TorrentFreak Email Update |
- MegaUpload Fights Back Against MPAA and RIAA Propaganda
- RapidShare Accuses ‘Piracy Report’ Publisher of Defamation, Might Sue
- Chinese Crackdown On Piracy Enters The Digital Domain
| MegaUpload Fights Back Against MPAA and RIAA Propaganda Posted: 13 Jan 2011 03:29 AM PST
As reported earlier this week, in traffic terms the number of one-click hosting sites that are now larger than the mighty Pirate Bay – and above them in the Internet’s top 100 sites – has grown to five. While Hotfile, 4Shared, Mediafire are all significant players on the world stage, market leaders RapidShare and MegaUpload are the companies at the sharp end of accusatory finger-pointing by Hollywood and the music industry. Now, following on the heels of RapidShare’s fightback, here comes MegaUpload countering what it describes as “grotesquely overblown allegations” of mass copyright infringement. “We provide connectivity between end users and storage capacity in the cloud, but no content – just like e.g. ADSL providers and hard drive vendors,” the company said in a statement emailed to TorrentFreak. “As a matter of fact, most public Internet services, including backbone carriers, could not exist if the law did not protect them from liability for abuse committed by their users, as long as they fulfill specific requirements, such as the timely processing of abuse notices.” MegaUpload is a “dual-use tool” comparable to an email account or a USB stick, the company says, and as such can be put to both non-infringing and infringing uses. In dealing with illicit content, MegaUpload says that violations of its terms and conditions are not tolerated and the company abides by the DMCA and quickly processes takedown requests. Like competitor RapidShare, MegaUpload says that it too goes one step further to accommodate those seeking to remove infringing content from its servers. “We also cooperate closely with rightsholders and their copyright enforcement agents and provide them with direct realtime takedown access, bypassing the DMCA process entirely. Because we strictly conform to all legal requirements, nobody has ever sued us over copyright infringement, and cases brought forward against our competitors have a long history of being unsuccessful,” the company notes. MegaUpload also provides some very impressive stats. The company says that not only does it have more than 100 million registered users and in excess of 45 million unique visitors every day, but that employees at more than 70% of the world’s Fortune 500 companies are account holders. It adds that given these numbers, it is unfortunate that the actions of a small group of “black sheep” (aka copyright infringers) can overshadow those of the millions of customers who use their site legitimately every day. “We have become the de-facto standard for sending files that are too big to email. We are the most popular hard disk in the cloud. We host more backups than any other company. If Mega is a rogue operator as we have been unfairly labelled by the MPAA and RIAA, then what about Google? What about Yahoo? And every single ISP?” Yesterday, after reading a report by brand protection company MarkMonitor which labelled them as a “leading digital piracy site”, RapidShare threatened to sue for defamation. Google-owned YouTube, apparently due to their takedown policies (which don’t appear to be any more comprehensive), were not included on the list. Today, MegaUpload questioned why it too should be labelled a “rogue site” when Google “probably hosts the world’s largest index of pirated content.” MegaUpload concludes with a statement that the vast majority of its traffic is legitimate and that their company is here to stay. It also holds out an olive branch. “If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.” Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005. |
| RapidShare Accuses ‘Piracy Report’ Publisher of Defamation, Might Sue Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:24 PM PST
In legal action the cyberlocker site has been active and successful, winning cases in both the US and Germany where courts ruled that RapidShare runs a perfectly legal business. Despite these efforts both the RIAA and MPAA have marked RapidShare as one of the largest piracy havens, and this stance was reaffirmed yesterday by a paper published by brand protection company MarkMonitor. In this study, which was picked up by dozens of mainstream news outlets, it is concluded that the Swiss cyberlocker is the largest ‘digital piracy site’ with a massive 13 billion pageviews. Although RapidShare is indeed a big player in the cyberlocker market, being labeled as a piracy site has hugely offended the site’s owners, who might go as far as taking legal action in response to statements they view as defamatory. “This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the right to take legal action against MarkMonitor. RapidShare is a legitimate company that offers its customers fast, simple and secure storage and management of large amounts of data via our servers,” the company announced today. One of the main problems according to RapidShare, is the use of pageviews as an indication of the scope of the ‘piracy’ that occurs on a site. The company claims that the majority of its consumers use the site for legitimate reasons, which means that they should be discounted. Also, if pageviews were an indication then YouTube should really be branded the biggest digital piracy site on the Internet, with hundreds of millions of copyrighted videos published without the owners’ permission. However, YouTube was intentionally left out of the study, incorrectly according to RapidShare. “In an interview with mediapost.com MarkMonitor's vice president of communications Te Smith said that she did not consider websites like YouTube piracy sites as they ‘have procedures in place where brandowners can take down the material.’ RapidShare offers the exact same take down features to copyright owners as YouTube does. Now, where is the difference?” TorrentFreak asked MarkMonitor’s Te Smith to clarify why they chose to exclude YouTube but include RapidShare, despite both companies being committed to working with copyright holders. Although she could not answer our question directly, Smith did say that her company stands behind their research which is claimed to be independent. For RapidShare the MarkMonitor report is another affirmation that they have a long way to go before they can shake off the piracy stigma, which they are committed to do. The company continues to seek dialogue with copyright holders and has most recently employed lobbyists in Washington to look after its interests. “The study confirmed our resolution to actively raise awareness about what RapidShare is and what RapidShare does. Therefore, we have mandated a Washington-based lobbying firm some weeks ago. We are optimistic that this decision will eventually pay off,” RapidShare concludes. Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005. |
| Chinese Crackdown On Piracy Enters The Digital Domain Posted: 12 Jan 2011 06:21 AM PST
But with trade talks looming between the two countries next week, China has been keen to announce significant progress. In the last few weeks China says that 650,000 law enforcement personnel have carried out 4,000 arrests while investigating 2,000 cases of serious infringement with a financial value of around $350 million. With the authorities promising harsher punishments, China has been getting tough with the physical side of piracy with the recent destruction of huge numbers of counterfeit DVDs and other products. A show of force on Monday saw the authorities conducting public book burnings in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Sichuan, with a promise of more in the lead up to World Intellectual Property Day in April. But increasingly it is the digital domain where piracy is running most rampant and up until now China’s actions have largely appeared limited to the physical world. That, apparently, is changing. Just before the holidays there was an investigation by the authorities into 500 music download sites. The Ministry of Culture said that 237 of those sites (list) were suspected of illegal activities, citing a lack of licensing, failure to register and/or distribution of copyright infringing material. On Monday the authorities issued a list of music – much of it from Universal, RCA, Warner, EMI and Sony – to be removed from sites by February 28th. The list features music from artists such as Eminem, Christina Alguilera, Kylie Minogue and KT Tunstall but isn’t particularly long. Indeed, many single DMCA takedown requests sent to Google by IFPI are substantially longer. That the government mentions “illegal music products” and “piracy” separately in respect of these products is sure to raise questions of censorship. But music isn’t the only media being targeted or becoming the subject of self-imposed censorship online. According to a report this morning, China’s three leading YouTube-like video sites – Youku, Tudou, and Ku6 – have been deleting US TV shows and movies from their servers en masse. Although Ku6 claims it has been deleting infringing content since 2009, the latest move comes as less of a surprise following the announcement last year that it had reached content deals with Hollywood studios Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers. This deal made Ku6 the first local site to acquire legitimate copyright content from major Hollywood studios and with 10% of the market in China, Ku6 has impressive potential. Then last week, competitor Youku announced that it too had done a deal with Warner to stream the blockbuster Inception for the modest price of $0.75 per view, a move which resulted in company shares increasing by 6.6%. No surprise then that hot on the heels of a fine for copyright infringement last November and their chase for legitimacy and access to more premium content, Youku has just implemented a YouTube-like filtering solution for infringing content. However, removing huge amounts of pirate content and replacing it with increasingly expensive licensed fare is taking its toll on Youku. While the price of its content goes from zero to through-the-roof, the fees advertisers are paying the company remain static. Couple this with competition from sites still offering infringing, more attractive and zero-cost content, Youku have a serious problem if they can’t convince users to pay for premium content at prices that make sense. “This is the worst kind of diseconomy of scale,” writes Business Insider. “The bigger Youku gets, the bigger its losses.” When Barack Obama and Chinese leader Hu Jintao meet in the United States next week, the progress against music and video piracy will certainly add to the positive mood set by the earlier agreement for the Chinese to crackdown on software piracy. The road to legitimacy, however, will be a complex one for China’s markets but one that the US will be keen to see succeed. Just don’t mention the J-20 or, in the content vacuum that’s likely to exist before all shows and movies become available legitimately, BitTorrent. Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005. |
If during 2009 and 2010 the world’s leading cyberlocker companies were feeling the heat, the signs are that 2011 will be a few degrees hotter still. While business is booming, competition is fierce, and more and more companies are looking to get involved in this rapidly expanding but sometimes controversial market.
In the last year 
As it comes under increasing pressure from the United States, not for the first time China has announced that it is getting tough on copyright infringement. With a campaign set to run until at least May 2011, China says it can make significant headway with the problem. The US reasonably thinks it will take rather longer than that.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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