The studios are pushing for Hotfile to be shut down for not banning repeat infringers, or identify and track them. During the discovery part of the proceedings, they say infringement notices sent to Hotfile by copyright owners revealed a “staggering” number of repeat offenders. Taking aim at Hotfile and owner Anton Titiv, saying that he has “direct financial stake in Hotfile’s extensive infringing activities, which he took active steps to enable.”
Of course there is always another side to the story. Hotfile denies the accusations, of course, stating they registered a DMCA agent, informed repeat offenders of their policy. They have a ‘ report abuse’ form for content owners to send DMCA take down notices and has taken down links in response. A second filling by Titov argues that he is not responsible for day-to-day operations on Hotfile. He only handles the technical matters. They even developed a tool that lets select copyright owners take down infringing links immediately if they feel it violates their holdings.
The Hotfile / Hollywood case has been open for some time now, with the original suit being filed a little over a year ago. Now that Megaupload got taken out of the mix, they have new weapons to use going forward. Hotfile isn’t backing down by any means though. They counter sued Warner Bros. in September for repeatedly demanding the take down and removal of content that they didn’t own in the first place.
What a mess. We know a lot of devs host their ROMs and other works on Hotfile. Losing this location would mean another file migration. Those of you that had to make a change after Megaupload went down, where did you end up? Any suggestions for non copyright infringing work to be hosted at? We have a developer account option with a server available for Android works if you need it. Let us know.
Source: Arstechnica
