TorrentFreak

File-hosting service FileServe has been sued by the production company behind the independent movie American Cowslip. In a lawsuit filed at a federal court in California the movie producers accuse FileServe of several copyright infringement related charges and are demanding more than a million dollars in damages.

Citing an Interpol investigation underway with the cooperation of Mastercard and Visa, Czech-based payment processor iKoruna discontinued service to file-hosting sites this week. The target of the investigation was not announced but transaction information was handed over to Interpol and all remaining funds have been frozen. The news comes soon after an Italian prosecutor announced a major crackdown on file-hosting sites, including some iKoruna clients.

Most people who upload files to cyberlockers make less than minimum wage from their activities according to researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University and Eurécom in France. The researchers analyzed the click rates at several link-sites, and conclude that the overall impact of affiliate programs on piracy may be overstated.

Three months ago one man declared war on the cyberlocker market and set himself a mission to disrupt and meddle with the businesses of what he describes as the industry’s “bad players”. Now, 90 days on and with a team of people stepping in time, TorrentFreak takes a look at what has been achieved. Without doubt the annoyance factor is off the scale and at first view the damage looks significant, but will sites simply give up – or use the opportunity to adapt?

In recent weeks, PayPal has cut off many of the world’s largest filehosting sites from its service including MediaFire, Putlocker and DepositFiles. Growing concern over copyright infringement has resulted in an extremely strict and in some cases privacy-violating set of requirements being laid down by the payment processing company. Cyberlocker owners are disappointed with the apparent witch-hunt which in some cases is paralyzing their business.

By design the porn industry is often to be found at the extremes of the human race’s moral compass. So recently, when one industry man began a campaign with a stated aim of bringing the cyberlocker market to its knees, one might expect things to have gotten a little dirty. Well they have – absolutely filthy – just ask Putlocker, ExtaBit, TurboBit and a growing list of others, all victims of a concerted operation to strangle their finances and put them out of business.

While Hollywood paints file-hosting sites as the new piracy havens, a new study shows that these services are indispensable to many employees. A survey among 4,119 respondents from a wide range of companies shows that 66% use free file-sharing sites to share and store work documents. Among those working in professional services the percentage is as high as 87%.