Payment services are among the key intermediaries and the entertainment industries previously helped negotiate an anti-piracy agreement between VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, PaySafeCard and several other key players.

As a result several major file-hosting services have had trouble accepting payments from their users. The popular cyberlocker Uptobox is among the latest casualties of this effort, TorrentFreak has learned.

“Our payment processors have received a notification from Visa and MasterCard telling them to stop accepting credit card payments for our service, subject to penalties,” Uptobox operator Guillaume informs us.

“These measures are the result of pressure from movie studios on Visa and Mastercard,” he adds.

Uptobox is currently still able to accept credit card payments through a reseller, but decided to cut all ties with the United States to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.

This means that U.S. visitors are no longer allowed to access the site. Instead they receive the following notice. “Sorry, Uptobox.com is not available in your country.”

Uptobox will consider lifting the ban if a European payment provider is willing to directly accept credit card payments for them. However, considering Visa and MasterCard’s tight grip on the situation this may prove to be difficult.

According to Guillaume, MasterCard previously complained to payment processors Hipay and Allopass as well, following a request from Disney. In addition, PayPal has rejected Uptobox’s requests to become an authorized file-hosting service.

According to statistics released last year more than 1,500 “pirate” merchants were cut off from payment providers between 2011 and 2013, and this list continues to expand week after week.

Despite the setbacks Uptobox is determined to keep its business going. The cyberlocker is currently exploring several alternative payment methods including Bitcoin.

“Processing payments for our users is hard right now, but we are sure we will find a suitable payment processor. We’re also considering to support Bitcoin and other payment methods such as SMS,” Guillaume tells us.

“For now, the service is not in danger, we still have a bright future ahead of us,” the Uptobox operator concludes.

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

The rhetoric in court filings has been harsh, with Liberty Media’s lawyer Marc Randazza openly referring to Oron as ‘criminals’ who do not qualify for safe harbor under the DMCA.

After having their funds in the US frozen, Oron unsuccessfully tried to have several hundred thousand dollars released, ostensibly to pay for their legal battles and hosting. A judge agreed to release $100,000 but no more, leading Liberty Media to warn Oron users that the file-hoster could collapse.

But for all the rhetoric and public aggression, more considered discussions were going on behind the scenes last month.

It is already a matter of record that Liberty Media asked Oron for $500,000 to settle the case and that Oron rejected the amount as “unreasonable”. But the negotiations between the two companies went much further than straightforward cash offers – much, much further.

TorrentFreak has learned that on June 23rd Oron offered Liberty Media $50,000, some ten times less than was originally demanded. In addition, Oron said that should an agreement be reached it could become particularly helpful towards the adult studio.

After a request from Liberty, Oron said it could indeed take “both strong and bold measures to keep Liberty Media content off of its servers” by giving Liberty direct and “unfettered” deletion access to its systems.

Then, in order to generate revenue, removed copyright-infringing content could be substituted for links pointing to locations where people could buy official product from Liberty instead.

“Oron will receive no income from such links until Liberty has recouped gross income of $400,000 after which Liberty shall pay to Oron 50% of its profits from said links,” Oron suggested.

There is nothing particularly surprising in the above since similar systems are operated at other file-hosting sites. But this is where things begin to escalate.

Oron also offered to “permanently ban, by email address, PayPal account, IP address or any other reasonable and robust metric, any user who is the subject of even a single Liberty Media takedown notice.” Any user flagged as infringing Liberty’s copyrights would also have their payments frozen by Oron.

Then, in a wakeup call to anyone who thinks that cyberlockers offer almost bulletproof security, at Liberty Media’s request Oron confirmed that should a settlement deal be reached, the company could offer the following:

Oron will assist Liberty in identification and civil prosecution of any parties who have been using Oron to distribute Liberty’s copyrighted material, including but not be limited to, full disclosure of IP addresses, banking information, emails and any other information that may assist in Liberty in such prosecution.

Finally, and to wrap the whole deal up in a neat bow, Oron accepted Liberty Media’s offer to provide “some public relations help for Oron in order to minimize the chance of other lawsuits being brought against it” by stating, contrary to earlier assertions, that Oron does deserve safe harbor under the DMCA after all.

Liberty Media’s offer was dated June 22 and Oron’s counter offer was dated June 23 with a June 25 deadline. General agreement was evident on all major issues except the cash offer. Whether their differences on that point will kill the whole deal remains to be seen.

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

Both have dozens of millions of users every day, and they also share the wrath of the entertainment industries. But, that’s generally where comparisons stop.

The founders of the new startup Netkups thought this was odd. Why not incorporate the two technologies and make a new hybrid file-sharing service? Why not allow people to upload files and share them through direct links and torrents?

There is indeed nothing that prevents both platforms from being combined and so Netkups was born.

“The hybrid model is a win-win situation,” Netkups founder Adrian told TorrentFreak.

“In our case, we can save on bandwidth charges and enable a faster growth, while we guarantee that the file is seeded by us as long as it is downloadable. At the same time, users can enjoy the benefits of torrent files and download as many files as they want, using part of our bandwidth and bandwidth from other users.”

In common with most cyberlockers, Netkups has no built-in search engine. Users can upload files up to 1 gigabyte for free, and share them with friends or co-workers, or keep them private. If users choose to share the files, these can be downloaded for free from Netkups’ servers with a speed limit of 300 kBs.

And there’s more. Since Netkups also creates a torrent file, people can also use that to download without speed restrictions. All free of charge. For the uploader there’s an added advantage that Netkups will always seed the torrent file in question, so they don’t have to.

Adding a torrent also means that the files will remain available even if the Netkups site ceases to exist. The torrent files created by Netkups use public trackers so they can be easily uploaded to external torrent sites as well.

Sites that operate file-sharing services need to be cautious of copyright infringement issues, and Netkups are no exception. After the Megaupload shutdown in particular, the site’s operators are smart enough to make sure that they’re not breaking any laws.

“We’d be fools not to worry about that. That’s why we have a serious DMCA policy, as well as a serious legal agreement. That said, we watch out for censorship and abuses of any kind. ”

Netkups’ founder told TorrentFreak that copyright holders have to file proper DMCA requests to take content down, and that they are wary of automated censorship requests with huge lists of allegedly infringing links.

“People might not like seeing some things published, but that doesn’t mean all files should be removed. We care about everyone’s rights – not just users, not just creators.”

The Netkups service has been running stable for a few weeks and the site’s founder welcomes people to check it out. While there’s a premium package available with added benefits, the site can be used for free with limited restrictions.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, Netkups is not the only cyberlocker that has BitTorrent support.

4shared also allows users to download files through torrents. However, 4shared appears to log the IP-addresses of downloaders to prevent sharing on external sites.

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

Needless to say, a site of this size can’t possible avoid some of its users occasionally uploading copyrighted files. In common with most websites that deal with user uploaded content, 4Shared allows rightsholders to send takedown notices to remove copyrighted files that are posted without permission, but for some this is not enough.

Modulo Security Solutions has filed a lawsuit at a federal court in New Jersey in an attempt to reveal the identities of the person or persons who uploaded confidential documents to 4Shared. The security company told the court that it plans to take civil action against the alleged uploader(s) for copyright infringement related offenses, but that it can only do so if 4Shared hands over their personal details.

In the complaint Modulo states that while 4Shared took swift action to remove the infringing files from their website, it refused to give up any information on their users without a court order. This claim is backed up by a copy of an email 4Shared sent Modulo early December.

Interestingly, the lawsuit was filed “ex parte,” meaning that 4Shared will not be notified about the legal proceedings. Modulo says it chose to do so because it fears that the cyberlocker may destroy the information when they become aware of the suit.

“Petitioner submits this petition on an ex parte basis because the information that it seeks from Respondent is highly susceptible to deletion or otherwise may be destroyed, either intentionally or inadvertently,” the complaint reads.

Modulo further cites several paragraphs from the 4Shared site which indicate that the data they are after may be destroyed if the case is delayed significantly. Among other things, the 4Shared’s terms of service state that free accounts will be deleted 180 days after they were last accessed.

The cyberlocker also notes that it reserves the right to “disable or remove the accounts of users who infringe the intellectual property rights of others or may expose 4shared to civil or criminal liability.”

While the nature of the case is different from traditional media piracy, its outcome will be watched closely by copyright holders currently suing BitTorrent users. After all, if 4Shared is ordered to hand over customer information including names and IP-addresses, there is no reason why others shouldn’t try the same tactic.

In their complaint Modulo is only asking 4Shared to identify the uploader(s) of the files, not those who have downloaded them. This would make it harder to sue large groups of people as is currently the case with BitTorrent lawsuits, but it’s not unthinkable that other companies will cast a wider net.

At this point it’s unclear what type of information and logs 4Shared has of up- and downloaders, and perhaps more importantly, for how long this data is stored. TorrentFreak contacted 4Shared with a request to comment on their logging policy, and we will add a response as soon as it comes in.

Update: 4Shared comment

“We take our Privacy Policy very seriously and protect the rights of legal copyright owners, as well as personal data of our users. Here’s a snippet, concerning the protection of the users information:

“… We will make no public release of any personal information that is collected through our proprietary file sharing tool. All client-specific information gathered through 4shared will be the property of the user.”

Personal information that is collected includes users IP, the exact time and date of the login and upload process. The reason for disclosure of such data can occur only if a crime took place and after appropriate decision of the court. We don’t provide our users info if someone just say so without a legal reason for that.”

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

Aside from naming many of the larger BitTorrent sites, the MPAA’s list also included several so-called cyberlockers. In recent years these file-hosting sites have overtaken BitTorrent in popularity, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by Hollywood.

The problem with outing these sites as piracy havens is that there’s no clear definition of when a site is “rogue” or not. Last year the file-hosting site RapidShare was branded rogue by the MPAA, but this year they were excluded without explanation. However, an internal MPAA fact sheet that landed on TorrentFreak’s desk may shed some light on their definition of rogue.

Titled “It’s All About the Money: The ‘Business’ Model of Rogue Cyberlockers” the two page document gives an overview of the several affiliate programs some cyberlockers have in place. According to the MPAA these programs motivate users to share copyrighted material, thereby promoting piracy.

“Rogue cyberlockers aren’t just distribution hubs for stolen movies and TV shows – both the users who upload content and the operators who run the sites can earn money from doing so. As Internet video traffic grows, the threat from rogue cyberlockers that profit from stolen content is rising rapidly,” the MPAA writes.

The “fact sheet” continues with various examples of what the MPAA believes to be the clear promotion of copyright infringement. They thereby cite several of the descriptions of the affiliate programs that can be found on cyberlockers such as Putlocker, Fileserve, Bitshare and Uploading.com.

“Rogue cyberlockers feature ‘affiliate’ or ‘partner’ programs that pay uploaders cash for every thousand downloads of uploaded files. Putlocker.com exhorted users to ‘get paid for uploading good content that people want to see.’ Uploading.com promoted the ease of earning money by uploading files: ‘Now every time someone downloads your file you earn up to 2 cents. Relax and watch the money flow!’”

The MPAA further notes that some cyberlockers explicitly encourage their affiliates to share files with as many people, “even strangers,” and that the highest payouts are reserved for large files that are downloaded by users from English-speaking and Central Europe countries.

According to the MPAA it’s even suspected that cyberlockers in general encourage people to sign up for a premium account, a business model that is quite common for online services.

“Rogue cyberlockers induce users to subscribe to the site by restricting download speeds for ‘free’ accounts, as well as limiting the number of files users are able to download per day,” the MPAA writes.

“Rogue cyberlockers profit from selling ‘premium’ subscriptions that typically allow users to avoid restrictions on download speed, intrusive advertising, and artificially-imposed waiting times between downloads.”

The MPAA fact sheet strengthens the above arguments by giving several examples taken from the various cyberlocker sites, but doesn’t always specify why these should be considered as “rogue.” In some cases it raises even more questions than it answers.

We assume that the fact sheet is supposed to act as a bulletin of talking points for MPAA associates tasked with convincing the press, public and lawmakers that “rogue” cyberlockers are up to no good. It will come as no surprise when we hear more “official” MPAA statements on this very topic in the near future.

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