One such site, Hong Kong-based Filesonic, took the drastic measures of discontinuing both their rewards program and all third-party sharing. In the file-hosting world their decisions were a pretty big deal. At the time Filesonic was one of the top 10 file-sharing sites on the Internet, with a quarter billion page views a month. As can be seen from the Alexa graph below, the effects were dramatic.

Despite the efforts of Filesonic to stay out of the copyright infringement spotlight (in December 2011 the company had partnered with anti-piracy company Vobile), in February 2012 the International Intellectual Property Alliance reported Filesonic to the USTR. IIPA, who count the MPAA and RIAA as members, described Filesonic as an “infringing distribution hub.”

But today, six months on, it appears something is seriously amiss with this former giant of the file-sharing world. For two days Filesonic has been completely unreachable via its .com domain after changes were made to its DNS settings.

The site does have plenty of other domains with different extensions, but strangely none of those have been updated to include the same settings as the .com domain. For example, Filesonic.net, .ch, and .jp are all registered to Earnwell Hong Kong LTD, the company behind Filesonic. However, Filesonic.com is now registered to Seychelles-based Renovatio Management Limited.

While the .com domain is completely broken and no longer uses the traditional Filesonic DNS servers, the other domains do resolve to the Filesonic site but it is completely non-functional.

In order to find out exactly what’s happening with Filesonic, TorrentFreak attempted to contact the file-hoster in three different ways but we received no response. We also contacted Renovatio Management but they didn’t respond either. The only people we could get to say anything at all was Filesonic’s hosting company, but they told us they would not discuss their client’s business.

This year has been a miserable one for Filesonic, and it’s still not over. Aside from its traffic woes and now unexplained disappearance, along with Oron (another cyberlocker that has simply vanished), Filesonic is being sued by adult entertainment company Flava Works. The company does not yet appear to have responded to the lawsuit.

The disappearance of both Oron and now Filesonic raises plenty of questions, but perhaps what is most unusual is the complete lack of communication with their customers. A simple message on the sites’ homepages would suffice, but neither filehost has obliged. Exactly why is anyone’s guess.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Flava Works, known for winning a preliminary injunction (currently under appeal) in its landmark lawsuit against MyVidster, a case which involved Google, Facebook and even the MPAA, is now targeting two prominent file-hosting services and 26 of their users.

In papers filed at the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last week, the company accuses FileSonic and Oron of several copyright related offenses.

Among other things, the complaint alleges that FileSonic and Oron are “websites that copy, store, distribute, display, profit from unauthorized copyrighted materials, and/or induce and assist others to infringe copyrighted materials.”

The two cyberlockers are joined by 26 John Doe defendants who allegedly shared links to copyrighted material with each other via several Yahoo groups. It is claimed that through these mailing lists the defendants actively traded links, some of which were uploaded by the defendants themselves.

According to Flava Works the file-hosting sites directly profited from these infringements through their affiliate programs.

The complaint characterizes FileSonic as an “illegitimate” outfit, a description repeated for Oron.

“On information and belief, at all relevant times, Filesonic.com is not a legitimate file storage company. Filesonic.com’s affiliates reward program offered members the opportunity to make money by uploading copyrighted videos.”

“Affiliates members are paid based upon the number of downloads of their posted materials and based upon how many other premium memberships were bought by users accessing Filesonic.com through the member’s links.”

Flava Works goes on to accuse FileSonic, Oron and the Doe defendants on several counts including direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement.

The adult company asks for a permanent injunction and temporary restraining order against the defendants. Flava Works further requests statutory, compensatory and punitive damages for the alleged infringements.

It is unclear why Flava Works has singled out these two file-hosting services as the complaint also mentions that Hotfile, Fileserve and Rapidshare were used to share files. Filesonic in particular seems to be an odd choice since the cyberlocker disabled public file-sharing months ago, which led to an exodus of users.

For Oron, this is the second lawsuit brought against the site this summer. Last month adult studio Corbin Fisher sued the company for no less than $34.8 million for alleged copyright infringements. As part of a settlement, Oron then offered to assist the studio prosecute its own users.

Both Oron and FileSonic have yet to respond to the complaint.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“I should write a book about doing business in Hong Kong, that’s how good it is. People there leave you alone and they are happy for your success,” he added.

But leaving him alone wasn’t on the agenda of the Hong Kong authorities. In a triumphant January statement they revealed how they had worked with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to “smash a transnational cyberlocker syndicate” – aka Megaupload.

The commitment from Hong Kong Customs was significant. Not only did they invest a year’s worth of investigative manpower, but also supplied 100 officers from their various copyright enforcement divisions to carry out raids on the company.

According to an FT report, authorities there are set to go even further. Later this year, Hong Kong Customs will set up an “electronic crime investigation” center after being called on by media companies to pay closer attention to other cyberlocker-type services operating locally.

The announcement is likely to further unsettle several other file-hosting services that have a presence in the territory such as Filesonic.com, Uploading.com, Uploaded.to, zshare.net, Filepost.com and Hulkshare.com.

Just a couple of days after the Megaupload raids, Filesonic – one of the top 10 file-sharing sites on the Internet – reacted by disabling all 3rd party sharing.

Like Megaupload before it, Filesonic blocks all local IP addresses, presumably in an attempt to avoid local difficulties. But although there is no suggestion that Filesonic has done anything wrong, this type of blockade alone will not ensure it has a quiet life.

Hong Kong authorities described the motivation behind Megaupload’s IP block as “a bid to hinder investigation by law enforcement agencies.” Filesonic told FT that they have “a zero tolerance” approach to piracy.

Uploaded.to, another site with Hong Kong links, reacted to the Megaupload raids by blocking all visitors from the United States. Others have disabled their affiliate programs or taken other measures.

“Targeting the organized and transnational nature of IP infringing activities in the wake of technology development, the Hong Kong Customs will continue to monitor the situation and co-operate with the IPR industry and overseas law enforcement agencies so as to suppress infringing activities effectively,” HK Customs said in a statement.

Whether Customs will follow-up with further action remains to be seen, but in the meantime an Eastern chill is certainly blowing through cyberlocker land.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to a shock announcement by the site, all file-sharing functionality has now been disabled, leaving current users only with access to files that they have personally uploaded. Many hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of links all around the web have now been rendered useless, at least temporarily.

But the bad news for the site’s users doesn’t end there. In the last few hours, before file-sharing was disabled, Filesonic also ended its rewards program, meaning that uploaders to the site no longer earn money when people download their files. A moot point perhaps, since no-one will be downloading files anyway.

However, there is the matter of what will happen to the reward money that was sitting in uploader’s accounts before the rewards program was discontinued. Will it be paid out, or will it simply disappear? Many users fear the latter.

While there has been no official explanation from the site as to why the above actions were taken, all eyes are turned towards events of the last week – the closure of Megaupload and the arrest of its founder and management team.

Like Megaupload, Filesonic appears to be based in Hong Kong and it’s clear that the authorities there already worked with the US government to shut down Kim Dotcom’s operations and seize his assets there. Filesonic is also believed to have some US-based servers.

In December, Filesonic announced it had partnered with Vobile, a provider of content identification services. All uploads to the service were said to be being checked for copyright infringement before users were able to share them publicly, although it is unclear if this system was ever implemented by the site.

The events of the last week have turned the cyberlocker world upside down and there is quite literally panic among users and site operators. Stay tuned for our detailed report tomorrow – the Megaupload takedown appears to be a game-changer.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.