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Filesonic Removes Ability To Share Files
Ihmhi writes "In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, Filesonic has elected to take preventative measures against a similar fate. The front page and all files now carry the following message: 'All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.' Whether or not this will actually deter the U.S. government from taking action remains to be seen."
This is the new thing. Make a shit ton of money from customers (advertisers, publishers), and after you've hit your goal, close down and never pay anyone or refund any of the advertising money. Etology (of etology.com) did the same thing about 5 months ago - stole advertisers money and essentially stole money that publishers were owed (for displaying their ads). Megaupload cut off their affiliate program and didn't pay anyone out some time ago. Rapidshare.com went through 5 different version of billing and affiliate methods a couple of years ago - in the end, screwing everyone in the same way rapidshare.de did a year or two earlier. The only company that I've dealt with that has actually paid out what they owed, after cutting off their affiliate program, was Wupload.
Why would anyone ever have to "share" backup files with anyone else.
I predict, within a week filestube and the like will be utterly useless and this facade (of legal file sharing)will be completely stopped just like Napster was.
If these sites can be shut down with lawsuits now, why do we need SOPA and PIPA?
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Some curiosity:In Bulgaria and also most other eastern European countries there used to be a funny practice amongst ISP's:Each internet provider used to have a NAS/LAN server, accessible only to subscribers/customers, loaded with warez, pr0n and movies, in a catalog type of way, year by year. This was way back in 1999- 2005. So You basically see what your monthly fee is, now much Mbps you get up/down, and also what kind of "bonus" warez this particular ISP has to offer, lol! I almost canot believe this was the de facto standard for many years! After some time the laws got changed and the ISPs were forced to quit this practice. But then torrents came in place. So what i am thinking is - we have at least a dozen trackers that are registered/hosted in Switzerland, Netherlands and other locations, like offshore islands or that Transnistria in Russia, where our local Bulgarian/EU laws do not apply. The servers/trackers themselves are configured to answer to requests only from Bulgarian peering IP addresses. So basically those servers remain unseen for the rest of the internet, including authorities, unless you use a Bulgarian proxy. My humble guess is that this kind of "localized" trackers will never go away, also i know for a fact that in Russia they have the same private trackers, DC hubs, and other p2p based ways of sharing warez. Just my 2 cents on this subject - i don't really care about the Filesharing hosts like MegaUpload, WUpload, Hotfile, RapidShare and so on, because they want money, because they have their pages bloated with ads and because of the crappy CAPTCHAs. Yeah.
What if someone combined TOR with P2P? People who owned the file could not be identified because they'd be obfuscated through like X nodes. People who were generous could mark themselves as portals where people could send data through. Sure it isn't impossible for ISPs to get records across short hops of a few people, but if it got complex and multinational, it might be impossible to track. I think especially if you forced hops across the world so ISP records couldn't be lifted, it'd make it very difficult for RIAA to sue your grandmother for downloading music.
I personally try and not even consume that which comes from Hollywood, Television or music I can't get off the radio anymore. The Internet just is so great without main stream media that I don't need it. I actually kinda dislike mainstream media because they try and change policy with government to destroy the Internet.
God spoke to me
...to the rest of the world: we don't want your business. We don't want any tech companies to set up here. We're going to make this the most hostile nation to internet and technology start ups by bullying anyone who dares defy our notion of imaginary property.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
The concept of liberty is so 1790s.
>Filesonic becomes useless.
Internet within US jurisdiction becomes a little more useless.
FTFY
You know that piracy isn't bothered by what the US does to it's own Internet businesses, right?
Youtube also has checks in place to figure out whether the soundtrack matches a copyrighted one. Of course, it's relatively easy to fool (change tone a bit or alter the soundtrack just a tiny fraction), but unaltered songs get automatically silenced. I know because I tried uploading a World of Tanks Clan Parade video I made which had "Diesel Power" by Prodigy as soundtrack. As soon as the upload finished, I received a notification that the soundtrack was copyrighted and bang, movie with no sound.
Interestingly, the same algorythm they use made me stop uploading Audiosurf captures; Audiosurf is a game allowing you to "race" a track uniquely generated from a song you choose. After ending up with a few nice captures which were muted, I said screw it and stopped.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
RIA, MPAA, and related vicious companies have won. They've created fear that they can do whatever they want without any problem WORLDWIDE.
Does anyone know how to kill them?
Morality aside, since everything on the net is copyright by default it IS my right to download and keep anything I can find (obvious exception is pedo-candy). AFAIK downloading (leech style) is not illegal in any western country, it's uploading that's the problem.
Seems to me that over the last 10yrs or so the MAFIAA have been very successfully in their campaign to convince people (including way too many slashdotters), that downloading is illegal. From a moral POV, I would really like to see the authorities take them to task over what amounts to a seriously fraudulent advertising campaign. A just punishment would be to fine them twice what they spent on the campaign and give it to a court appointed executor to spend on correcting the misinformation....one can dream, right?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I wanted to also point out that uploaded.to pretty much completely blocked the United States. Just my luck, I find out a half-hour after I submit the story.
The reaction of non-Americans (on Reddit, at least) seems to be "Ha, now you have to deal with the same shit we deal with from the BBC, Netflix, etc.".
Man, wouldn't it be just awesome if loads of websites in other countries blocked us? -.-
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Some time ago I contacted the RIAA to get permission to play music in public in a specific setting. I got sent off on a 6 week long wild goose chase with no-one able to tell me how to get permission and how much it would cost. The bears repeating: no one at RIAA or any of the labels could tell me how to get permission to play music in my setting.
What this means is that in spite of all their noise making, the *IAA is not set up to let people do what they want; they still want to control not only the distribution but also the who, when, and where. They just tell you that if you don't have permission, you can't play. But they don't have a mechanism, at any price, to let you play when and where you want.
Man, wouldn't it be just awesome if loads of websites in other countries blocked us? -.-
This is actually fairly likely. File hosters, and plenty of other sites targetable by inane legislations like SOPA/PIPA, are likely at some point to figure out that it costs them less to give up the US market entirely than to fight its legal system and possibly risk forced shutdown. I think Uploaded.to is just one of a long series of sites that'll do that.
This could go well, though. For starters, seeing the US shut out of increasingly large parts of the internet could serve as a warning for other countries attempting similar stupidity. And then, as more and more of the Internet is precluded to them, perhaps the US will start seeing the error in their ways and come back to sanity.
And in the meantime, those of us who live in more civilized countries won't have to endure rules that a government entirely owned by megacorps forces upon those that aren't.