After months of discussions and ongoing pressure , we saw Avangate finally remove payment processing from a large batch of file hosts. Avangate did this reluctantly and in the end it came down to the risk to Avangate of losing relationships important to it’s ongoing business. At the time of writing there are still a handful of file sharing sites using Avangate.
Avangate became a refuge of last resort for many file lockers, the largest of which were Freakshare and Bitshare who fled to Avangate after the loss of their Paypal relationships. Avangate took on the business of Freakshare and Bitshare knowing our objections to the illegal file sharing business. For too long, Avangate completely thumbed it’s nose at legitimate rights holders by processing payments for infringing websites.
We shall be keeping a close eye on Avangate over the weeks and months to come, prepared to lobby those who provide necessary services to Avangate for as long as Avangate continue to support IP infringing merchants.
The sites affected by the Avangate’s decision to remove some file sharing merchants are:
Bitshare.com
cepzo.com
Extabit.com
Filefolks.com
FileRio.in
Freakshare.net
Sharedbit.net
Novafile.com
Lumfile.com
Filefactory.com
Luckyshare.net
Upsto.re
Megaload.it
FileStay.com
oteupload.com
upfile.biz
prefiles.com
ryushare.com
Ultimately all third party payment processors accepting credit cards or Paypal rely on their relationships with those organisations. In cases where payment processors do not adopt a best practices approach to the mitigation of IP infringement it will be necessary to continue to apply pressure on their business relationships and to conduct a public campaign until such time as the payment processor decides to place IP rights above profit.
We will continue to monitor all of the sites listed above to ensure that there are no safe havens of payment processing available to them.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m still see Novafile.com still used Avangate as their payment bank transfer.
You keep calling file lockers infringing sites, but as long as they obey the letter of the law, they aren’t responsible for user generated content.
This is the law in the EU under the INFOSOC Directive and in the US under the DMCA.
Safe harbors are there for a reason. Can you prove that none of the sites would be entitled to the safe harbor?
You are acting as if safe harbors did not exist and that the entire model of file hosting was illegal.
What’s up with your case against Rapidshare? and Hotfile?? They are still working well while you go against small ones.
You’re commenting in a post where it is reported about sites like Bitshare, Freakshare, Lumfile, Extabit and Ryushare terminated. And you’re complaining about Stopfilelockers only going after the small ones? Are you alright buddy?
Most of them (Bitshare, Freakshare, Extabit, Ryushare, Lumfile) are bigger than Hotfile and comparable to Rapidshare, and all all of them are way worse than Hotfile and Rapidshare. Hotfile has a strict 3-strikes policy against repeat offenders which they do observe for real, and they’re also being sued by major studios. So let the court decide on Hotfile. They’re not the biggest problem anyway. As for Rapidshare, they’ve recently announced about new traffic limits for downloaded files which will more than likely make them obsolete at piracy/warez sites in a short period of time. So as you can see both cases (Hotfile and Rapidshare) are progressing quite well.
Man are you on drugs? Bitshare, Freakshare, Extabit, Ryushare, Lumfile are comparable to Rapidshare? Rapidshare is like 10000 times bigger than all of them together.
I still see copyright files stored in Rapidshare. I still see people share copyright files in RS. But not as big as it used to be. So according to you its OK to support piracy in small scale?
what is Novafile.com payment?
They won’t go after the big ones because the big ones are very experienced with this kind of harassing lawyers and know exactly what their rights are, as oppose to the small ones who literally cannot protect themselves because they don’t know their rights and don’t know what to do in this legal area. It’s like in school, the bullies go and harassing the nerds who cannot protect themselves, until they stand up for them (like Rapidshare and hotfile are doing).
Hello, I saw more others alternatives to Avangate spread around the world.
Others will come to replace Avangate.
Just when I was about to quit, I saw I have nothing to be worry about.
Anyway, I want to take a real job in the next 2 months.
I see Avangate is from Holland. I have doubts they removed this sites. Lots of file lockers are hosted in Holland.
I don`t deny the fact that you have an huge contribution in this file sharing collapse. In some boards, the file sharing is totally callapsed since paypal started to cease payments.
I was wrong before ( yesterday ), this way of business is down for good but I am glad I made some money after all.
Good bye!!!
Oh man,
You’re spending your life to fight against the world.
Hehe
They are still alive. You are looser Stop FAIL Locker
So where can I sign up to fight places like this? Scam artist POS lawyers who don’t give a crap about “Authors” and “Artists”. How much money from the MPAA, RIAA, and the like has actually went anywhere but their pockets? Or to “fight piracy”.
Scum…
So did you support paypal pulling donations from wikileaks because the information was stolen?
I love reading the hate posts on here. Reading posts by the Anons here, it’s obvious SFL is hurting the upload monkeys who profit from the work of others
Speaking of Anon cowards, I have one request for 2013. Can you have a section where you publish the names and addresses of those behind these file lockers? Perhaps we’d see less illegal activity if the owners of these sites couldn’t hide behind whoisprivacy tools and had to deal directly with people who were disgruntled their DMCA notices were being ignored or takedowns that aren’t being processed ‘expeditiously’
Keep up the good work SFL and all the best for 2013