

Hotfile shut down - bloody0815
http://hotfile.com

======
Fuxy
Every time they pull this crap a lot of non us copyrighted fan subbed anime (i
enjoy watching) disappear off the internet.

Edit: Yes i get them from fan subbing sites because no company is willing to
license it and sell it. I buy what i can and take what i can't.

I'm certain there's tonnes of legitimate content being lost on every shutdown
some of it permanently if it's not very common or popular.

I think people should be allowed to sue the MPAA or RIAA if they take down
content they don't own.

~~~
peroo
The irony of the situation is that it's unprofitable to license anime for the
US precisely because the fansubbing community already distributes "free"
copies, and most anime-fans consume the majority of their content that way.

~~~
radoslawc
What's even more ironic, is that no one is willing to pay for poor quality
subtitles, which is frequently the case with the ones provided by companies.

~~~
peroo
That's presumably a result of razor-thin margins and quick turnarounds.
Competing on quality against free labor is quite hard.

~~~
millerc
...which is precisely what is meant when one says "there's no market for
this". At this point, content owners have the choice of either being
permissive, or clamping down on the community using IP laws.

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kr4
"Sites like Hotfile ...do a serious disservice to audiences who deserve high-
quality, legitimate viewing experiences online."

"This judgment by the court is another important step toward protecting an
Internet that works for everyone"

Edit: I get a feelling that these quotes in the article have been created off
the hn title generator tool [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6815282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6815282)

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mschuster91
And once again the question, what about the users with _legitimate_ content on
the site? Megaupload all over again?

Don't prosecutors ever learn? Megaupload blew up in their faces and now the
next one...

~~~
ritonlajoie
Well, the reverse is true, don't users ever learn ?

~~~
mschuster91
What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?

Every hosting service can and will be used for copyright infringement -
Google's Blogspot is a nice example. They host(ed) hundreds of "piracy" blogs
(and took them down on DMCA notice, like Hotfile/MU did), so do I have to fear
my blog being taken down because some idiots sue Google?

The only thing that protects me/my data from this scenario is that Google is
Too Big To Be Sued.

~~~
dspillett
_> What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?_

For a start, yes. Never trust data solely to a 3rd party and never assume data
hosted solely by a single 3rd party is going to be reliably available. It
doesn't matter how redundant their systems are internally, to an external user
they are still a single point of failure.

The other thing to learn is that if you use cloud hosting avoid the ones that
openly attract (or are know to turn a blind eye to where-ever possible)
unlicensed copyright covered material. Also avoid most things that are "free"
which includes ad-sponsored upload+distribute sites - they always attract iffy
content often could not survive without the add revenue from it. Those that
offer to pay you for impressions are even worse on all these counts. You can't
expect more than what you pay for, and to be honest unless you are careful
about your provider selection you can't reliably expect what you have paid for
half the time...

~~~
mschuster91
Most of the people who really are affected by the provider shutdowns are
"ordinary" people who may occasionally download stuff from youtube but don't
know much else about computing. They just see the facade of the hosters and
don't know about the "back side" \- and when the fuck-up happens, they're
caught cold.

"We", as in "tech-savy population", know about SPOFs, backups and such - but
not an everyday person.

~~~
dspillett
_> They just see the facade of the hosters_

There is nothing much we can do about that though, other than beat people with
the clue-stick until such time as they grow a protective layer of cynicism.

I'll help by educating people where I can, but there is a point beyond which I
refuse to take responsibility for people doing the wrong thing because they
don't know any better and don't take a second to _think_ : often it is down to
things looking too good to be true (to the point where zero/little techie
skills/experience are needed to see this) or things quite obviously being
dodgy - if people lose data in either case I have little sympathy. Maybe
losing important data is the only way they'll ever learn.

Give a user a good fish and they'll be fed without poisoning today. Teach a
user to fish safely and they'll potentially be fed safely for life. Users who
refuse to engage their brain and learn to fish safely? Let 'em starve or get
poisoned.

Of course if you see data you might want in future hosted in an impractical
manner, take a copy now and make sure you put it somewhere (or several
somewheres) more safe.

------
csmuk
Well that leaves, what 50+ other sites still?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0n8N98mpes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0n8N98mpes)

The moles keep coming forever though...

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casca
The media companies need to do something against "piracy", otherwise it looks
like they're complicit.

The MPAA/RIAA/equivalent are industry bodies that are funded to protect their
members. These members want to see a return on their investment, and press
coverage about shutting down a high profile filesharing site shows that
they're doing something. Everyone wins.

Of course it will have no impact on the availability of filesharing sites. If
anything, the rise in bitcoin mining malware will make it even more profitable
to set up such services.

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nly
So... when are the Feds going to shutdown Dropbox? More or less the same
thing.

~~~
nolok
Afaik Dropbox stops the sharing of file once it goes beyong a given
(relatively limited) bandwidth. Not making it legal, but making it pretty much
impossible to use it as a "file share" on sharing forums.

~~~
Sami_Lehtinen
That's also a very bad idea. What if I just happen to be very popular and I
want to distribute my data to a large group of people. Does github close down
projects which got too many clone requests?

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Sami_Lehtinen
This is so wrong. I use these single click file hosting sites all the time to
share totally legal content with my friends. It's just bad idea to attach 2 GB
file to an email. Also one link can be shared with group of people in Skype
chat or so, without requiring me to upload same data to everyone who's
interested.

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robobro
A no-name piracy site dies because it broke the law. I'm not grieving.

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edem
This reminds me of a hydra. You cut off 1 head and it grows 2 more in its
place.

They need to realize that they are tilting at windmills.

~~~
ghshephard
Keep in mind - the objective is not to shut down the sites, but make it
difficult enough that your average person goes to legal sites instead.

Take me for example - I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to go find an
illegal copy of a TV season on a "File Locker" \- but I have zero problem
finding legit stuff on iTunes or Amazon or Netflix.

I think the MPAA / RIAA have been very effective - in 2004/2005, there were a
ton of places I knew about to download stolen content - but today - nope.

~~~
maccard
Exactly. However, the methods of obtaining these files legitimately have
improved vastly since then too. I will take whatever route is most convenient.
For music, if I can give you my card details and you take a prearranged amount
from my account every month, and I don't get interrupted, I will happily pay
for this service (Spotify). Give me a TV service where I pay a fixed fee, and
get to watch what I want when it suits me (on a saturday night, not at 9pm on
a tuesday when I have to be up at 6 the following day), and I'll pay for it
(Netflix). Service to get the latest and greatest game that my friend has been
talking about all day, but all the shops are closed when I get home? Steam!
Note that steam started selling 3rd party games in 2005, Spotify started in
2008 and Netflix started in 2007 (Streaming I mean, not the DVD on delivery).
I realise this is only true for a small minority of countries (I'm in
ireland), but Before these services, the alternatives were pirate or go and
buy in a store. Now that I can easily get the media I want through legitimate
means, I have virtually no reason to pirate stuff. Sometimes however, games I
want/music I want is unavailable on X service. If I download it/use it I'm
probably going to buy it at the next opportunity anyway.

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derrzzaa
Wonder if they have a licence for Helvetica used in the banner.

~~~
callum85
You don't need a licence to use a typeface in a design, only to install a font
file on a computer. And OS X ships with a version of Helvetica so they might
have just used that.

~~~
lhgaghl
But you need a license to put JPEG files on your website. But I guess you
already knew that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Patent_issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Patent_issues)

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throwawaykf
Hmm, wonder how much of their 80M settlement the MPAA will actually get...

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/hotfile-
settles-c...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/hotfile-settles-
copyright-case-will-accept-80-million-judgment/)

