because they profited more from distributing more popular content.

Sami_Lehtinen2• 13 years ago

This is so wrong. I use these single click file hosting sites all the time to share totally legal content with my friends. It's just bad idea to attach 2 GB file to an email. Also one link can be shared with group of people in Skype chat or so, without requiring me to upload same data to everyone who's interested.

robobro• 13 years ago

A no-name piracy site dies because it broke the law. I'm not grieving.

Hotfile shut down

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