Tag Archives: cyberlockers

Turning Piracy Problems Into Copyright Resources

Posted on by
Reply

No matter how dogged and persistent you are as an enforcer of intellectual property rights, there are certain ‘hard target’ copyright-infringing websites that are basically impossible to reach. Operating from countries in which copyright laws and treaties simply are not adhered to, some websites and forums manage to avoid any consequences stemming from their own direct infringement or their blatant piracy-abetting, making them a source of great frustration for rights-holders.

There is often a silver lining to this particular cloud, however, one that might not be so obvious upon first glance. In many cases, although the forums and link lists that point users toward illicit copies of music, movies, video games, etc. cannot be targeted directly, those forums and link lists can serve as valuable information resources for operations like DMCA Force.

Quite often, links on such sites point to infringing files on cyber lockers and other hosting services that do honor take-down requests, because unlike the forums and link lists, those services operate in jurisdictions where ignoring U.S. copyright laws is not a particularly bright idea, because doing so can lead to enormous civil and/or criminal liability for the service provider in question.

Armed with this knowledge, services like ours turn these infringing sites into part of our research tool kit, in the same way our software spiders Google to sniff out infringements that would likely elude us were we doing all of our searching manually. In essence, these facilitators of copyright infringement unknowingly become facilitators of copyright enforcement, as well.

So, if you’re a rights-holder whose blood pressure is spiking in light of egregious infringement on your intellectual property by site operators and users who appear to be beyond the reach of U.S. law, take heart: there is a way to turn that lemon into lemonade, and DMCA Force is here to help you with the squeezing. We understand the relationship between the forums and cyberlockers, the pirates and their accomplices, and we know how to turn your stress into their stress.

RapidShare to U.S. Officials: Focus on Linking Sites

Posted on by
Reply

In comments recently submitted to the Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), RapidShare’s Chief Legal Officer Daniel Raimer recommended that the U.S. government focus its efforts not on “cloud services” like RapidShare, but on the sites that “facilitate access to copyrighted material stored remotely by cloud services” — in other words, linking sites, some of which have already received some attention from various law enforcement agencies.

“Cloud storage services are becoming an integral feature of modern computing platforms,” Raimer notes in his comments, adding that the growing ubiquity in cloud computing services argues for an approach to online copyright enforcement that will not impede development of such services.

“Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network,” Raimer writes — with linking sites being the “critical part” of the online piracy network he’s referring to.

While it’s easy to be cynical and note that RapidShare’s suggestion has the added, self-interested benefit of drawing rights-holder and law enforcement attention away from services like those that RapidShare offers, Raimer isn’t wrong when he identifies linking sites as a critical aspect of online piracy networks. There’s also a good deal of merit in the Responsible Practices for Cloud Storage Services statement RapidShare issued in April.

No matter how you slice it, RapidShare’s comments to IPEC are an interesting read – all the more so because they come from a company that is well positioned to observe the habits and techniques of pirates who abuse the “cloud” in order to rain on rights-holders’ parades.

Is There Such a Thing as a ‘Legitimate’ Cyberlocker?

Posted on by
Reply

Whether you call them “cyberlockers,” “file lockers” or “cloud hosting services,” sites that offer both file storage and file sharing capabilities to their users have been in the news a lot lately, often not in a positive context.

In the midst of the ongoing Megaupload story and Australian webmaster Robert King’s mission to make life difficult for various allegedly illicit cyberlockers, an interesting question comes to mind: Is there any such thing as a legitimate and/or responsible cyberlocker?

Despite the potential for abuse inherent in the way cyberlockers function (those that offer a financial incentive to encourage file sharing by their members, in particular), DMCAForce’s answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” The problem with cyberlockers is not the technology itself; the problem is in what some unscrupulous site operators do with that technology.

Take the allegations in the Megaupload case, for example; if the prosecution proves its claims concerning the alleged willful acts of copyright violation (including a mass ‘scraping’ of YouTube’s video library in 2006) the consequences for Megaupload won’t be a function of having run a file locker, they will be a function of having run a criminal enterprise. In other words, it’s not about a site’s technology, it’s about that site operators’ conduct.

In our view, any file locker that pays account-holders based on the number of views or downloads generated by the content uploaded by those account-holders is playing something of a dangerous game, because to many rights-holders, that sort of arrangement between a cyberlocker and its users looks an awful lot like providing customers with an incentive to infringe. Indeed, if you look at what the most popular, most downloaded and most viewed content on cyberlockers (and/or on the torrents), there aren’t too many home videos to be found on the list; the most popular files are, by and large, Hollywood movies, and usually relatively recently released ones, to boot.

While it’s unreasonable to expect a site the size of Megaupload to be entirely aware of all the files uploaded and shared across its system, there is such a thing as willful blindness, and in some cases cyberlocker providers are likely a whole lot more aware of the illegal activity taking place on their site and network than they will publicly admit. Some operators might not only be aware of the illegal acts, they might be the ones committing those acts, as well.

So, if illicit cyberlockers are ones that turn a blind eye to infringement (or worse, are operated by those who engage in infringement directly) how does a legitimate cyberlocker conduct itself, by contrast?

For starters, any site that publishes or provides access to “user-generated content” (UGC) should abide by the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. Even for sites based outside of the U.S., run by operators who may not believe themselves to be subject to U.S. law, it is still a good business practice to abide by the DMCA.

Beyond DMCA compliance, we also believe it isn’t a good sign if a cyberlocker includes an affiliate program that pays users based on the number of views and/or downloads that their uploaded content generates. Inevitably, such an arrangement invites users to upload the content that they believe will be the most popular with other users, and thereby the most profitable, as well. If you think about how many views the new Batman movie would attract, as opposed to the number generated by some random amateur homemade video, we think it is fair to say the former would be the bigger draw. For a lot of cyberlocker uploaders seeking to make money off of these affiliate programs, many of whom hail from countries with depressed economies and few job opportunities, the ease and speed of making money from content piracy is too great a temptation to withstand.

In short, there’s no reason why a cyberlocker can’t be a valid, law-abiding business. For that matter, cyberlockers enjoy a great deal of leeway under the law (more leeway than a lot of rights-holders are comfortable with, in fact). Running a cyberlocker as a legal, legitimate service doesn’t require a superhuman effort, just respect for the law, common sense, and the ability to resist the temptation of the “easy money” that piracy and other crimes often represent.