MediaFire CEO: We Don't Depend On Piracy 185
New submitter libertyernie writes "Although FileSonic has disabled sharing and Uploaded.to has blocked access to the U.S., the CEO of Texas-based MediaFire is not concerned about government action against his company. 'We don't have a business built on copyright infringement,' says Derek Labian. 'Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we're a legitimate business targeting professionals.'"
Maybe Should Have Went with "No Statement" (Score:5, Insightful)
"We try to steer clear of things that would attract scrutiny," Labian said. "If people are pirating on our service, we don’t want those people to use it."
So what you're openly admitting is that you just don't know the extent of piracy on your service? I probably would have said "no comment" rather than risk the Eye of Sauron ... er RIAA/MPAA's gaze. From what I gather, it could 0% it could be 100% of your service based on pirates sharing files with each other but since you don't know it's okay? Unless you have some sort of Youtube-like fingerprinting going on, I'd just keep your mouth shut.
Another reason Labian said he wasn’t worried about the government stepping in is because the company maintains a "good relationship" with various government bodies, including "Homeland Security, ICE, and the FBI."
Right but those are just the enforcers, your real problem is the MPAA and unless you're paying elected officials more than they are you could be next.
Re:Maybe Should Have Went with "No Statement" (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're openly admitting is that you just don't know the extent of piracy on your service?
Yes, so they can claim common carrier status... seems pretty smart to me. If you have any idea at all, you are screwed.
Right but those are just the enforcers, your real problem is the MPAA
As long as they respond to take-down notices and do not ACTIVELY seek traffic based on piracy as MegaUpload did (judging by emails they had to turn over) they, and companies like DropBox, should be fine.
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So what you're openly admitting is that you just don't know the extent of piracy on your service?
Yes, so they can claim common carrier status... seems pretty smart to me. If you have any idea at all, you are screwed.
Right but those are just the enforcers, your real problem is the MPAA
As long as they respond to take-down notices and do not ACTIVELY seek traffic based on piracy as MegaUpload did (judging by emails they had to turn over) they, and companies like DropBox, should be fine.
ISPs aren't common carriers.
In other news, the "24 hour evaluation period" WaReZ sites talked about in 1996 is also bullshit.
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ISPs are or at least should be common carriers. And just like ISPs should be providing access to dumb pipes, filehosts should have dumb servers and be protected from liability.
Well, they aren't.
Re:Maybe Should Have Went with "No Statement" (Score:5, Informative)
I think people are confusing "common carrier" for telecommunications and "safe harbor" for intellectual property. (a VERY rough summary follows) Common carriers have to treat all content using their telecommunications system the same and cannot have tiered access to different content but in exchange are not liable for serving illegal content they didn't create. Safe harbor refers to a lack of liability of your users posting or saving information to your services as long as you don't solicit such posts by the user. So a website gets safe harbor but not common carrier protection. My cell phone company (which does not provide hosting) does not get safe harbor protection, but does get common carrier protection.
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Well, some [sonic.net] ISPs [broadbandreports.com] are [ca.gov]. Just depends on how they structure things legally. Should it be easier for ISPs to stand up and refuse to censor and snoop on their customers? IMO, yes. However, AFAIK, AT&T still retains common carrier status despite their well documented spying [wikipedia.org] efforts, so...
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Yes they should be.
Senator Al Franken has sponsored Net Neutrality legislation to allow them to be treated as such.
Of course, he's also sponsored PIPA which would force ISPs to filter every packet.....
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The enitre concept of "common carrier" is a telephone thing. What you want is "safe harbor" instead. These are legal terms, and so mean whatever they want to mean.
Re:Maybe Should Have Went with "No Statement" (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that it's like selling knives to people and the most common thing people do is stab each other with them. You can try keeping up appearances and say we're only selling a tool, but sooner or later someone on your staff is going to crack and say "Yes, our tool is used for stabbing. You know it, I know it, we all know it's the 800lb gorilla in the room we can't talk about." Even if you're legitimately trying to minimize the illegal potential, admitting that your awkward stabbing weapon still could be used for stabbing is an admission. And that you didn't sell an even duller knife even though it'd be useless as a knife too, you are still saying you didn't do everything you could to stop stabbers. In short, you can't talk about them. I guarantee that if you do, their lawyers will find more than enough rope to hang you with when things are taken out of context and interpreted in the most cynical way.
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Don't most people use knives to eat food with?
Gun's would make a better analogy. Their are some types of Guns that are illegal, ( automatic weapons) because it is almost impossible to use them for legal purposes ( other then perhaps target practice if you are someone who enjoys that kind of thing) . But just because something MIGHT be used in an illegal fashion is not justification for preventing it's reasonable legal use.
on the flip side of the argument there are lagitimate legal uses of all kinds of ban
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Their are some types of Guns that are illegal, ( automatic weapons) because it is almost impossible to use them for legal purposes ( other then perhaps target practice if you are someone who enjoys that kind of thing)
Automatic weapons (and silenced weapons) are not illegal per se, at least not in the US. You still have to pass a background check and you have to pay the appropriate taxes, but other than that...
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Their are some types of Guns that are illegal, ( automatic weapons) because it is almost impossible to use them for legal purposes ( other then perhaps target practice if you are someone who enjoys that kind of thing) . But just because something MIGHT be used in an illegal fashion is not justification for preventing it's reasonable legal use.
Ummm, There are a lot of uses for Automatic weapons. Predator hunting comes to mind, and no not the movie, Hogs, Big cats, etc.
It is kinda funny, the National Firearms act was passed to regulate what were considered "gangster weapons" however, farmers had been using automatic weapons for some 20 years to control varmints and predators on their ranches. Heck they banned silencers in the same law but in many countries silencers are mandatory for hunting because it reduces the decibels of the gun shot to below
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Depends on how the people store their files. If they're stored as plain files, unecrypted, then yes your knife analogy is somewhat apt. (From what I've been reading, this appears to have been the case at Megaupload
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Yes, so they can claim common carrier status... seems pretty smart to me. If you have any idea at all, you are screwed.
No, that is no longer the case. If you exist at all you are screwed. The only question is when and how hard.
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All we can say for certain is that every pirate starts with Google.
Also I'm bored with all this MPAA/RIAA demonising. It's obvious that all this is just an excuse for top-down control of the Internet, one of many recent laws designed to control the people. Your "real problem" starts when you do things which increase freedom for others and your "real problem" ends when you do as you're told. This changes according as the pressure from people interested in preserving freedoms for the common man, whether that'
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The points seemed clear enough to me.
(1) If piracy enablers are to blame, then why is no-one targetting Google?
Because Google is willing to put forth the money required to do legal battle with the MPAA/RIAA. And Google has very deep pockets.
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(1) If piracy enablers are to blame, then why is no-one targetting Google?
Because if someone told them they could no longer run a search engine, they would spend every dime they have proving otherwise. They have a lot of dimes by the way.
They have about half assets than the company that owns the biggest recording company in the world. If Vivendi were willing to sell, Google could probably buy Universal Music Group.
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Give it ten or fifteen years, and you'll probably see this happening. The entire entertainment industry is so small compared with the technology industry that such consolidation is almost inevitable if the entertainment industry continues to act the way that they have been lately. The tech companies will eat the entertainment "giants" one by one, and in so doing, become them. Then the cycle will repeat itself as some new disruptive technology changes the game again ten or twenty years hence.
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"We try to steer clear of things that would attract scrutiny," Labian said. "If people are pirating on our service, we don’t want those people to use it."
So what you're openly admitting is that you just don't know the extent of piracy on your service?
I read it as his service looks at the hosted files to verify they are not pirated material, which would imply his service is inappropriate for internal business use, which is too bad. I'd like a "business fileserver" provider for a little project I'm working on. Obviously I can roll my own with a virtual box provider like linode and sshfs but it would have been nice to just cut someone a check to handle backups and upgrades and general maintenance for us.
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MediaFire claim to delete encrypted files unless you're on one of their paid plans on the assumption that you're probably hiding pirated content in there. Expect other providers to follow suit.
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So what you're openly admitting is that you just don't know the extent of piracy on your service? I probably would have said "no comment" rather than risk the Eye of Sauron ... er RIAA/MPAA's gaze. From what I gather, it could 0% it could be 100% of your service based on pirates sharing files with each other but since you don't know it's okay? Unless you have some sort of Youtube-like fingerprinting going on, I'd just keep your mouth shut.
Saying no comment implies that you are guilty in the eyes of public opinion. It would be stupid for any legitimate organization that is trying to attract business customers to do that.
Businesses are going to be wary of dealing with file hosting websites after the megaupload take down. They will want to stay away from shady services that primary focus is dealing with copyrighted content because they risk losing their files. If Mediafire sells itself as a legitimate business, it will be good publicity and
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Exactly right. Under the DMCA, no one is required to take down infringing material proactively--in fact, if it's found you do this, you can be in more trouble for what you don't catch. Instead, you take a reactive approach and take things down when you get DMCA notifications. Then, you can be in compliance with the law without having to devote vast resources to policing your site, as others are policing it for you.
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Businesses are going to be wary of dealing with file hosting websites after the megaupload take down.
Which is exactly why it was taken down. File hosting sites provide competition to the RIAA/MPAA distribution cartel.
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I have never uploaded to mediafire (I have my own webserver, and seldom need to send to more than a few people) but I have in the past used it to download both infringing and non-infringing content.
IT WAS A TRAP!
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Very cool. And thanks for chiming in.
Are you confident that in -every- case you considered infringing the content was not authorized by the copyright holder? Sometimes it is difficult to say from the downloading side of things; I recall that some of Trent Reznor's fans got approached by his previous record company for leaks which he personally authorized (to promote Year Zero? If you're interested I can look for some references for you).
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You see right here? This is the downside to tight copyright controls. If the copyright police have their way, we're eventually going to get to the point where most independent creators (the ones who don't know how to run their own servers) can't publish their own works, as all of the avenues for doing so
COM:DW (Score:2)
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The point is not whether you make enough profits for anyone to care. The point is that if you infringe doing such mundane things, you're pretty sure that anyone with a camera infringed at least once in his lifetime. Hence, you have the way paved for an authoritarian regime where anyone in power can bring you down at will, because of such stupid laws making sure that virtually anyone alive infringe on some stupid thing.
Not every situation-jurisdiction pair has fair use (Score:2)
For example, there are many photographs of sculptures and artwork on Wikipedia which are of a small resolution (similar to cell phones), and have been vetted to be non-infringing fair use for educational purposes.
That doesn't help much once someone steps past educational purposes. Nor does it help much once one leaves the United States; several other jurisdictions construe fair (use|dealing) much more narrowly because their free press guarantees aren't as broad as that of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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I'd like to discuss this further with you, if you'd care to provide specific examples
Wikimedia Commons' guideline about derivative works [wikimedia.org] mentions the toy example (search the page for "Pooh") among others. For the sculpture example, see Wikipedia's article about the Eiffel Tower [wikipedia.org].
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Downloaders do not matter to the issue at hands. UPLOADERS do.
Professionals? (Score:5, Funny)
Like... Professional pirates?
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Like... Professional pirates?
Somalians?
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There is nothing more terrifying than a Somali pirate hacker.
Hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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You still have to get your Internet connection from somewhere. Good luck with that if all you do is cause headaches for your ISP.
You may pirate when ready... (Score:5, Funny)
"MediaFire CEO: We Don't Depend On Piracy"
- But it sure helps the bottom line!
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When asked about the Googling issue, Labian said that MediaFire is a âoeprivate serviceâ and the only reason Google indexes a MediaFire page is when it has been shared by a user on a third-party site. He said MediaFire isnâ(TM)t at fault for this and said Google should look into the issue.
Helping the bottom line indeed.
Robots.txt would make their service much more private
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Bot or not, it still counts as one pageview, hence one ad impression. ka-ching
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if the ad is never loaded, don't serve the file.
that's the aim they got anyhow.
Gotta love it when.... (Score:2)
... they claim they aren't doing anything wrong, but completely change their services anyways.
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That's what happens when poorly drafted, overly-broad, draconian laws are written.
"We don't do X, but we didn't think our competitor, Y, did either, and they completely disappeared from existance before so much as a single hearing had taken place, so we'd better scale back anything that we think might even *possibly*, in the worst light, be construed as anything kinda sorta like X!"
Blocked Access to the US (Score:5, Insightful)
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we're a legitimate business targeting professional (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just read his quote with a mafioso accent and it all sounded right.
I use Mediafire professionally (Score:2)
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Shared hosting services often stipulate that you can't use them as file storage services--you have to actually be serving websites with them.
But really, if you are paying Mediafire to host your files, what's wrong with that? I just wouldn't use them as my only copy--only a fool would trust a cloud service with their one and only copy of anything.
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Why would you put work-related files on a hoster full of full-screen popups and blinking animgif ads?
That's gotta look pretty bad to your clients.
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What would you even use it for internally?
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Why would you host them on a slow, remote, ad-filled site, rather than on your own network?
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Obviously you have something to hide, citizen. Please place your hands in the yellow circles and await a police action.
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Things like this make me so very glad I run my own server with some friends of mine for less than the combined cost of our personal web-hosting, file hosting and voice comm bills per month. Don't have to deal with this crap and can run my server my way. Granted, I get that it isn't an option for everyone. That all said, Megaupload was really asking for it when you look at the indictment, so I'm not too worried about them all going away, but it is frustrating to not know which ones might be following simi
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but it is frustrating to not know which ones might be following similar practices.
I think it's pretty easy to judge what kind of business they are just by looking at their ads.
In the case of MediaFire, blinking animgifs all over their pages, and full-screen YOU HAVE WON AN IPHONE 4 popups.
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By that criteria, my ISP's e-mail service must be serving up kiddie porn.
Professionals? (Score:2)
A legitimate business targeting professionals.
Targeting them with animated GIF ads and "YOU HAVE WON AN IPHONE 4" popups?
Likely story, there.
Everybody knows... (Score:2)
"I'm a legitimate businessman." (Score:5, Insightful)
Alarms always go off when someone tells me that.
Similarly, different kinds of alarms that go off when some one says, "I'm not a slut."
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What if they say "I'm not a slut, I'm a legitimate business woman"?
Re:"I'm a legitimate businessman." (Score:5, Funny)
Alarms always go off when someone tells me that.
Similarly, different kinds of alarms that go off when some one says, "I'm not a slut."
"I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want,"
"All I do is satisfy a public demand."
Both are quotes from Al Capone
Sluts also satisfy a public demand, but without a Venn diagram I do not know if Al Capone was a slut or not.
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"I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want,"
"All I do is satisfy a public demand."
Both are quotes from Al Capone
Was he wrong? After all, we repealed Prohibition in 1933 precisely because the public demand in question created people like Al Capone.
File Security (Score:2)
It seems to me that one of the paramount services these types of companies offer is file security. If I put up a file to be shared among a group, I probably want to restrict access to that file to a specific group. Most often this is handled by requiring either a direct link or a password. If I am sharing confidential business information with a vendor or client, (say, graphics for an ad campaign that include pre-release pictures of the product), I don't want just anyone to download it. Implicit in this
With apologies to Casablanca... (Score:3)
"I am shocked, absolutely shocked, to learn that there is copyright infringement going on with this filesharing website."
though seriously, this seems to be the standard argument that the overall service is OK because it has legitimate uses.
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though seriously, this seems to be the standard argument that the overall service is OK because it has legitimate uses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc [wikipedia.org].
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yes, that's where the phrase/concept comes from...probably should have cited that myself
Yep (Score:2)
Yep. MediaFire is my file host of choice for lots of nonproblematic stuff
I am glad to hear from them about this.
Less annoying to free users, which ironically made me more willing to get premium. (With MediaFire, me having premium does benefit nonpremium users downloading my stuff)
No piracy here (Score:2)
Oh, and these were just the first ones I came across, by googling terms like "MS Office site:mediafire.com"
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Hmm, wonder if those links will still be active tomorrow?
If they are, I will not be surprised at all when they get prosecuted.
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I think what their CEO is trying to say is that they aim to be legitimate, and will actually... you know, respond to DMCA requests, unlike MegaUpload who had sort of a "wink, nod" approach to pirated materials.
Doesnt matter (Score:2)
In this new brave world it doesn't matter if you are legit or not. All they have to do is point a finger at you and you are gone.
Due process is no longer in effect.
It was fun while it lasted. This is just the beginning.
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I know of no filesharing site that does this automatically, but some users themselves give cryptic names to their files for this reason.
yeah, generally a cryptically named archive with clearly named files inside it. (so people aren't confused by what they have once they download it.)
then again, maybe some uploaders are too lazy to organize their stuff. tempted to do it for them...
http://support.mediafire.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/15/1/can-i-search-files-from-other-mediafire-users [mediafire.com]
MediaFire do
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Why would you have to rename after each download? Let the client take care of that.
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6. User then posts the link to a forum, and happily describes them as "All nintendo roms evarrrrr"
7. Google indexes said forum
8. Joe Average gets his free roms
9. Lawyer time
So much for that plan
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Its becoming increasingly evident that the US government doesn't want US citizens to compete globally. While it is most evident in the financial sector (try opening an ordinary bank account in a foreign country) that US citizens are unwanted due to our tyrannical state. It is soon going to be that US citizens are not wanted on most of the internet because they are too big of a liability.
So the question is raised. How much longer till it makes more sense to move outside of the US? Between a lack of freedom of movement, even within the country, to increasingly less freedom of speech and increasingly less economic freedoms it is becoming obvious that US citizenship is no longer really desirable but is slowly becoming a liability.
Bye. Delta is ready when you are. BTW, good luck with "economic freedoms" in Europe.. as if anyone in Britain or the EU has fewer regulations than the US. Maybe Asia is more your speed. They've got the tiger economies, but then again, they're almost completely export-dependent on the US and Europe.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/04/italy-idUSL5E7N40CB20111204 [reuters.com]
Scary stuff going on in europe.
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The US has some of the best laws in the world for technology companies. There is a reason why the majority of tech start ups were founded in the US and not somewhere else.
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Pretty much every country in the first world is a U.S. lapdog when it comes to IP laws. So moving to Europe isn't going to help.
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Singapore is a pretty good option, I'm a Canuck and I've been considering it for the last couple of years. And since Iceland is considering moving to the loonie(canadian currency), I may move there if they do that too. Both are viable in my book. Considering the hassle of even traveling to the place I have in the US anymore, I've already sold my US property I was going to retire to. And here I was planning 20 years ahead, well at least I cleared an extra 100k to the bank.
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