File Locker Piracy is surging in 2011 and looks like its now the highest threat!

[Alex911]

At least, this has become a reality for us...

So we've had the tubes, the torrents & P2Ps, and some file lockers like rapidshare...

It looks like there is now a growing trend in piracy which consists of mirroring full site rips on several file lockers (filesonic.com, Uploaded.to, letitbit.net, vip-file.com, fileserve.com, share-online.biz) and hide the links with redirect sites like linkcrypt.ws or linksave.in

With this it becomes more and more difficult to send DMCA notifications to the file lockers that - we shouldn't forget this - largely benefit from the illegal content that is uploaded to their servers by their users.

traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r =2y&u=share-online.biz&&u=filesonic.com&u=fileserve.com&u=link crypt.ws&u=youporn.com&

Fileserve and Filesonic have become in less than a year as popular as YouPorn ! And these guys are selling 'memberships' with our content... This is by far a bigger threat than tube sites a few years ago because it appears that a non-negligeable amount of customers looking for specific content from a website will try first to download that content from filelockers before joining the site.

I found this thread to be interesting :
friendlyhow.com/index.php/25/should-i-ban-torrent-files-on-my-file-locker
These guys know they are in dangerous territory, but with the money they make with our content, it's probably worth it!

One of our sites was ripped early in march and 79 GBs were shared over several file lockers. We have issued tens of DMCA notifications, deleting links to more than 3500 large files (500MB-4GB on average). That's about 5 TB of content shared in one month!! Our sales for that site decreased by 20% in march (immediately, google was ranking the illegal stuff on top position, before our own site, and this in just a few days!). As soon as the files were deleted, sales were back to normal. But what would happen if it was nearly impossible to delete the links? If sales have been down 20% in just one month, what would happen after several years of file sharing with impunity?

So, file locker users are hiding their links by generating unrecognizable/anonymous URLs, almost all file lockers provide anonymity to their users... And now what? It looks like some file lockers are now trying to delay the link removal by making things a lot more complicated to us. Here's the answer we received from letitbit.net after we've sent a proper DMCA notification (we received the same letter from another FL):

Hello,
If you are the copyright holder of any material which is posted on this site and do not wish to see this information spread by users without your consent, we can assist you by removing the appropriate links.
To do this, send us a letter (in PDF format) with the following information:
1. Documentary proof of your rights to the material that is protected by copyright:
The scanned document with the seal or
other contact information that allows us to identify you as the owner of this material.
2. Direct links to files that must be removed.
Links should be of the form ht tp:/ / ...
Within 48 hours of the receipt of this information we will remove the links of interest to you from the site.

So what are we gonna do about it? Are we gonna let them steal our content and make money with our hard work? Alltogether, we could create a legal association to sue their asses to hell and back !

[Nautilus]

Yep fuckers are learning quick how to dodge DMCAs, protect their links etc. Old school sites such as rapidshare and hotfile who at least do some half assed attempts to make it look like they're cooperating with copyright holders (like dropping their reward program, blocking infringing files from reupload, closing accounts that are infringing massively and get a ton of DMCAs) are quickly loosing ground to this new shady bunch of filelockers.

Hotfile and Rapidshare are not in the Alexa top100 anymore, and their US traffic is dropping even faster, while the new bunch such as filesonic and oron is on the rise. Hopefully they'll get their asses handed to them in courts soon because what they're doing is outright criminal.

[Alex911]

Is there some kind of software that could generate a unique fingerprint that would be hidden inside each vid? So that each time a video is downloaded from the member's area, the fingerprint would be associated with a member's username... It would allow us to hunt down those users whose files were shared.

It looks like some people are working on this: h t t p: // fr.linkedin.com/in/massoudi

[Alex911]

Guys, take a look at this:

moggysgalleries.com/search/label/18CloseUp?zx=74a03e0b848a387d

Now this is fucking unbelievable!!! There's a whole bunch of site rips on this blog, not just my site... And it's the site admin himself that is posting the stuff! He's even trading traffic, I just can't believe my eyes.

MOGGYSGALLERIES.COM NAME SERVERS
Name Server IP Location
dns1.registrar-servers.com 69.16.244.24
Westbrook, ME, US
dns2.registrar-servers.com 173.224.125.12

dns3.registrar-servers.com 67.228.121.98
Dallas, TX, US
dns4.registrar-servers.com 184.171.163.90

He's not even hosted in China or something. Any idea of the best way to shut that fucking site down? Contact their host?

[dog-tag]

Anybody friendly with one of his aff managers?

[Alex911]

Originally Posted by dog-tag

Anybody friendly with one of his aff managers?

Hi Dog-Tag, I'm Bart, Affiliate Manager for 18CloseupCash.com. How can I help you?

[wicked1]

Maybe you should have a discussion with the people at pornguardian.com

[dozadesprite]

Originally Posted by wicked1

Maybe you should have a discussion with the people at pornguardian.com

second that

[existenz]

Originally Posted by Alex911

Hi Dog-Tag, I'm Bart, Affiliate Manager for 18CloseupCash.com. How can I help you?

there ya go