Hotfile has begun taking a harsh stance on copyright infringement, says TF, with the cyberlocker deleting premium accounts, along with all the files in them.
Furthermore, the company is not paying out money earned in the site’s rewards program.
The MPAA recently filed a lawsuit against Hotfile and its owner, claiming that “in less than two years, Hotfile has become one of the 100 most trafficked sites in the world. That is a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes.”
This week, hundreds of account holders are reporting that their paid-up premium accounts have been deleted, along with all their uploaded files. Many had been uploading movies and TV shows and were being paid weekly by the rewards program, using piracy as a means of income.
One account holder says he has not been paid on the $1000 Hotfile owes him for uploads.
Says Hotfile of the matter:
Recently, we have become concerned that despite these policies, some users persist in attempting to use Hotfile.com to share materials to which they do not have the necessary rights. Therefore, we have implemented a more aggressive policy of terminating the accounts of users who are the subject of repeated complaints of infringement.
Result for: uploading
Earlier this week we reported that just two weeks after LimeWire was permanently shut down by a federal ruling, a “secret dev team” had brought the P2P client back, dubbing it the LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE).
The LPE has the Ask.com toolbar removed, all need for the LimeWire LLC servers removed, all remote settings disabled, and all LimeWire Pro features activated, for free. There is also no adware or spyware.
LPE has been circulating via warez, P2P and torrents sites for a couple of days now.
Apparently, the real LimeWire is not a fan.
“We have very recently become aware of unauthorized applications on the Internet purporting to use the LimeWire name,” reads a notice on the LimeWire site.
“We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so. We further remind you that the unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works is illegal.”
Result for: uploading
Marking a first, an unemployed 31-year old has been arrested in Japan this week for sharing unauthorized TV shows via BitTorrent.
The arrest is the first ever in Japan for torrent use.
Shuichiro Tanaka of Saitama Prefecture was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s cyber crimes division for allegedly uploading and sharing TV shows.
The authorities said that from June 4th to 9th, Tanaka captured the programs using his computer then uploaded them via BitTorrent.
Over the course of the year, Tanaka allegedly uploaded 165 episodes of different shows such as “Waratte Iitomo” and “Genius! Shimura Zoo.”
When asked why he uploaded the shows, Tanaka plainly said: “I did it for people who missed the programs. Because there is a potential for viruses on Winny [another popular Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing program] and others, I used BitTorrent, which I heard police weren’t investigating.”
