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Hotfile Settles With MPAA, Drops Countersuit Against Warner Bros
After winning the right to use the term perjury in regards to Warner Bros abuse of the DMCA takedown procedure, and successfully blocking the MPAA from using the term "piracy" at their trial, Hotfile settled out of court with the MPAA today (mere days before the trial was scheduled to begin). As part of the deal, they are dropping their countersuit against Warner Bros, paying $80 million, and halting all operations immediately. The Hotfile website has been replaced by an MPAA message. From Torrent Freak: "The settlement deal was rubber stamped by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, ... The MPAA is happy with the outcome which it says will help to protect the rights of copyright holders on the Internet. 'This judgment by the court is another important step toward protecting an Internet that works for everyone,' MPAA boss Chris Dodd says."
So, after winning the right to use an incendiary term in trial, and blocking their opponents from using another incendiary term, Hotfile... rolled over?
No doubt this was another "win by default".
Of course, by "everyone" he means the only people that count... rich people.
Technoli
The most surprising thing to me here is that Hotfile was profitable enough to have $80 million.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Copyright will only work for everyone if the term is dropped to 7 years and no extensions.
Quoting from the MPAA message now on hotfile.com:
"If you are looking for your favorite movies or TV shows online, there are more ways than ever today to get high quality access to them on legal platforms."
How about a list of those numerous platforms? How about a link to an MPAA sponsored page of links to these various legal platforms?
Yes, they are out there, but why the hell wouldn't they promote them?
"Perjury" doesn't mean they called Hotfile's CEO mean things and ate the last cupcake. It means Warner Brothers committed a fucking crime. Hotfile can settle all it wants, that doesn't make WB's actions any less of a crime.
So, anyone taking bets on the temperature of Hell when we see formal charges filed here?
You forgot to mention that Chris Dodd is a disgraced former senator. Why the MPAA would want to associate with a scumbag of that caliber is anyone's guess.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Then they could learn the outcome of a story Hercules versus Hydra.
How does a US federal court gain jurisdiction over a company located in Panama?
A ruling prior to this settlement held that Hotfile could be subject to vicarious liability for failing to comply with the DMCA (they allegedly ignored a bunch of DMCA takedown requests and failed to shut down a bunch of accounts despite repeat infringements), but the DMCA is US law, not Panama law. Unless copyright is somehow a special case (due to, say, international agreements), I fail to see why Hotfile should be subject to US copyright law anymore than US companies should be subject to Chinese or Iranian censorship laws.
What gives?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The MPAA message says that a federal court found Hotfile liable. The court didn't find anything because the parties settled before trial began. It seems a little disingenuous, but perfectly within the normal bounds of the MPAA playbook, to blatantly lie like that.
Hotfile...lol. Pirates stopped using that service years ago, before Megaupload went belly up. They're now using Rapidgator and Letitbit and Uploaded.
Funny how the court systems here in the US and abroad are so woefully behind what happens on the internet.
This really sucks for the Android modding community, as these type of file hosting sites were really popular for sharing ROMs. What really surprises me is that there actually were enough fucktards sharing Hollywood shit through file hosting sites that the MPAA took notice. I thought anyone with half a brain used torrent sites (like piratebay) for movies/tv shows. Hotfile seemed more or less for sharing legitimate files. If they can be intimidated into shutting down, can Mediafire and Dropbox be far behind?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Who are clearly well read in the classics, as demonstrated by the upcoming blockbuster releases of Hydraman (summer 2014), Hydraman Returns (summer 2015), and the eagerly anticipated Hydraman reboot (summer 2016).
dropbox is legitimate... their ways and means and business model is quite different from other so called me-too sites like rapidshare, hotfile,etc. compliance is the word ! as long as a website does not cross legal boundaries it can exist... MPAA is sure flexin its muscles, but IMO, it is only the fringe crass websites which are being killed...
And not when you first started working on something?
If so, then your argument makes no sense.
> Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. How old are you, fourteen? I just published Nobots [mcgrewbooks.com] last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.
No, you would have 6 years and 11 months left.
This is either stupidest, or the most dishonest, thing I have read today.
All of the "high quality" accesses are illegal. You either break the law when you obtain the content (piracy) or you break the law when you read the DRMed content without getting authorization (e.g. Blu-Ray). Or the quality if abysmal by modern standards, but maybe "high quality" if you're talking to a time-traveller from the late 20th century (e.g. Netflix).
Of all the tradeoffs, piracy is still the best (the easiest, the most enjoyable, measure it nearly any way that you can), even when you are spending lots of money (on indexers, hard drives, etc). It's not even about money, and that the MPAA would try to cast their meager offerings as somehow within being three leagues of the piracy experience, shows that they still aren't even really trying yet, and have virtually no intentions of ever seriously opening for business. You know what that means? It means piracy is pretty much everyone's only hope, so everyone reading that message and making the inference, is just going to go look for the new hotfile replacement du jour.
If MPAA knew what was good for them, they would not keep sending out such stupid messages where they would be seen in public. They just told the whole world that piracy is all there's going to be, for a long, long time.
If I were a corrupt ex-Senator like Dodd, but with a selfish rather than nihilistic agenda, my lie would have been totally different. I would have made the message be something like "We understand that you want high quality, and we are working hard to get our shit together. Please wait for an important new announcement," or some thing like that, implying that MPAA member companies will soon be opening for businessing and selling the same Matroska files whose quality and ease-of-use, you currently only get from pirates.
Then after telling the lie and watching piracy die down a slight amount as the public anticipates and Long-Awaited End to the current Era of Amazing Stupidity and a Return to Real Business (i.e. how Hollywood got wealthy and powerful in the first place!), I'd decide to make the lie become the truth, and actually do it and start accepting people's money.
You know, like an actual legitimate businessman.
Instead of looking like some kind of lying, anti-business, anti-entertainment luddite who is trying to drive profitable business out of America. Fuckwit.
There is only one way to deal with the MPAA. Keep giving them rope. Let them hang themselves, let them starve the studios into bankruptcy. Then maybe some new studios will appear, and form a new pro- business alliance (what the MPAA should have been), buy a DMCA repeal, and start SELLING the files so there will finally be an alternative to piracy.
If Hotfile will not stand ground against the MPAA and their partners, then many others will, and many people do not care if the final results are legal or not.
50 gb of work data gone..
how do i explain that to my clients.. just extended my premium.. money is gone.
way to go fucking MPAA