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4Shared Wins Court Case To Overcome Piracy Blockade (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the national-piracy dept.

Popular file-hosting service 4shared has won a court case against the South Korean authorities who placed the site on a national piracy blocklist. While 4shared's users occasionally host pirated files, the court concludes that it can't be seen as a service that is setup specifically to facilitate copyright infringement. "We think it is a good result. It's the first time we tried disputing in court with a state Internet censorship body," 4shared's Mike Wilson tells TorrentFreak. "We believe that 4shared does enough to protect intellectual property and disabling access to our service for an entire country is not lawful," he adds.

20 comments

  1. Typical Pirates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Oh, look. We host a Linux ISO, too! We're legit!

    1. Re:Typical Pirates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aha. MAFIAA astroturfing. Do they pay well? How does one apply?

    2. Re: Typical Pirates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry for actually compensating artists I enjoy and not being a freeloader. I am a horrible person.

    3. Re: Typical Pirates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL, it's so funny you think that.

      Hint: artist have been getting raped since the Barry Gordy days and Motown.

  2. Plausibly deniable piracy by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 1

    I was thinking that it should be possible to set up a file sharing system that supports plausible deniability for downloading pirated material. Let us suppose, for simplicity, that the system only allows sharing 10MB files, and that some of them are legal and some are not. Each time an user wants to upload a new 10MB file, they do not publish the file itself, but the XOR of the file and a pre-esisting 10MB chunk. In this way, each time you want to download a file, you have to download two 10MB chunks from the system and XOR them. But, this is the catch, every possible chunk belongs to more than one file: if you download a chunk that belongs to both ubuntu_16.04_amd64.iso and pirates_of_the_caribbean_XXX_subtitle.mkv, who can prove that you were interested in the second?

    --
    My first program:

    Hell Segmentation fault

    1. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by rmdingler · · Score: 2
      Workarounds that leave plausible deniability are like the cover story you have ready in your head for when the police pull you over.

      Despite your imagined impenetrable logic and Jedi nerves, your explanation will be delivered with much less sense and cool than you imagine, to a seasoned roadside interviewer.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone only need look towards the king of piracy: YouTube. Let people upload millions of pirated content, and force the content creators to police the content themselves. Then watch that same stuff get reuploaded, edited oh-so-slightly to avoid the new filters. Rinse and repeat, and collect money all the while.

    3. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      if you download a chunk that belongs to both ubuntu_16.04_amd64.iso and pirates_of_the_caribbean_XXX_subtitle.mkv, who can prove that you were interested in the second?

      You downloading the "ubuntu_16.04_amd64_iso_XOR_pirates_of_the_caribbean_XXX_subtitle_mkv" file as well should be sufficient proof.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    4. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Am I the only person curious about the subtitled XXX remake of Pirates of the Caribbean?

    5. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keith Richards has the lead role. Still interested?

    6. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's been done, unfortunately the bootstrap servers are dead

    7. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 1

      Very interesting, thanks for the link!

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    8. Re:Plausibly deniable piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The developer was probably killed.

      OFFS was a serious attack on identity of files, and someone wasn't happy.

  3. spy vs. lie what does anyone really 'own'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    read the teepeeleaks etchings,,, please. we're all natives now...

  4. They also block pr0n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    South Korea also blocks (or attempts to block) all tube/stream pr0n sites

  5. how many poorly attended diaper addicts left? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's the real measure of us?

  6. Training camp? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps there's a market for a training camp? Crowdfunding anyone?

  7. Or, it's or! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now downloading the "ubuntu_16.04_amd64_iso_OR_pirates_of_the_caribbean_XXX_subtitle_mkv" should get you definitely in jail, because now you have the bits of both! Yarrr!

  8. Occasional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The majority of their files are pirated content

  9. Illegal to block an entire country? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "We believe that 4shared does enough to protect intellectual property and disabling access to our service for an entire country is not lawful," he adds.

    This sounds like a goose/gander argument: It's good enough for the US to block internet gambling sites but it's illegal for South Korea to block piracy sites?

    Oh, wait! UN courts have already found against the US for blocking internet gambling sites - it's not legal for them to be doing it either.