Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services

ericatcw writes "Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor V.I. Labs, 100% of the warez in its survey were available on RapidShare, which, according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."

Comments

captain obvious

[MoFoQ]

this one needs a "no sh*t sherlock" tag...

obviously, when u stamp out one source....and not the demand, a new source will come to existence to fill in that demand.

Rapidshare, Megaupload, netload, etc. have been around for a while and do have legitimate uses (some times, trying to send to a 20MB PDF or Illustrator (.ai) advertising file can wreak havoc on email, especially with some of the free email ones or if your client is a small business).

Some opensource apps also use the services to host mirrors to their downloads to lighten the load on their own servers.

Re:captain obvious

[xaxa]

"stores always have to accept cash. it is legal tender, you can't not take it."

Do you live in the US? I live right in the middle of it, and an extremely large number of business now refuse to accept $50 or $100 bills. I assume they would cite counterfeiting as the concern, but I think it's pure bullshit.

If you do business in the US, you ought to have to accept US currency.

If you are owed money in the UK, you must accept legal tender: Bank of England notes of value £50, £20, £10 and £5, coins of value £5, £2, £1 in any amount, up to £10 worth of 50p and 20p; up to £5 of 10p and 5p, and up to 20p of 2p and 1p. You can (of course) accept anything else.

When you ask to buy something from a shop, you don't owe anyone any money, so the shopkeeper can decided what to accept. Many won't accept £50 notes.

So, the bus driver is allowed to refuse to take your £50 note, or your handful of 1p coins. But if you get a fine for not having a ticket they have to accept legal tender for payment of the fine.

Free games?

[nycguy]

You mean RapidShare has something else besides porn on it? I'm going to have to grab my other joystick!

Re:Can we stop calling it "piracy" already?

[MagusSlurpy]

Frankly, I prefer hearing myself called a "pirate," versus a "copyright-infringing content replicator."

Not as cool as being called a ninja, but I'll take what I can get.

Re:The future of piracy...

[rohan972]

User generated content? All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.

It won't be the whole future but it's here to stay whether you like it or not. User generated content is being used as the entire basis for mainstream media content sometimes now, such as in this news story about the "wedding dance video". You are way off base if you think this type of content isn't going to have a place in mainstream entertainment.

What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay.

Like with free to air TV and radio? Free content is hardly a new thing, for many people a significant portion of their entertainment has been free (ad supported) content for decades.

The idea that people aren't willing to pay is a lie anyway and everyone who promotes the idea knows it. iTunes proved that. If you provide the product or service people want they will pay for it. Make paid for DRM free downloads available at the right price and most people won't bother with "pirate" sites with even minimal risk of getting caught. Just having predictable quality movie and music files will win people over on convenience over illegal downloads.

Re:Sucks to be American sometimes

[Artemis3]

Actually the law is not like that in US, thats why its crazy. If ONLY the author were the copyright holder and the only one with those rights, it would made some sense. However, the US system allows "transfer of ownership", thats the death trap. The original US copyrights lasted 14 years, and were meant to put a stop to perpetual rights of printer guilds in UK. Today, these "printer guilds" (corporations) have restored their hereditary powers. For this reason, if you are not going to fix it, we are going to ignore it, or even better, legalize non-profit sharing and put an end to the abuse.

You keep your US only Hulu and your DRMed iTunes, i keep my worldwide p2p file sharing sites and my anonymous p2p networks. If artists want money, they better start touring or taking direct donations, i don't believe in third parties "owning" content and exploiting said artists beyond their lives. Or the corporate state imposing their rule to the world.