Anti-Piracy Group Targets Mega

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
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Anti-Piracy Group Targets Mega


The day after the launch of Kim Dotcom's new Mega service, the StopFileLockers anti-piracy group has begun a campaign to cut off its finances.

Kim Dotcom lifted the lid on complies [https://mega.co.nz/] with all relevant laws and claimed that its launch is "the most closely scrutinized start-up in internet history."

But StopFileLockers [http://stopfilelockers.com/] head Robert King isn't convinced. He said that while Mega presents a "thinly veiled appearance of a legitimate cloud hosting service," in reality it has "all the fundamental qualities" of an infringing file-sharing service, and so his organization has launched a campaign to have its payment processor accounts shut down.

Instead of going after file-hosting sites directly, StopFileLockers attempts to disrupt their cash flow by having their payment processor accounts terminated. It's apparently a successful strategy, as King claimed [http://torrentfreak.com/90-days-of-killing-cyberlockers-50-dead-more-than-500-injured-121006/] in 2012 that he had disrupted the cash flow of hundreds of sites and forced the shutdown of 54. Now he's turned his sights on Mega.

"Mega itself does not process payments because nobody would process payments for it. A couple of Mega resellers have PayPal and they are being terminated," he told TorrentFreak. "It has been widely reported that Paypal requires certain conditions to be met to become an approved file sharing merchant, on the face of it many of these conditions cannot be met by Mega."

King claimed that Mega is already sharing a "significant amount" of infringing material, although he declined to provide evidence to support the charge, and said that "there is no mechanism by which rights holders can gain access to remove files, there appears to be no plans to institute arrangements whereby files can be matched against MD5 or other fingerprinting technology for automated copyright removal and the detection of harmful content, and the site has not shown any wish to comply with the policies of the payment processors with whom it seeks to do business."

"Given the site lacks many of these safety features, we believe that Mega is no different to various other file locker services which have had various payment services canceled or suspended," he added. And while Mega does have a takedown policy for copyright infringing material in place, King said that nothing short of "proactive filtering" is adequate to qualify it for payments from PayPal and other processors - but because of Mega's system of encryption, conventional filtering methods won't work.

Mega has not yet commented on the StopFileLockers campaign.

Source: TorrentFreak [http://torrentfreak.com/dotcoms-mega-anti-piracy-group-moves-to-cut-off-finances-130121/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29]


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thesilentman

What this
Jun 14, 2012
4,513
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Anti-piracy group. Right; someone explain how an anti-piracy group has issues with a file-sharing site. Anyone? I'd applaud this if they were going after a piracy group, and with a better explanation than "hurp derp, those idiots pirated media." No, they did not. It's a file sharing site for god's sake...

I don't support piracy, but I believe that these guys are attacking the wrong people.
 

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
5,264
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Look into the history of StopFileLockers.

They're less an 'anti-piracy group' and more a 'trolling people they don't like' group.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,580
3,538
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Megaupload went down early 2012? Funny, doesn't seem anywhere near that long. Odd that.

...

Clicking on that link on their site takes me to a blog. In which they are talking about Hotfile going down, and bringing up mention of the recent high-profile rapes in India as justification, because Hotfile allows rape related material.

Now, there's certainly an argument to be made there, but that's not a piracy issue, and it's disgusting to exploit something like that this way.
 

Entitled

New member
Aug 27, 2012
1,254
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thesilentman said:
Anti-piracy group. Right; someone explain how an anti-piracy group has issues with a file-sharing site. Anyone?
Well, it totally WILL be used for massive amounts of piracy, and they are not wrong in how it's built ntentionally in a way to lock out automated copyright removal, and hide any possible pirated content through privacy encryption.

But then again, it is inevitable the nature of the Internet.

You can't ban the Internet, anti-piracy groups.

You are doomed.
 

SinisterGehe

New member
May 19, 2009
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"In order to protect to IP owners we shall destroy and harass private companies that are only trying to make a living and destroy hundreds of jobs and cause hundreds of thousands of their legit clients to loose their files and sharing service. In the name of copyright! We shall destroy thee!"

Also that StopFileLockers seems kinda dodgy, their site sucks, there is no webmaster, no copyright marks, only 900 supporters on Facebook. There has to be someone bigger behind this otherwise they influence is + - 0.


So out of fucking curiosity... Is there a content sharing site in to which I can upload files and be sure of the fact they are there year after.
Because any site that people can freely upload material need to be destroyed by StopFileLockers logic. This would also include Google Drive... Paid hosting services, Paid server cluster, private clouds, private cloud server, private media server hosts, Data banks... And a lot of other services.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
6,651
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Yeah. Let's also go after banks that have lockers. Which is pretty much every big bank in the world. God only knows what people put in those. How about airport lockers and high school lockers? Why not go after those as well?
Are these idiots really that stupid they don't understand that the primary purpose of a site like Mega is to store your stuff on their servers instead of your computer? If banks can't be responsible for what their customers put in their lockers, then sites like Mega can't be responsible for files that Mega customers upload. It's the same fuckin' principle. Jesus Christ. These guys are so dense, light bends around them.
 

1337mokro

New member
Dec 24, 2008
1,503
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Oh hello Robert King or should I say AdultKing?

Yeah this sad sad sad little man here really is nothing else but a youtube flagger. A delusional idiot who goes around on the internet flagging videos (read file hosters) for having "illegal" content. The same people that will flag down a review for containing a piece of a song with a DMCA notice would applaud the actions of this man.

What's funnier is that he actually got a response from one of the sites he reported. Basically this site was 100% legit according to the law, implying the same methods youtube applies (filters, checks, taking down illegal content when asked and or reported), and his answer was basically "Shut up, I don't want to hear it, come back to me when you are serial about stopping pirates!!!".

Dude, you are basically a flag troll, get a life, get a job, doesn't even have to be a regular job, you could go into anti-piracy activism. Now? You are nothing but a troll. A sad troll that might damage other people's businesses because they fill a niche that traditional corporations refuse to fill.
 

Sylveria

New member
Nov 15, 2009
1,285
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Tanis said:
Look into the history of StopFileLockers.

They're less an 'anti-piracy group' and more a 'trolling people they don't like' group.
So they're Lulsec except they're pretending to be righteous.
 

Knight Templar

Moved on
Dec 29, 2007
3,848
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So he can't prove anything untoward is happening, but he is going to have his own little crusade anyway?


SirBryghtside said:
Sylveria said:
Tanis said:
Look into the history of StopFileLockers.

They're less an 'anti-piracy group' and more a 'trolling people they don't like' group.
So they're Lulsec except they're pretending to be righteous.
So they're Lulzsec.
Boom Boom!
 

Dogstile

New member
Jan 17, 2009
5,093
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No evidence, but they're going ahead and trying to take em down anyway.

I thought being a vigilante was illegal in most places?
 

Coffeejack

New member
Oct 1, 2012
350
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Well, this is interesting. I wonder how long it will last before, you know, Anonymous happens.
 

Charli

New member
Nov 23, 2008
3,445
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Why do they flipping care. After the embarrassment that was the megaupload fiasco, the U.S. is going to have their internet guns at Mega's head if they put one toe out of line in allowing pirated material to stay on their site long. If only to justify the massive waste of time and money that crap was.

So move along little troll, your input is not needed here.

If you want to attack pirates, fine, but stamping up and down and screaming at a file sharing site, which, though able to be misused, has a right to exist, is pointless.

From what we could see, Megaupload was lazy as hell at getting rid of material it knew was copyright protected... aaand that's about it. It was just the biggest of the targets. There's hundreds of sites like it and still do it.
Need to employ quite a few people to look over the millions of files that get uploaded and pick out the bogeys, and last time that was pushed to the wayside in favor of ad revenue and profit. Big mistake. Hopefully lesson learned.
But time will tell.
 

Nurb

Cynical bastard
Dec 9, 2008
3,078
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I hope this works out, Dotcom is the only guy that has the money to fight terrorism departments used by corporations to get around due process. Besides, piracy takes place in other ways more than on mega upload if I'm not mistaken.
 

ZLAY

New member
Jul 31, 2011
41
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Christ. Just look at these cunts.

Pirates are in most cases bad, yeah. But people that try to fight them with retarded ways and means like these are always, always worse.