
Expert witness says most popular Hotfile downloads are open source apps - llambda
http://www.arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/expert-witness-says-most-popular-hotfile-downloads-are-open-source-apps.ars
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Kylekramer
If we are comparing by the files with the most downloads, should this be
surprising at all? Legit, popular, non-infringing software/content has the
major advantage of actually being able to capture the long tail. The stolen
stuff tends to get yanked post haste. I'd be much more interested in the
overall volume of stolen vs. legit.

But I suppose that helpful information isn't going to come out of a expert
witness at a trial.

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jasonlotito
If the stolen stuff gets yanked post haste, wouldn't that suggest the system
is being active in removing copyright infringing material? That a system
allows you to post copyrighted material should not matter.

I can easily post copyrighted material here on HN that I don't have permission
to post.

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Kylekramer
Well, to rephrase, the _popular_ stolen stuff gets yanked. Basically, the
closer an infringing file gets to competing with the top downloads, the more
likely it is to be removed from the competition.

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casca
Sadly this article does not provide the actual numbers that the expert witness
presented. All it really says is that sn0wbreeze and iReb (for iPhone
jailbreaking) were downloaded a lot which might change the statistics a lot.

It's good that Hotfile is fighting this and always interesting to get an
insight to how these kind of services are being used, but we're not getting
much here.

