In recent years many of these sites have gotten a bad reputation as they are frequently used to share copyrighted files.

Today the Digital Citizens Alliance released a new report (pdf) that looks into the profitability of these sites and services. Titled “Behind The Cyberlocker Door: A Report How Shadowy Cyberlockers Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions,” it offers insight into the money streams that end up at these alleged pirate sites.

The study, carried out by NetNames and backed by the entertainment industry, uses information from the busted Megaupload service to estimate the earnings of various other sites. Based on these and other assumptions it concludes that the top cyberlockers generate an average $3.2 million per site per year.

“Overall, total annual revenue across the thirty cyberlockers equated to $96.2 million or $3.2 million per site. One site gathered $17.6m per year in revenue,” the report notes, adding that it’s a conservative estimate.

The report brands these sites as piracy havens based on a sample of the files they host. All the sites that are listed are used predominantly for copyright infringement, they claim.

“The overwhelming use of cyberlockers is for content theft. Analysis of a sampling of the files on the thirty cyberlocker sites found that the vast majority of files were clearly infringing,” the report reads.

“At least 78.6 percent of files on direct download cyberlockers and 83.7 percent of files on streaming cyberlockers infringed copyright,” it adds.

Here’s where the researchers make a crucial mistake. The sample, where the percentage of allegedly infringing files is based on, is drawn from links that are posted publicly online. These are certainly not representative for the entire site, at least not in all cases.

For Mega the researchers looked at 500 files that were shared online. However, the overwhelming majority of Mega’s files, which number more than 500,000,000, are never shared in public.

Unlike some other sites in the report, Mega is a rather traditional cloud hosting provider that’s frequently used for personal backup, through its desktop client or mobile apps for example. The files that are shared in public are the exception here, probably less than one percent of the total.

There is no denying that there are shady and rogue sites that do profit heavily from piracy, but lumping all these sites together and branding them with a pirate label is flat-out wrong.

Aside from “exposing” the estimated profitability of the cyberlockers the report also has a secondary goal. It puts out a strong call to the credit card companies Visa and MasterCard, and hosting providers such as Cloudflare, urging them to cut their ties with these supposed pirate havens.

“They should take a hard look at the checkered history of their cyberlocker partners. Simply put, the businesses that simply exploit and expropriate the creative efforts of others do not occupy a legitimate place in the Internet ecosystem,” the report notes.

“Content theft is a cancer on the Internet. It introduces viruses and malware to computers, robs creators who rely on the Internet to sell their products, damages brands by associating them with illegal and inappropriate content and provides seed money for criminals to engage in other illegal activities,” it adds.

Hopefully future reports will have more nuance. At minimum they should make sure to have all the facts right, as that’s generally more convincing.

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

“What I hope to achieve is very simple. I want to tear apart the illegal file locker industry by removing its supply of funds and then ultimately removing its supply of network connectivity,” King explained.

Over the months that followed King kept up the pressure. With a team of people (he has never revealed its exact size or membership), King sought out infringing files on hosting sites and used their existence to build up a picture that sites were acting illegally.

Then, using contacts he had built in the payment processing sector, AdultKing (as King is known online) began to hit file-hosting sites in the pocket by reporting them to the likes of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and a variety of intermediate processors. The aim: to cut sites off from their cash.

For some sites the results were extremely problematic. With no options to process payments, file-hosting sites were not only unable to accept money for user subscriptions, but also had problems sending money out, meaning that server bills went unpaid. Worse still, some who had problems with PayPal due to King’s work found their funds frozen for six months, a situation that proved terminal for some fringe players.

Some 90 days into the StopFileLockers campaign, King said he had played a part in 194 sites having their payments interrupted and the total shutdown of 54 others.

There can be little doubt that among King’s targets were sites designed from the ground up to profit from infringing content and for this he gained both moral and financial support from his industry peers. However, in January 2013 King began attacking the payment processing abilities of Kim Dotcom’s brand new Mega.co.nz, the most-scrutinized file-hosting startup in tech history.

There was no way that Mega would do anything to break the law, yet King was determined to harass the company. He failed, Mega continued to grow, and the moral high-ground of the StopFileLockers campaign had been damaged by going after a law-abiding company going about its 100% legitimate business.

In the months that followed King continued his work, although with less fanfare than in the early days. However, a lowered profile did nothing to improve his standing in file-sharing circles. King is almost certainly the most-hated man in the file-hosting business today, which some will attribute to his successes over the past 15 months.

King himself believes that his contribution has been significant, with the suggestion that the StopFileLockers campaign has played a part in the shutdown of hundreds of piracy-related sites and the closure of thousands of PayPal, Payza, Moneybookers and other payment processing options. No official stats or reports are available but it’s safe to say that the project has been a considerable nuisance to the file-hosting market.

However, it’s now clear that King’s work is on the brink. Despite initial enthusiasm and support (including hard cash from industry giant Manwin), interest in the project has waned considerably. In an update to adult industry platform GFY, King announced today that StopFileLockers has run out of money and resources and will shut down this week.

“Unfortunately at the end of September we finally ran out of funds and the resources just don’t exist to keep this effort going any longer. In fact, we now face a deficit in the vicinity of $15,000,” King said.

“Unless a source of funding is found, all operational aspects of the Stop File Lockers project and Copy Control will cease at midnight on Friday 4th October (AEST). I would like to thank every person, company and organization that has provided support (financial and otherwise) to the project.”

So what now for AdultKing? More anti-piracy work, or an unlikely change of sides perhaps?

“Overnight one of the largest remaining file lockers offered me $XXX,XXX a year to come on board as a consultant and help them become compliant and get their PayPal account back,” King revealed in September.

“I told them to get fucked.”

In the absence of any figures to show success or failure it is very difficult to assess the real-world achievements of the campaign, at least as far as it may or may not have boosted sales of official content. However, King’s legacy may lie in a more significant area – adding momentum to the shifting of payment processor attitudes towards the file-sharing space.

“We have recast the way in which file lockers are viewed by many organizations,” King concludes.

Few will argue with that.

Update:

“More than one file locker operator has offered either incentive or threat to help them, or desist from working to mitigate their business model. There is no price at which a piracy outfit can obtain my services,” King informs TorrentFreak.

“At the conclusion of the Stop File Lockers project I shall be concentrating my efforts on my mainstream business interests which are not associated with either anti-piracy or the adult industry.”

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

The file-hosting service offers a standard DMCA takedown procedure but recently decided to go a step further by developing its own content identification technology based on audio fingerprints.

Under the new system copyright holders can upload their files to 4shared’s backend. The company then makes a unique fingerprint of each file to prevent them from being shared in public by its users.

“4shared has always been a personal online file storage service and has never endorsed online piracy,” 4shared’s Mike Wilson tells TorrentFreak.

“So we have decided to introduce a music identification system, among the other steps, to maintain the reputation of a legitimate file storage and further prevent illegal usage of our service,” he adds.

4shared’s system is based on the open source solution Echoprint, which is powered by the music intelligence company Echo Nest. This technology allows 4shared to identify files based on audio characteristics instead of just a file hash.

“The algorithm calculates special code for each music file, based on its acoustic properties rather than on a digital hash code, thus making the code or ‘fingerprint’ a unique identifier of a certain title, no matter which properties or format the file has,” Wilson says.

When an attempt is made to share a pirated file in public it will be blocked, assuring copyright holders that their content won’t be distributed without permission. The system only scans public files meaning that it’s still possible for users to backup their own files privately.

The system 4shared has developed works in a similar way to YouTube’s Content ID system, which also offers filtering based on files copyright holders upload to the site.

4shared plans to expand the music identification system with an option to monetize pirated files in the future. This means that in addition to blocking pirated transfers, copyright holders will have an option to replace them with links to sites where the content can be bought legally.

“In the nearest future we will also provide a monetization option instead of simply blocking the file so the users can get the content in a legal way and the owners can make their profit,” Wilson told us.

Aside from audio files, 4shared can also offer similar services for video although these are expected to be rolled out at a later stage. For now, the company is focused on signing up content owners to its music identification account.

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

The movie producers accuse FileServe of a wide variety of copyright related offenses, including inducement and contributory infringement. According to the complaint FileServe’s business is based on selling subscriptions to pirated material.

“FileServe is a website that sells access to large amounts of unauthorized intellectual property to the public, including California residents, without paying the rightful owners of that property,” the filmmakers write.

“FileServe is aware that its websites are being used as a vehicle to illegally copy and distribute large amounts of infringing materials. Because it charges membership fees for immediate access to the copyrighted materials stored on its servers, it is a distributor and seller of pirated materials.”

Under this general characterization pretty much every cloud hosting service could be branded a ‘pirate site’. The producers add, however, that they have advised FileServe that it was offering infringing copies, but that the infringements continued nonetheless.

“Between March 31, 2011 and February 7, 2012 Cowslip sent FileServe notices by letter and email advising FileServe that it was infringing upon Cowslip’s copyright in the work. Despite such notices, defendants’ infringements did not cease,” they write in the complaint.

Whether these notices where in the form of proper DMCA takedown requests and whether specific files were pointed out is unknown.

Cowslip Film Partners believes that FileServe is responsible for the distribution of the pirated copies and demands a jury trial. The movie producers want to see $1,000,000 in damages as well as the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement.

The current lawsuit does come as a surprise considering that the cyberlocker no longer allows users to share files in public. Immediately after the Megaupload raids last year the company changed its policy to only allow users to download files they have uploaded themselves.

Whether this will change anything for the pending case has yet to be seen.

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

After the Megaupload shutdown this became even more of an issue. For example, there’s an unwritten rule that Mastercard and Visa don’t accept sites that have an affiliate program and PayPal has thrown out nearly all cyberlockers in recent months.

Behind the scenes, payment providers are being pressured by anti-piracy groups to stop doing business with file-sharing sites, but this week an even more troubling issue came to light. Czech-based payment processor iKoruna discontinued service to all their file-sharing clients, citing the involvement of Interpol, Visa and Mastercard.

IKoruna is a relatively small player but it was used as a payment option by many file-hosting services, including Turbobit, Uploaded, Filemate, Uload, Extabit, SecureUpload, Luckyshare and Depositfiles.

Monday morning these customers were contacted by iKoruna with the following message:

Dear merchants,

Unfortunately we were forced by association Visa and Mastercard cooperating with Interpol to stop all cooperation with filesharing merchants. Also they required detailed information about our merchants and all transactions that have been made.

Your current balance will be reserved for fraud investigation. After investigation the rest of your funds will be released to your bank account.

We are sorry for the inconvenience

IK support

The Interpol connection and the fact that transactions are being retained makes this story different from all other payment issues we’ve seen in the past. It suggests that the actions are part of a criminal investigation into one or more of the file-hosting clients of iKoruna.

While it may be a coincidence, it’s worth noting that the Interpol probe coincided with the announcement of a crackdown in Italy on Monday. Several of the file-hosting sites targeted by the Italian prosecutor were also clients of the Czech payment processor.

Early this week TorrentFreak contacted Interpol and iKoruna for further information, but we have yet to receive a response. SecureUpload, one of the sites affected by the apparent Interpol probe, told TorrentFreak that they have heard nothing more than the information detailed in the email above.

The developments at iKoruna don’t mean that all the file-hosting sites are out of business, as most sites have other payment alternatives. However, it adds to growing concerns for the operators of these sites.

“We did only 5% of processing via them, so it doesn’t hurt our business too much,” a SecureUpload spokesperson said in a comment. “Do I find it acceptable? No. I have a business to run here so I would rather spend my time on that than to discuss it with iKoruna and waste useful time.”

“If they find it necessary to disconnect us, they are free to do so. First Paypal kicked [file-lockers], even the ones who comply with the law. Then Moneybookers, now credit cards. Where will it end?”

SecureUpload is also surprised by the involvement of Interpol. The company says it abides by the law and is frustrated that, yet again, it is confronted with payment troubles.

“I also wonder why they bring Interpol into this. Can’t they go after the big criminals who host botnets, the actual organized crime, instead of bugging companies like us who simply comply with the law and work hard every day in a non-criminal way?” SecureUpload added.

If the involvement of Interpol is indeed part of a larger crackdown we expect this to come out in the coming days or weeks. One thing’s for sure, the dust hasn’t settled yet in the cyberlocker world.

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

While it’s not really a secret that, like any business, cyberlockers are out to make a profit, a new study suggests that most of the people who upload pirated content to these sites have more altruistic motives.

Based on publicly available data, researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University and the French Eurécom analyzed how much uploaders of pirated content earn. They published their findings in a paper titled “Paying for Piracy? An Analysis of One-Click Hosters’ Controversial Reward Schemes.”

The research is the first to provide an estimate of how much revenue uploaders make through affiliate programs, and how much time they have to invest in return. The overall conclusion is, perhaps surprisingly, that the vast majority of uploaders are not money driven.

“While the potential earnings of a few uploaders are non-negligible, for most uploaders these amounts are so low that they cannot rationally explain profit-oriented behaviour,” the researchers write.

One of the sites that’s examined in the report is dpstream.net, dubbed by the researchers as France’s largest piracy-based streaming site. The researchers identified 585 uploaders during their crawl of the site, who together added a total of 11,026 links.

As is the case with most sites, only a small percentage of the uploaders take up most of the pie.

“From a global point of view, the income is concentrated on a few uploaders. For instance, the top four uploaders earn more than 30 % of the total income. The top 50 users receive almost 80 % of the total income and provide around 70 % of the links,” the researchers write.

However, that doesn’t mean that these top uploaders are cashing in. According to the researchers they only make a few dollars per day.

“With a site-wide daily payout of $ 32.70, the potential earnings of individual uploaders are surprisingly low: 60 % of the users post content that is worth less than one cent per day, and even the top uploader can earn only $5.26 per day.”

The researchers also looked at redlist-ultimate.be, another popular site in France, and one that was particularly useful because it reported the time uploaders spent on the site. Overall, redlist uploaders have a higher earning potential, but the numbers are far from staggering.

“The median income for the top 50 highest earning uploaders is $ 11.74 for a median of 1.6 hours spent logged in and 10 files posted each day. While this daily income would be worthwhile for an uploader based in a developing country, the vast majority of uploaders come from western countries, notably France,” the researchers write.

The top uploader on redlist earns a respectable $113.17 a day, but spends 8 hours to add an average of 200 files each day to come to this number. This is just above the current minimum legal wage of $12.50 per hour in France.

The researchers further used their data to see what the effect on content availability is should the top uploaders leave the sites in question. This is to simulate the discontinuation of affiliate programs, a decision many cyberlocker services took after the Megaupload shutdown.

Excluding the top 50 uploaders on redlist would remove 58.5% of all links, but only 39.7% of the content objects and just 21.7% of the traffic according to the report. Most of the missing links are relatively unpopular and the researchers conclude that the ecosystem isn’t harmed too much when financial incentives are removed.

“Discontinuation of the affiliate programmes would deprive profit-oriented pirates of their illegal income, but it seems that these programmes are not the main driving force behind One Click Hoster-based piracy,” they write.

“More generally, our findings suggest that the overall impact of the One Click Hosters’ affiliate programmes on piracy activities may be overstated: Most users upload content despite earning next to nothing.”

The report provides a unique insight into the revenue generated through some linking sites, but of course the ecosystem can’t possibly be summarized by looking at two or three sites. That said, the overall conclusion that cyberlocker uploaders aren’t all bathing in money is probably correct.

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

Known online as AdultKing, the Australian-born 45-year-old said he would make it his mission to damage or destroy what he described as “the bad players” in the cyberlocker market.

“What I hope to achieve is very simple,” he told TorrentFreak. “I want to tear apart the illegal file locker industry by removing its supply of funds and then ultimately removing its supply of network connectivity.”

Tactics

King’s initial tactic was to focus on sites that sell premium subscriptions and those that offer users cash for uploading popular content. But quickly those parameters widened to include any site, no matter how big or small, that the 45-year-old considered to be profiting from piracy.

Armed with a huge list of sites, King and other like minded individuals have been gathering evidence of alleged copyright infringement and reporting it to the payment processors of file-hosting sites. Day after day since the summer King has reported successes, detailing how companies such as PayPal have frozen site funds, cut off their payment options and in some cases their ability to do business at all.

90 days of killing file-lockers

The ‘Stop File Lockers’ project hit its 90 day anniversary recently so having monitored developments on a daily basis since they began, TorrentFreak caught up with King to see where the campaign is three months on. (all figures from late September)

“In that time we have shut down one or more forms of payment processing for 503 sites. This includes file lockers, resellers, plus piracy enablers we have needed to focus on in relation to a file locker investigation, image hosting sites or web hosts for example,” King told us.

“54 sites have gone offline completely, some we understand went offline with unpaid server bills. A further 34 sites are currently with no payment processing service and 22 of those we expect to go offline in the near future,” added.

As well as more informal chat on industry forums, the anti-filelocker action orchestrated by King has been documented on StopFileLockers.com. The site contains lists of dozens – hundreds – of sites that have been affected by the campaign. It has also become a hub where disgruntled copyright holders can make a request for specific sites to receive attention.

“In the past three months 209 reports of infringing sites have been made through the Stop File Lockers website. Of those 194 sites have had one or more forms of payment processing terminated. Most of these sites were already on our radar before the reports were made but we greatly appreciate the information received from the wider community,” King explains.

Other processors start thinking like PayPal

“We have also seen some payment processors lose their PayPal processing ability, PaymentWall and CarrotPay being two examples,” he adds.

Furthermore, there are signs that other payment systems are taking the PayPal approach. King says that Moneybookers/Skrill, HiPay, AlertPay/Payza, 2CO, Paxum and CCBill are now all refusing to accept payments for file-hosting sites.

From very early in the campaign King has stressed that StopFileLockers isn’t taking credit for every cyberlocker losing access to its funds or its ability to process payments, but what is clear is that his group has motivated, encouraged, and in some cases plain old annoyed payment processors into taking action.

“Ultimately it is up to individual payment processors to determine whether or not a site is to be terminated. Suffice to say we present what we believe is irrefutable evidence with our reports and can further the progress of terminations by providing a steady supply of information about every file locker we have targeted,” King explains.

“We often hold back on reports if we are not satisfied that we’ve established nefarious conduct taking place on a site which is reported to us or has been detected by us.”

The critics

During our time monitoring the StopFileLockers campaign we have seen a number of interesting developments. While one might expect that file-hosting sites and some file-sharers aren’t that pleased with the project, what was perhaps more unexpected was the hostility King has faced from some elements of the adult content community itself.

Some of the critics, such as those on adult industry forum GFY, have on occasion accused King of setting anti-piracy standards that are too high for any file-locker to achieve, and at any rate way beyond their obligations under the law. Some, it later became apparent, had interests not only in the adult content market, but the file-hosting business too.

“We have faced criticism from both pirates and our own constituency. Some people complain we’re unfairly targeting legitimate business while others complain we haven’t done enough,” King admits.

It’s killing file-lockers, not tube sites, stupid.

Interestingly, while King and his associates are clearly putting in a lot of effort against file-hosting and any other sites connected to the infringement of adult material, many in the adult industry believe there is a bigger enemy – so called ‘tube’ sites that host a huge range of copyrighted content. But despite the threat, these are not on King’s radar.

Controversially, King hasn’t made any secret of the fact he has received financing for his StopFileLockers campaign from Manwin, the huge porn outfit now behind some of the world’s biggest tube sites. Eyebrows have been raised at King’s apparent enthusiasm for killing file-lockers, but for leaving tube sites alone.

King says the current campaign is targeted at file-lockers and other sites in the same eco-system, not tube sites, and that donations received play no part in ensuring a site is left alone. Nevertheless, critics say there is a conflict of interest and King admits that without Manwin’s contributions his campaign would have ended more than a month ago.

As reported on TorrentFreak in June, Manwin is also funding the Adult Content Industry United Foundation (ACIUF) anti-cyberlocker campaign.

The money

And the money related criticisms haven’t stopped there. Some elements have accused King of working for financial reward and for having plans to turn his current (claimed) non-profit organization into a fully fledged anti-piracy company once it’s fully established.

King denies this, and says that in fact he’s personally donated more than $50,000 to the campaign and that donations have gone nowhere near making up the difference.

“Our entire effort has been the result of volunteered time, nobody has been paid to work on the Stop File Lockers project and we could always use more support,” he insists.

“The fact is that we are trying to unravel many years of unchecked copyright infringement and I believe to have made the progress that we have within only 3 months is remarkable.”

Hurting lockers, large and small

When skimming the lists of sites that StopFileLockers claims to have have affected there are dozens of names that most people will have never heard of. Others are much more well known.

As reported by German news outlet Gulli, Netload.in has been suffering lately after King reported them to PayPal and the processor withdrew their payment facility. This has resulted in users of the site complaining that they aren’t getting paid.

And there are more.

King says FileFactory.com, DepositFiles.com and Uploaded.to all lost their PayPal accounts following reports from StopFileLockers.

“While some of these have moved to different payment processors or are accepting credit cards directly, as long they host significant amounts of infringing content we will maintain our interest in them,” King concludes.

Payment processors toughen up

Despite being happy to publish the claimed results of the campaign, King refuses to be drawn on his methodology. However, while it’s clear that his team is putting in a significant amount of work, the hardening attitudes of companies like PayPal means that getting results is somewhat more streamlined than it has been in the past.

As revealed in our earlier article, PayPal is now demanding back-end access to all files hosted on file-hosting sites regardless of user privacy settings.

For some, including hosting service PutLocker who explained the situation to us, that is simply a step too far. PutLocker has discontinued PayPal use and other services are either being forced to follow suit or are doing so under their own steam.

Watching how sites further adapt to a strangling of their finances will be something to keep an eye on in the months to come. King, it’s pretty much certain, will be watching them.

Has AdultKing’s campaign affected your business? Have you been affected by payment processors’ hardening attitudes towards file-sharing sites? Are you adapting to life without PayPal in the file-sharing space? If so, please contact us via the contact page.

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

Hollywood has painted a target on sites such as MediaFire, Putlocker and DepositFiles, but these legal threats are not their only worry. In recent months, PayPal has stopped working with these and dozens of other file-hosting services, citing piracy concerns.

To be accepted by PayPal, file-hosting services now have to comply with a list of far-reaching demands entirely targeted at copyright-infringing and otherwise illegal files.

Just how far PayPal is prepared to go is explained by Putlocker. The UK-based company had its PayPal account frozen three months ago after it refused to allow the payment provider to snoop on files uploaded by its users.

“They basically wanted access to the backend to monitor all the files being uploaded, and listing all files of users if they wanted, regardless of the privacy setting that the user might have selected,” Putlocker told TorrentFreak.

“This is a complete invasion of privacy on PayPal’s part, as it’s none of their business what files users keep in their account. We have a solid abuse handling policy already, and we don’t feel a 3rd party company has any business snooping on our users,” the company added.

The owner of another major file-hosting service, who prefers to remain unnamed, says that he tried to do everything to keep PayPal on board. The site in question says it complied with all publicly listed terms, but that didn’t help.

“We have talked to more than five PayPal agents, however, all they are saying is that we do not comply with their policies, and that we should stop processing payments using PayPal,” the owner told TorrentFreak.

“This has a paralyzing effect on the file-hosting industry where 90% of the users of some sites pay using PayPal,” he added.

Previously most file-hosting sites relied heavily on PayPal, but they will now have to switch to alternatives. The next question is whether PayPal’s example will be followed by others such as Visa and Mastercard.

If it’s up to the one man army of adult industry businessman Robert King, all payment providers will follow. King is actively approaching these companies and says he wont stop before all major file-hosters are disconnected.

While King’s efforts probably have some effect, he can’t take credit for disconnecting PayPal from Putlocker three months ago. United States-based MediaFire also told TorrentFreak that King had little to do with their PayPal issues.

MediaFire says it stopped accepting PayPal after the company was unable to reach an agreement with the payment provider.

“PayPal started a discussion with us in February regarding continued use of its service. Ultimately, we were not able to agree on how to move forward and, as such, stopped accepting new customers through PayPal in early June,” Mediafire co-founder Tom Langridge told TorrentFreak.

MediaFire sees PayPal’s recent actions as a direct consequence of the Megaupload shutdown.

“I think it’s fair to say that because of PayPal’s business model, it got burned by the sudden shutdown of Megaupload,” Langridge says. However, unlike some other file-hosters, MediaFire was fortunate enough to be able to prepare for the switch.

“We have been planning for this change for some time so the impact to new and future customers is negligible. We have seen no impact to continued sales since we stopped accepting PayPal,” Langridge told us.

While not all file-hosters are equally impacted, it is clear that the troubled industry has a long way to go before things calm down.

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

At times, the MPAA and RIAA are accused of using dirty tricks, but their outright denials and favorable framing of controversial issues means that the mud often fails to fully stick. But compare that to the action currently being taken by elements of the adult industry against a wide range of file-hosters, and we have a veritable mudbath in which the players not only relish the dirty tricks, but cheerfully admit to them at every turn.

For the past couple of weeks, Australian-born adult industry businessman Robert King (known online as AdultKing) has been doing everything in his power to screw up the lives of what he calls the “bad players” of the cyberlocker market. The 45-year-old has no qualms about his mission, or the methods he’s employing to complete it.

“What I hope to achieve is very simple. I want to tear apart the illegal file locker industry by removing its supply of funds and then ultimately removing its supply of network connectivity,” King told TorrentFreak.

King’s tactics focus on sites that sell premium subscriptions in order to provide users with improved access to user-uploaded content even though, importantly, those sites have no part in providing it. Secondly, he’s aiming for sites that pay members cash for uploading content that achieves many downloads.

“I decided to take this action because I was fed up with watching businesses profiting from stolen content and illegal content while doing so under the guise of ‘user uploaded’ or ‘internet freedom’,” King adds.

And the Internet, King says, is something he feels strongly about. Not only does he claim to be a vocal opponent of Australia’s proposed Internet censorship laws, he says he also played a part in building it.

“I was involved in the embryonic stages of the Internet in Australia having a role within APANA which provided network access when almost nobody could get it unless they were in University. Julian Assange was also one of many Australians involved in APANA and most of us ran APANA nodes which let people dial in and connect to the Internet all connected to central hubs.”

But ‘internet freedom’ and what some file-hosters and their users are doing couldn’t be further apart, King insists.

“In the main file lockers are simply modern-day ‘fences’ of stolen goods. Just like a thief would take a stolen television or car radio to the pub and sell it for a few dollars, there are thousands of people around the world who take copyright content, upload it to an incentivized file locker, then get a few dollars to as much as $30 for 1000 downloads of that content.”

In an attempt to bring these sites down, King has been utilizing a hugely controversial approach. One by one, King has waded through a laundry list of sites, searching their indexes for files that appear to contain not only regular copyright-infringing material, but also animal and child pornography. He then reports his findings to PayPal and other payment processors.

“Not content with merely hosting child porn, many file locker sites also host bestiality,” King explained at the start of his campaign. “Our friends at PayPal make money from each premium sale of this material to people who download it.”

At first, King got nowhere with PayPal, but through persistence something changed recently. During the last week or so King says that PayPal has been cutting off services and freezing the funds of a wide range of file-hosting sites including Putlocker, ExtaBit, TurboBit, UptoBox, Cloudnator, RYUShare, BulletUpload, BackUpload, RGHost, NitroBits, FireGet, FileMates….and the list goes on and on.

Also raising eyebrows is the impression that King appears to have detailed, presumably private, information on the nature of measures taken by PayPal against the sites in question. For example, against PutLocker, the 346th most popular site in the world.

“PutLocker have had their Paypal accounts terminated. All funds have been frozen for 180 days and in that time they cannot withdraw or transfer funds. They may no longer process any payments through Paypal,” King reported today. So how is he getting information like this?

“I worked hard to develop relationships with people from all sectors of the payment processing sector. Initially I had no luck reaching anyone at PayPal who could help me, however I persevered until I was placed into contact with the right person and now have ongoing dialog with them. I have also established dialog with several other credit card companies and 3rd party payment processing services,” King explains.

“Unfortunately I cannot go into how information is exchanged or shared as I do not wish to give the targets of my campaign any insight into the methods or strategies we employ to remove their payment processing ability. Suffice to say, these companies do their own independent investigations and do not solely rely on our information.”

But a nagging question remains, and it’s raised time and again by King’s reports on his campaign site StopFileLockers. What real proof does he have that the files he’s finding on these file-hosting sites do indeed contain the content that their titles suggest, especially when there is reference to children and animals?

The answer, it seems, is none whatsoever. Nevertheless, King insists that’s irrelevant.

“Personally I don’t know whether a file entitled ’12yogirlraped.avi’ actually contains a movie of a 12-year-old girl being raped or a legal adult video being named a misleading file name. It would be stupid of anyone to download it to find out unless they were involved in law enforcement in that field.

“However the mere connotation that there are files named this way is, in itself, unconscionable. Where we find a systematic pattern of what appears to be child pornography based upon file names we refer the matters where possible. We are not about to download the material ourselves to find out what the file actually contains. This is a job for policing and child protection agencies,” King notes.

King’s activities are causing fury among both users and the file-hosting companies themselves but none approached by TorrentFreak would comment on the record. However, some appear to be taking their own action in response. One locker, NitroBits, has threatened to sue King.

“If this is how you want to destroy our legal business you are wrong,” the company told King. “We do not allow any kind of illegal material, and if you have uploaded illegal material to NitroBits, and reported it to PayPal I will make sure I will take you to the European Supreme Court!”

Others are less straightforward. King says he’s been DDoS’d and has received threats against his life, but he doesn’t appear to be taking them too seriously. With the help of a team of volunteers he says he will continue and at the moment envisages a three month campaign – which he is funding – to achieve his goals.

So should other file-lockers be concerned at the prospect of having their PayPal and other payment processing facilities withdrawn too? King says he’s pushing hard for all file-hosting sites to be an unacceptable use of PayPal but currently the processor isn’t going that far, instead preferring to move on a case-by-case basis.

And that case-by-case basis, once PayPal have been informed that a problem even exists, raises an interesting point.

King says that PayPal are doing a “fairly good” job in their response considering the millions of accounts and transactions they have to process – after all, they can’t monitor everything that goes on via their service.

So, applying the same reasoning, the vast majority of file-lockers will not have anything to do with the content being uploaded and, once they are alerted to a problem, will take action as the law requires. However, rather than being given the benefit of the doubt and the same room to move as PayPal, they’re finding their finances strangled instead.

For King, it sounds like a no-brainer. Why bother with a million DMCA notices when a concerted effort can cut off a company’s ability to do business in one swoop? Filth sticks, it seems, and the adult industry has that – and determination – in spades.

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

This widespread legitimate use also applied to Megaupload. Founder Kim Dotcom told us last year that movie industry insiders and employees at the world’s top corporations were all using the service.

“Among our 180 million users is a large number of celebrities, musicians, film makers, actors, etc. and they love Mega. We have hundreds of premium accounts from employees of the companies the RIAA and MPAA represent. In fact 87% of the fortune 500 companies have premium accounts with us,” Dotcom said.

While the numbers above say little about the legitimacy of the files being shared by these users, a new survey reveals that it is common for employees today to use file-sharing sites (e.g. cyberlockers) to share and store work-related documents.

The survey conducted by Skydox polled the use of free file-sharing sites among 4,119 workers at companies in the U.S. and U.K. Two-thirds (66%) of the employees admitted to using free file-sharing sites for work. Among these ‘sharers” 45% said their IT departments are aware of their usage of these services.

A breakdown of the result in different work sectors shows that file-sharing services are most used among employees in professional services (87%), closely followed by financial services (84%). Health care (57%), the creative sectors (55%) and government employees (54%) score below average.

The above doesn’t only emphasize the huge legitimate potential of cyberlockers. The widespread use of these services in the work setting also sheds a new light on the ongoing fight of Megaupload users to get their files back.

This week the EFF argued in court that the U.S. Government disadvantaged many former Megaupload users by shutting the site down without warning. By seizing the servers, they deprived millions of users access to their files. The EFF is supported by retired Judge Abraham David Sofaer who is very critical of the Government’s actions.

“It’s really quite outrageous, frankly,” Sofaer told Threat Level in an interview this week.

“I was thinking the government hadn’t learned to be discreet in its conduct in the digital world. This is a perfect example on how they are failing to apply traditional standards in the new context.”

Ignorance might play a role here. Judging from previous criminal investigations the U.S. Government is relying heavily on how the copyright holders portray certain websites. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the investigators were simply unaware of the many legitimate users, including thousands of government workers.

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